Sainsbury's And Waitrose Accidentally Cancel Hundreds Of Christmas Orders After Website 'Meltdown'

REUTERS/Stephen HirdJ Sainsbury CEO King and Chairman Hampton

Sainsbury's and Waitrose, two of the UK's biggest supermarkets, have been hit by website problems that have caused disruptions to hundreds of customers trying to order food for Christmas. 

The Guardian is reporting that the Sainsbury's website accidentally cancelled "hundreds" of orders on Sunday night.

Waitrose was also hit by a similar problem. Staff told customers that its website was "going into meltdown" and had led to failed deliveries of food.

A Waitrose spokesman, speaking to the Guardian, said that "The temporary IT problem yesterday was swiftly and successfully fixed."

People affected by the website issues were told that they could rearrange their deliveries to a date after Christmas, or pick them up in store. 

It's not clear why the supermarket websites failed on Sunday evening. There was likely a lot of people trying to book orders at that time since it's so close to Christmas, but as we saw during Black Friday, supermarket websites have plans in place to deal with excess traffic.