Just wondering if anybody else has had a similar experience to me.

In 2007 my girfriend and I travelled to Tenerife for a week. I weighed my bag on leaving and it came out at 15Kg. By the way a freind of ours is a Weight Watchers Leader and had just had her scales calibrated before they were weighed so there is no question that that the scales were out of order.

I smugly stood in the queue at checkin and watched as everybody else had to repack their luggage or pay extra charges to check their bags thinking " that will not happen to me."

Imagine how smugg I felt when my bag was 23 kg on their scales and was asked to pay £30. I immediately pointed out that the bag was well under 23Kg and that I would not be parting with a single penny, nor would I be removing anything from the bags.

I was told that if I wanted to complain, I would have to do so at the Customer services desk and would get the same answer and would then have to queue to checkin again and miss risking my flight.

At this point I lost it and said that I wasn't moving and that somebody from the customer services desk would have to come and see me. Five minutes later somebody from Thomson/Servisair came to the checkin desk where I was holding up the queue to try and resolve the problem. By this point other people were now kicking off at other desks and were refusing to pay the charges.

The girl I spoke to abruptly said that she would let me and another passenger go and then confidently said "you will be charged comming home."

Coming home I had added two bottles of scotch to my hold luggage and had not removed anything during the week. My hold baggage weighed just 17Kg at Tenerife airport coming home.

On my return I called trading standards, and whilst Thomsonfly/servisair's scales were found to be ok, I was later informed that another airline had been caught red handed having scales which were not calibrated.