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."
Disappearing lien
Consider if you will George & Bill's Appliance Service, a business in Springfield. The store, and former owner John Gillespie, have already entered the year 2000 zone.
On July 25, 1996, a UCC statement was filed showing that the store had borrowed money from Metropolitan National Bank of Springfield and secured the loan with collateral. A UCC statement is a filing under the state's Uniform Commercial Code, and is used by lenders when considering whether to lend money to a business or individual.
The year 2000 bug, however, made the lien disappear -- at least on the computer records maintained by the state. Instead of expiring on 2001, documents on file with the Missouri secretary of state's office said the lien expired in 1901.
"The effect of the error could be significant to anyone doing business with the debtor," said James L. McNish, a lawyer and executive director of the Kansas City Year 2000 Coalition.
Because the UCC statement erroneously shows that the lien on collateral used by George & Bill's Appliance for a prior loan expired 97 years ago, a lender considering another loan to the business could end up making a loan without appropriate collateral, McNish said.
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