Tesco van

Tesco’s IT problem affected processing orders for home delivery and click & collect

Tesco has ruled out a cyber attack, as it announced its home deliveries and click & collect services had returned to normal today after thousands of orders were hit by a major issue with its national picking computer system yesterday.

The problem hit picking operations in stores used for processing orders for home delivery and click & collect.

A spokesman said the supermarket could “categorically deny” that it was anything to do with a cyber attack, following high profile recent incidents such as that which hit the NHS.

“We experienced an IT issue earlier, which affected some grocery home shopping orders,” said a spokesman. “We’ve worked hard to fix this problem and expect the service to return to normal tomorrow. We’d like to apologise to customers for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Sainsbury’s yesterday launched a social media campaign to try to rub salt into its rival’s wounds. It tweeted: “Having trouble with your online shop? We’ve got you covered. Order from us, for speedy delivery right to you.”

However, Sainsbury’s itself has recently been hit by chaos in its online service.

It suffered its second online grocery glitch in three months earlier this month following a computer failure.

Customers faced hours of delays in their online grocery orders and struggled to get through to the busy customer care line this week due to a “temporary issue”.

Jason Shorrock, vice president EMEA of retail strategy at JDA, said supermarkets risked customers jumping ship if problems persisted.

“The problem suffered by Tesco was not an isolated one. Research has shown that issues with online orders are on the increase, with more than half of UK shoppers experiencing a problem with an online order in the last 12 months.

“Fulfilment and ‘last-mile’ issues continue to hinder their efforts at a time when consumers are becoming increasingly intolerant of poor service.”