A SUPERMARKET has apologised to a customer wrongly suspected of driving off without paying for petrol.

Clare Cassidy was shocked when police investigating an incident a few days before called at her house and cautioned her.

They asked her to go to the city's police station to view security camera (CCTV) footage from the filling station at Sainsbury's at the Arnison Centre, Pity Me, near Durham, where she had bought fuel and a sandwich.

Luckily, she had kept her receipt and her partner gave it to the officers.

Mrs Cassidy, who was a regular customer at the petrol station, said her car registration had apparently been caught on film shortly after the theft occurred.

She said: "It begs the question what did they do with the CCTV footage? Didn't it show me going to pay? It has not been checked correctly. Sainsbury's have not really been able to give me a proper explanation.

"If had not had my receipt - I paid cash and normally I would just have binned it -- I would have had to go to the police station and I could have been in a police cell for five or six hours.''

Managers from the store visited her to apologise and the company gave her £200.

Mrs Cassidy, of Durham City, said she was unhappy with the police response because the receipt was later pushed through her letterbox and it was a few days before she heard from the investigating officer that she was no longer under suspicion.

She said: "I'll not use that filling station after this. I'll go somewhere else.''

A Sainsbury's spokeswoman said: "We sincerely apologise for the distress caused to this customer and have given her £200 as a gesture of goodwill following our error."

A Durham Police spokesman said: "On the basis of information supplied by the supermarket, the officer went to the address of the lady but she was able to produce a receipt which confirmed she had, in fact, paid for the petrol.

"But she was acting on information supplied by the supermarket.''

He said the officer went off-duty after that but as soon as she became aware that the information from the supermarket was wrong, she rang Mrs Cassidy to apologise.