AN ANGRY dad has blasted a Poole jewellery shop for wrongly over-charging him almost £1,000 just days before Christmas.

Colin Heath and his wife, Sarah, visited the Ernest Jones store in the Dolphin Centre on Saturday, December 20, to buy a half eternity ring as a tradition in recognition of the birth of their first child two weeks ago named Imogen.

Mr Heath chose a ring costing £675 and a pair of earrings as an extra treat for his wife costing £200.

He paid for the purchases and later checked his bank balance to find he had been correctly charged for the ring, for a total debit of £1,813.

Now Colin says staff at the store have said they will not be able to refund the money for between three to five days. He claims that he was previously promised that the money would into his account in less than 24 hours.

He said: “When we got home, I wanted to see what the ‘damage’ was done from our shopping and saw that I had been overcharged.

“When we went back to the store, they said that it was a company-wide issue, where people’s cards were being charged in error.

“I asked if they could allow the credit card transaction to run through and instead pay me the money in cash, but they said that they wouldn’t do that.

“Every piece of jewellery we have bought since Sarah and I have been together has been from Ernest Jones and she was without the eternity ring or anything at Christmas.”

Colin said that the store has given him the earrings as a goodwill gesture, but this does not help the fact that his account has been emptied by the transaction in error over the festive period.

A spokesperson for Ernest Jones said: “We are aware of the matter, however, for privacy reasons it is our policy not to resolve or comment on customer service issues through third-parties.

“We always seek to resolve customer service matters to our customers’ expectations and are pleased that is the case here.”