I paid £150 for a tablet in Tenerife and it ended up costing me £2,128

Sunseeker Bridget Manning was browsing a rail of bright summer clothes in a souvenir shop in Tenerife three weeks ago when the shop assistant asked her whether she was interested in their cheap deals on electronics.

The 84-year-old widow was told that for just £150 she could get her hands on a ‘top-of-the-range’ tablet computer.

Even better, she needed to put down only a £26 deposit to take the tablet away with her to try it out.

A new electronics scam that has taken off in Tenerife sees shopkeepers ‘accidentally’ overcharge a credit or debit card without the knowledge of the buyer

After a bit of back and forth to change the tablet’s language from Spanish to English, she returned to the shop on Los Cristianos promenade on the day she was due to fly back to England, and paid in full for the gadget.

But upon arriving home in Warwickshire, Bridget discovered her two bank accounts had been emptied of £2,128 — money she’d saved up by taking on cleaning and ironing jobs in retirement.

‘It seemed like a good deal and they were very charming — they even offered me and my friends soft drinks and had us sit down,’ she recalls of the scammers.

‘I need this money to pay my bills. I am so distraught — I’ve been crying for many days and cannot sleep at night.’

Bridget, a retired legal assistant from Stratford-upon-Avon, had fallen for a heartless scam that has taken off in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands.

Money Mail has heard from a number of victims, who say the ruse typically starts with a shop offering a product at a very low price and then pressuring the customer into upgrading to another item at a considerably higher price.

The shopkeepers then ‘accidentally’ overcharge a credit or debit card without the knowledge of the buyer.

When Bridget bought her tablet, she was told her card — which she uses for holidays — did not work.

After three attempts, she tried a second debit card — for her main bank account with Santander — and entered her PIN. This was ‘accepted’ and she was given a guarantee for the tablet.

But she now recalls how the conman dangled his hand in front of the payment terminal screen to obscure the sums entered.

Bridget Manning was told that for just £150 she could get her hands on a ‘top-of-the-range’ tablet computer

Bridget says she couldn’t see the total she was being charged and did not receive a receipt either.

As part of the bluff, the shop assistant asked to take photographs of her passport, with the excuse that it would help her to declare the tablet when she went through customs.

As Bridget found, one red flag for this scam is the salesman suggesting you return to the shop on the last day of your holiday to make the full payment.

The idea is that you’ll be many hundreds of miles away before you realise you’ve been hoodwinked.

When Bridget notified Santander that she had fallen victim to a scam, she was denied any compensation on the grounds that she had willingly entered her PIN to make the payment.

Money Mail has asked the bank to investigate again.

After we got involved, Santander agreed to reimburse Bridget the full £2,128 she had lost. 

A spokesman for the bank says: ‘We would encourage all customers always to check carefully that they are paying the correct amount before making any payment, and if they are in any doubt not to make it.’

It couldn’t explain how both accounts were fully drained.

It is vital to see the sum you are paying on the card terminal before entering your PIN, they added.

Lynn Mackenzie also fell victim when she was on holiday in Tenerife in November last year. She was told she had to sign up for broadband in order to set up the tablet in English, but that the subscription could be cancelled as soon as she got home.

Upon realising it was a scam, she urgently asked her bank to block the payment, but it was too late — £1,750 had already been transferred.

Another reader, Susie Adlington, was horrified to find that her father had been conned.

He was on a surprise holiday to Tenerife that she and her uncle had taken him on to celebrate his 87th birthday. 

‘We were on a mobility scooter when a guy came out of a shop on the seafront promenade and started speaking to us about buying a tablet and a phone SIM card,’ Susie says.

Her father lost £1,500 to the scammers, while her uncle handed over £280 in cash. ‘A surprise birthday in the sun turned into a nightmare. These terrible people are preying on elderly folk.’

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