So someone at Dreamhost caused a ruckus when they accidentally caused their billing cleanup program to run as if it were December 31st, 2008. This of course is a problem since that particular date is over a year away. According to this particular blog post on the billing problem, they ended up taking in about 7.5 million dollars due to this error. Not only that but it’s possible if the script determined that you were long over due on your payment it might have shut down your site. Luckily for me, my site is still here and the credit card they have on file for me isn’t valid on that particular date so I wasn’t billed at all. I’d hate to be a person that pays with debit or something and have insufficient funds. I *would* have been billed over $400, a completely wrong figure mind you, and for some people that’s a lot of money. The nice folks at Dreamhost have promised to compensate anyone who’s bank charged them overdraft charges though but it’s still a hassle to have to deal with.
I’ve written similar scripts, so I know from experience that you really have to check, double check and triple check scripts that deal with money because when people get erroneously billed they freak out and send angry emails.
The blog also notes that the billing script no longer accepts dates in the future 
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