I found this article at www.year2000.com

The Kansas City Star By FINN BULLERS and DAVID HAYES - Staff Writers Date: 09/26/98 22:15

>>> You don't have to wait until Jan. 1, 2000, to see effects of the year 2000 problem.

With 460 days remaining before the 1900s become a memory, the year 2000 bug and computer problems very similar to it already have caused digital headaches in the Kansas City area.

`Slightly' overdrawn

Sept. 8 was not a good day for Tom Roskop and his wife, Lorna.

That was the day the Olathe couple got an urgent phone call from their credit card company.

"Did you place a $15,000 charge with an insurance company?" the credit card representative asked Roskop, an information services consultant with Johnson County.

"Heck no," Roskop responded. "We never spend that much money with a credit card."

But the credit card company showed that at 4:28 a.m. the day before, $15,000 was drawn as an automatic debit from Roskop's account. Four minutes later, his insurance company pulled an additional $2,800 from the account.

Roskop had been bitten early by the year 2000 bug. And it hurt.

Roskop's insurance company had installed new software that was ready to handle the year 2000 situation. But the company's computers garbled date entries and miscalculated insurance premiums.

It got worse.

By now, the couple had exceeded their credit limit. The company agreed to extend their $19,000 cap so they could purchase two plane tickets for Lorna's parents to visit from Europe. But the airline saw a "caution" on the couple's account and in the confusion billed them twice.

"It's been a real hassle. And when we got our credit card statement it was well into the five figures," Tom Roskop said. "Now I don't know if this is going to affect our credit rating. It's like a domino effect." <<<<<<<<

-- John Callon (jcallon@gate.net), September 28, 1998

Answers

Let the games begin!

-- Steve Hartsman (hartsman@ticon.net), September 28, 1998.

Too bad they didn't have a Smith-Barney account. After their y2k test every customer had 19,000,000 credited to their accounts. Oops! Who needs the lotto, when we have y2k?

-- Bill (bill@microsoft.com), September 29, 1998.