Sainsbury’s down updates — Thousands report issues with store deliveries as ‘technical issue’ hits UK stores

‘We will not be able to fulfil the vast majority of today’s Groceries deliveries’

A spokesperson said: “We are currently experiencing a technical issue affecting some stores, our Groceries Online service and our ability to contact customers directly.

“Unfortunately, we will not be able to fulfil the vast majority of today’s Groceries Online deliveries.

“We are working hard to fix the issue and apologise to our customers for the inconvenience. We will contact customers proactively to rebook orders as soon as we can.”

Why have Sainsbury's not contacted customers?

Customers have not been contacted by Sainsbury's following today's outage in order to let them know that deliveries will not be made.

A spokesperson has said: "Our ability to contact customers directly has been affected due to this outage. I'm really sorry."

Customers advised to place new order from Monday

A Sainsbury's spokesperson has advised customers to rebook their orders on Monday.

Taking to X they said: "No orders will be going out today and once the systems are fixed, your order will be cancelled.

"Please place a new order from Monday onwards."

Sainsbury's issues come hours after McDonalds faced a system issue

Fast food chain McDonald's had a system crash on Friday forcing it to close some of its restuarants.

Customers were reportedly turned away from stores and some reported issues with online ordering.

'We're working to resolve this issue'

Pimlico Sainsbury's had yellow warning tape around the SmartShop stall on Saturday morning.

A note stuck to the tape told staff the store was cash payment only.

It read: "We apologise, we're currently unable to accept contactless or card payments.

"We're working to resolve this issue.

"Please pay using cash. Thank you."

Advice to customers

Sainsbury's have offered advice to customers this morning following the outage.

One spokesperson said: "I'm terribly sorry but unfortunately our stores are currently experiencing system issues.

"Because of this, unfortunately we will not be able to fulfil the vast majority of orders today.

"Please place a new order from Monday onwards."

Store in London now only using cash

One store in London is now using cash only with shoppers abandoning trolleys and the queue for the ATM 10 people deep.

Ian Miller went shopping at the Pimlico store in London just after 7am.

He said that the smart shop guns didn't work and read "no internet" - so he used the app on his phone.

He said the app also failed and when he got to the till he had to re-scan all his items.

"It [the till] circles and then goes back to 'welcome to Sainsbury's, please start your order'."

Miller said he then faced payment troubles as the pay wave function didn't work and it took about a minute for they payment to go through when he inserted his card.

"I was like 'oh what the f'."

Shoppers left furious

Shoppers were fuming in response to the supermarket's posts on X, formerly Twitter.

One said: "No one told us till we got to tills. noone told us about it..only had fiver on me.. unfortunately mobile phones don't give out cash."

Another said: "Proactively contacting customers?? Sat on hold for over an hour to find out what’s happening with my order, no hold music so not even sure sat in a queue."

While a third posted: "Is there a list of affected stores/areas or is it countrywide? You’ve said “some” be good to know who is and isn’t affected."

'We will not be able to fulfil the vast majority of today's Groceries deliveries'

A spokesperson said: "We are currently experiencing a technical issue affecting some stores, our Groceries Online service and our ability to contact customers directly.

"Unfortunately, we will not be able to fulfil the vast majority of today's Groceries Online deliveries.

"We are working hard to fix the issue and apologise to our customers for the inconvenience. We will contact customers proactively to rebook orders as soon as we can."