Getty ImagesMorrisons has apologised after tech problems affected discounts and online deliveries across the UK.
Customers were unable to redeem discounts on their loyalty cards and had Christmas deliveries postponed at short notice on Monday morning.
Morrisons said it was investigating the issues in store and online but did not give any information on the causes of the outage. All stores were back to normal by Monday evening, the BBC understands.
In response to the problems at the tills, the supermarket chain has applied some loyalty discounts to all customers.
It is making its top 100 More Card prices the regular price for all shoppers, even if they are not members of the loyalty scheme.
More Card customers will also get an extra 10% off their entire shop “as an apology”.
Both measures will be in place until the end of Tuesday, Morrisons said.
Customers who shopped on Monday before the 10% discount was introduced can go back in store to redeem the discount, Morrisons said.
Some home deliveries may arrive late, and click and collect customers should wait for an email before going to stores, the company said.
But some customers have told the BBC their online orders – containing their Christmas Day food – have been cancelled altogether.
And others have told the BBC they have experienced similar issues before today, including over the weekend and “in the last couple of months.”
‘Staff were getting upset’
One customer said he missed out on about £20 of discounts.
“I added everything up as I went around the shop and it came to £70, which with all my card discounts and vouchers should have cost me nothing at the checkout,” Steve Weatherby, from Huddersfield, told BBC News.
“But it came up as £90. None of the discounts and offers around the store, like 50p off, had been applied.
“So I had to pay it as I was shopping for Christmas lunch and things we needed.”
He added: “The staff were getting upset as they weren’t aware of what was happening, and it’s not their fault.”
Another customer told the BBC her online order was cancelled on Monday morning.
“I booked it ages ago, when the delivery slots first came out for Christmas,” said Moira Gray, from Northumberland.
Unable to leave the house due to illness, she added she was “really stressed,” as her order included turkey and trifle for Christmas Day.
“[Morrisons] said they couldn’t do anything… they also said their systems were down,” she added, saying that Morrisons offered a £10 goodwill voucher.
Another customer, Lorraine Calvo from Northumberland, had her delivery cancelled in the morning and said Morrisons told her this was due to a problem with the IT system.
“I saw the email at 8.30am and was a bit shocked because they texted me last night confirming the delivery,” she told the BBC.
“It was all my weekly shop to get me through Christmas, and cat food and everything.”
Since this story was published online, Morrisons got in touch with Ms Gray and Ms Calvo, and promised to deliver their orders on Monday, free of charge.
It also disputed the claims that these cancellations were due to the main systems issue, telling the BBC that they were separate problems which were dealt with by customer services.
But it did say in a statement: “If for any reason there are isolated cancellations, our team will be in touch directly to resolve them.”
‘Stuff of nightmares’
Morrisons had been advertising large discounts ahead of Christmas, including some vegetables for 10p.
“There’s never a good time for a tech glitch, but for it to happen on what is expected to be the busiest day of the year is the stuff of nightmares,” says retail analyst Natalie Berg.
“This will further erode shopper trust and impact profitability.”
Monday was predicted to be the busiest shopping day for supermarkets this year, according to retail analysts Kantar.
Sales at supermarkets are expected to reach over £13bn for the first December ever.
Morrisons is the fifth-largest market supermarket in the UK, according to Kantar, with 8.6% of the grocery market in the 12 weeks leading up to 1 December 2024.
“Retailers are putting more and more deals through their loyalty cards and if shoppers can’t access them, they will feel cheated,” said Ronan Hegarty, news editor of trade publication The Grocer.
The Morrisons website was also down for a period in the morning, with error messages on some pages suggesting invalid or late responses from servers.