Confusion as garage payments link to fencing firm

The owner of a fencing business says he is searching for answers after taking "hundreds of calls" from people querying apparent payments to his firm after visiting a nearby petrol station.

Jason Lloyd, of Hillsborough Fencing, in Sheffield said he had been contacted repeatedly after purchases made at a garage nearly half a mile away (650m) appeared on shoppers' bank statements under the name of his company.

He said he initially feared "something untoward" was happening, until one man identified the error, but now was struggling to rectify the issue.

The BBC has made several attempts to speak to the management team at the petrol station in Bradfield Road but has received no response.

Lloyd said: "We've always had a good family business name and all I could think of was what if people think we're doing something untoward and cloning cards."

Lloyd, whose father started the business in 1993, said he took the first call on 21 January.

"A guy rang up confused saying, 'why have you taken money out of my bank account?'," he said.

"He gave me the date and number, so I was looking through all our records and we had no record of taking money from his account."

Lloyd said the man told him he would be contacting his bank to try and get to the bottom of the issue.

However, while he waited for the man to come back to him, "more and more" people were in touch to raise he same complaint, with some people coming in in prson.

When the original caller eventually did make contact again he said he had been told the payment had actually been made to the petrol station.

Lloyd said once they "had an idea what had happened" they were able to explain to callers, who then confirmed they too had been to the petrol station.

"I felt really sorry for them. One woman said her nanna was confused about this fencing payment," he said.

Lloyd said he had made several attempts to contact the petrol station since January, but the issue had not been resolved.

The BBC understands the garage is now operating independently, having previously been run by Total Energies and then Harvest Energy.

Lloyd said although he had managed to "appease" customers he was no closer to finding an "explanation" for what was causing the problem.

"We think it's something to do with the geolocation on their card machine which is not linked to the right address," he said.

Zoe Bordiuk, also known as the Card Machine Queen, who works as a payment consultant for businesses said she had heard of a previous "similar scenario", though was unable to offer an explanation for Lloyd's difficulties.

She said: "I heard of a story where customers were making payments on their phone using Apple Pay at one business but were finding that the payments on their statements were showing instead to a local strip club.

"It caused many domestic arguments."

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