A DISABLED Evesham man claimed this week he and his wife fell victim of Chip and PIN months before the initiative became mandatory across the UK.

Graeme Williams and his wife Rosemarie used their Solo cash cards over a period of six months and on four separate occasions during that time, found they had been charged twice the amount.

"We were charged for one of them during the Christmas period, a time when you need as much money as possible. The double charges happened once at Tesco's, once at Morrisons, once at Norton Grange pub when me and my wife went out to lunch and one other time," said Graham.

"We paid £118 out on one transaction, so £236 was taken in total, that is quite a lot to lose, especially around Christmas time. We complained to our bank, NatWest, who said it was the holding bank that was responsible for the cash.

"We complained to the manager at Tesco who was very helpful. He was so sure we would get our money back from the bank with no problems, he gave us the money to make sure we didn't go short. When the money was credited back into our account, we took it back to the store."

A spokesperson from Tesco's press office said: "We are aware this is happening to some people but our systems are not the cause. We were fully prepared for Chip and PIN and any problems people are having look to be the fault of the banking systems."

The couple also had problems in Morrison's in the town. Gary Bolton of Morrison's press office said: "We have checked our records and are certain our tills are not to blame, it is probably down to some teething problems with the bank's system."

Mr Williams, of Abbey Close, continued: "We did get the cash back after about three to four days but in the meantime I was concerned who's earning interest off our money and how many other people was it happening to?

"There were no error messages at the time, everything went through as normal and we'd never had problems with the cards before so we had no reason to question anything.

"It wasn't until we saw our statement we realised. We complained and then three to four days later we got the money back and the double transaction had been removed from the statement." Nigel Meffen, media relation's spokesman for NatWest Bank said: "Because this is an isolated case and thankfully very uncommon, we are thoroughly investigating this matter for Mr Williams. I have his details and will be contacting him in due course to further look into this." Chip and PIN is the biggest change to the way we pay since decimalisation and the scheme became mandatory just eight days go on February, 14. According to www.chipandpin.co.uk, its impact on card fraud is already beginning to be felt, with lost and stolen and counterfeit card fraud down by almost a third in the first half of 2005.