A local hotelier has been inundated with calls from strangers after the name of his B&B started appearing on bank statements, despite them never having visited.

The error has been ongoing now for several months and owner of guest house Drakewalls Bed & Breakfast at Gunnislake, Ken Smyth has been fielding regular calls from people wondering why his business is taking money from their bank accounts.

He said: “For about eight weeks now we have had people knocking at our door, two to three telephone calls a day asking why our name is appearing on their bank or credit card statement when they have not stayed with us.

“They are coming up with all manner of scenarios, such as are you operating a scam, or why is my husband or wife staying at your B&B without telling me! It’s become a bit stressful to be honest as every time the phone rings you’re expecting the same again.”

The common link is the ASDA Express across the other side of the A390 road. Customers topping up with fuel at the garage are finding the amounts taken linked to the guest house, causing much concern and anguish to the B&B owners and the ASDA customers. In fact, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and John Lewis credit card all seem to identify the guesthouse as the recipient.

Initially Ken assumed the issue lay with ASDA but after investigating his concerns a spokesperson for the supermarket said: “We have cross-referenced sales data with our systems and have confirmed that the transaction data reflects the expected Merchant ID on our systems, so we are confident that our systems are working correctly.

“Following this step, we engaged our card payment solution partners Elavon, who in turn looked at their own protocols to try and determine the root cause of this issue. Elavon confirmed that the correct narrative was being used at both sites when the transaction is sent through the scheme to the issuers. Meaning that from the perspective of our systems and theirs the right location data for the point of sale and transaction is being logged.

“The transaction narrative information can often be driven by the issuer and the payment app, rather than the acquirer or the gateway, likely attributed to the additional technology that issuer banks are implementing into their apps, i.e. geolocation, which may be being misinterpreted given the close nature of the two properties.

“We have written to Mr Smyth to explain our findings and advise that the current situation is not within either Asda's or Elavon's control to correct, and would need to be resolved by the customer who makes the purchase and their card issuer.”

After seeking clarification from one of the offending banks, a spokesperson for NatWest confirmed: “We’ve identified that transactions at ASDA Express Gunnislake have been mistakenly labelled as “Drakewalls Bed and Breakfast” due to a data naming issue.

“We have now corrected this issue for customers and are taking steps to prevent future errors. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”