Glitch sees £10,000tn ferry fare

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The company said the glitch in promotional prices was being fixed

Inflation is falling in the UK, but a web glitch caused prices on a ferry website to render the term hyperinflation a gross understatement.

A standard fare on StenaLine for a car with two adults and one child from Belfast to Stranraer normally runs at about £150, with discounts for economy travellers.

However, some people with promotional codes checking out the prices on Wednesday found the fares were in their trillions, with numbers outstripping those in the telephone directory.

For one code the lowest fare (single) was £10,823,000,335,693,400, or ten thousand eight hundred and twenty-three trillion pounds.

In the current harsh economic climate pitching ferry travel between Northern Ireland and Great Britain to the dwindling number of billionaires could be seen as an adventurous move.

The error is not restricted to the Irish Sea routes, but also affects the route to the Hook of Holland.

But the company said they were not targeting a radical new market and blamed a glitch in the system caused when a promotional code produced a decimal point in a price.

The firm said that the problem had been on the site for about a week and that customers receiving inflated ticket prices were being redirected to call centres where they would get their discount.

StenaLine carries three million people across the Irish Sea every year, with 60% of those booking their tickets online. A company spokesman said that only a "small percentage" of web bookings were made using promotional codes.

A fix is being developed for the problem and will be put in place as soon as it is suitable, the spokesman added.