A MICKLETON businessman believes he was charged twice for groceries as the country geared up for the chip and PIN revolution which began at midnight on Tuesday.

Former stage manager with the Royal Shakespeare Company Raymond Hood spent more than £44 in Morrisons supermarket in Stratford on Tuesday morning.

But his problems began when he reached the checkout and offered to pay using his Egg card, supplied by the internet bank.

"As soon as I put it in the machine it flashed up the message PIN blocked." he said.

"The assistant said she would swipe it through the till and I left the shop.

"When I got home I rang Egg to find out why the PIN had been blocked. They told me they had not blocked it, but when they checked my account they found that the same amount had been taken from my account twice within the space of a minute.

"As far as I can see, that means that the machine deducted the money from my account even though I never had the opportunity to key in the number.

"The people at Egg were unable to give me a satisfactory answer as to what happened or whether I would get one of the payments restored to my account.

"I have been using the card for four or five years and I have never experienced anything like this before."

A spokesman for Egg said: "This looks to be a glitch maybe to do with the retailers themselves.

"It looks like a straight forward case in which Mr Hood can claim the money back with no difficulty by contacting the Egg call centre where he could ask for a copy of the transaction.

"It would be obvious from the record of the transaction that the money has been taken twice in a matter of minutes from the same store which is clearly a mistake."

But Morrisons supermarket have said that after checking their own records Mr Hood's transaction only went through once on their system.

Gary Bolton at Morrisons press office said: "This is an extremely uncommon thing to happen and after we looked at our records we are sure that the transaction only went through once at the store.

"The stores chip and PIN machines and till systems have also been checked and there was no fault with them."

From midnight on Tuesday the chip and PIN system meant that anyone buying goods with a credit or debit card have to input a four-digit personal identification number into a terminal to authorise the transaction rather than signing a payment slip.