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A furious dad has told how bungling Birmingham shop workers charged him £59,400 for wrapping paper – which should have cost just £5.94.

Dean Baker, 32, said his family Christmas had been ruined after the astonishing debit card error by staff at Card Factory in Erdington High Street.

The dad-of-two had used his TSB bank card to pay £5.94 for four rolls of wrapping paper and a pack of gift tags at the store on December 22.

But two days later the cable engineer was stunned to find that the shop had instead taken £59,416 out of his account.

The mistake - which saw him paying over TEN THOUSAND TIMES the correct price - left Mr Baker more than £52,000 overdrawn. He told the Mail: “The girl on the till was a trainee. When I first put my card in the machine to pay, she said it hadn’t worked and asked me to do it again, so I did. I didn’t think any more of it.”

But when he went to pay for lunch at a restaurant on Christmas Eve, his card was declined.

“I knew I had plenty of money in my account so I couldn’t understand it,” said Mr Baker, from Erdington. “I went to a cashpoint nearby and couldn’t believe my eyes when the balance came up on the screen as being nearly £60,000 overdrawn!”

The blunder saw Mr Baker’s TSB bank account frozen - preventing him from being able to pay for Christmas food shopping and some last-minute gifts for his daughters, 18-month-old Harriet and Eden, seven.

“I was supposed to be buying an iPad for Eden but obviously I couldn’t do that, and we ended up having to beg food off relatives to pull a Christmas dinner together,” said Mr Baker, married to IT worker Joanne.

He said the couple were later “passed from pillar to post” by TSB and Card Factory - which initially said the cash might not be refunded to his account until January 12.

“I’m disgusted by how the whole thing has been handled,” he said. “I have barely been able to sleep through the worry of it all.

“People at Card Factory had promised to phone us back on a number of occasions but never did and the bank initially said it could not do anything either.

“Meanwhile, I was worried we wouldn’t be able to pay for our direct debits and our credit rating will probably take a hammering through no fault of our own.

“We can’t afford to buy food or petrol for the car and we’re having to take time off work just to try and sort it all out.

“I’m appalled. Christmas has been ruined for us.”

But after the Birmingham Mail intervened by contacting both the bank and company, the TSB immediately refunded the payment and said it would now recover the money from Card Factory.

A TSB spokeswoman said Mr Baker would not incur any overdraft or late payment penalty charges and added: “We apologise for the inconvenience that Mr Baker has been caused.

“We have been in frequent contact with Card Factory and are now pleased to confirm that Mr Baker’s money has been refunded.”

A spokesman for Card Factory, which has its HQ in West Yorkshire and boasted an annual revenue of nearly £330 million in 2014, said: “We can confirm that an administrative error made in our Erdington store on December 22 led to a significant overpayment by a customer.

“We became aware of the error on December 23 through our card service provider and acted immediately to initiate a reversal of the transaction so as to ensure that the customer was reimbursed and no bank charges were incurred.

“We received confirmation from our card service provider on December 23 that the reversal was being processed. Unfortunately, we were initially unable to reach the customer directly as we had no contact details.

“After establishing contact with the customer, senior management have been liaising directly to ensure that they are not disadvantaged by the situation and have apologised for any inconvenience caused.”