In a story that, in this reader’s view says as much about the lack of imagination of modern youth as it does about information quality management, comes news that a teenager in the UK has found himself stg£300 in debt after using an ATM card his bank sent him.

When the young man went to take some cash out, he was pleased to find that he could take out the maximum £300 and blew it all on the things teenagers blow their money on – iPods and such like. When he later checked his balance he found he had a bank balance of (apparently) stg£2 Million.

The boy had been waiting on payments due to him under the UK Government’s education maintenance allowance (EMA) scheme, under which students get 30 pounds a week to encourage them to stay on at school, so he didn’t initially question how he had sufficient funds in his account for the £300 withdrawal. He was, it seems, overjoyed to find the seven figure sum in his account, apparently as a result of his having gone to school when he should have (although one might suggest he should pay closer attention in maths classes so he can work out how many weeks he’d have to be in school to earn £2 million – the equivalent of 1282 years).

Subsequently the bank corrected its error and the young man found himself £300 over-drawn.
While the bank has suggested that the boy “should have known better” (and it is hard to argue with that), it is clear that the bank did make an error in the information associated to this boy’s account, and that is the IQ Trainwreck here. Some process within the bank erroneously put a large amount of money in the wrong account, resulting in a foolish teenager digging themselves into debt they could not afford (and the lad’s contribution to his own woes cannot be ignored).