A LABORATORY experiment has shown that less than one per cent of Hong Kong people check bills which have been generated electronically.
The experiment was carried out inadvertently by Shell, who sent out 110 bills with a duplicate entry (like the one shown right) to holders of their petrol account cards, which allow you to fill up and pay using a card.
Most bills have only a few lines, so any duplication should be hugely obvious.
So guess how many of the 110 customers noticed.
Fifty? Twenty? Well, the answer is one, namely Chan Pak-lin of Kowloon, who rang yesterday to say he wasn't too happy about offering interest-free loans to one of the world's largest oil companies.
In fact, if Mr Chan hadn't noticed the error, then every one of those 110 Shell account-holders would have paid up to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, because Shell had also failed to spot the mistake.
