Asda apologises for charging mother £930 for single banana

It's enough to send you bananas

(Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Nobody likes being overcharged for things.

In today’s murky economic climate, paying more money than you need to for even the cheapest of products is surely the epitome of injustice, not to mention it’s just downright irritating.

So, when Nottingham-based mother Bobbie Gordon discovered she’d been charged £930.11 for one banana that should’ve cost 11p, it’s fair to say that she was a little perplexed.

The mother-of-three had ordered her food shop online with Asda and was dismayed to find that she had been excessively overcharged - a mistake which the supermarket giant has since attributed to a “computer error”.

“Whoops, looks like we’ve slipped up here,” an Asda spokesperson said.

“Whilst our bananas are excellent, even we agree that they are not worth that much and clearly there has been a glitch in our system.

“We would like to thank Ms Gordon for keeping her eyes peeled and flagging this error to us and we are investigating to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Luckily, Gordon did not end up paying the extortionate bill as it was blocked by her credit card company's fraud team, who quite rightly suspected that something was up when they tried to process the payment.

"I told my seven-year-old 'you must really enjoy this banana, you must cherish every mouthful'," Gordon told the BBC.

Upon receiving the bill, she tweeted a picture of it alongside the offending banana, tagging Asda’s customer service team.

In the tweet, which has since been liked more than 2,400 times, she wrote: “My online delivery arrived. I’ve been charged £930.11 for one banana? I am going to be pretty livid if my card has been charged over £1k that my delivery note states!?! #asda #wtf #nottingham”.

Commenters revelled in the endless pun opportunities Gordon’s predicament made possible:

“A most unapeeling slip up,” wrote one person.

“Ahhh that's a *European* banana. The straight ones are only 11p. #bananagate #brexit,” joked another.

However, if the Twitter responses are anything to go by, it seems that the real mystery here is not why Gordon was so excessively overcharged for the fruit, but what her reasons were for ordering just a single banana, rather than a bunch.

“Who orders one banana?” asked several commenters.

It seems the perplexing case of #bananagate remains partly unsolved.

The Independent has contacted Gordon for comment.