Sainsbury's IT disruption: CEO confirms voucher for customers affected

Sainsbury’s stores nationwide, including Sussex and Surrey, are being affected by a major IT fault.

Card payments are not being accepted at hundreds of stores, with only cash accepted. The supermarket chain has also had to cancel online and click and collect orders.

Tesco has become the latest supermarket to be affected by IT issues, with the company forced to 'cancel a small number of orders'. It is understood to be a separate, unrelated fault.

Simon Roberts, CEO of Sainsbury’s, wrote: “Firstly, I want to apologise to you and every customer if you have been affected by this issue today. I really understand how inconvenient this disruption to your usual service from Sainsbury’s will be this weekend.

"Unfortunately, we will not be able to deliver the vast majority of today’s groceries online orders. For anyone expecting a delivery today, we have not taken payments for online deliveries and so you will not have been charged.

"We will automatically put a voucher in your online wallet in the next few days to apologise for the inconvenience of not getting your order.

"Our online ordering system is working as normal and you can place a new order now for delivery any time from tomorrow.

"Also to be clear, if you are expecting your delivery tomorrow or any other day after tomorrow then you can continue to shop online and checkout as normal.

"I can also assure you that all of our stores are open as usual today and accepting chip and pin and cash payments while we resolve the issue.

"Our contact centre will be unusually busy today, so my apologies that call times are likely to be longer than usual. Our teams are working as hard as possible to help you and are doing everything they can to take your call.

"I hope this message gives you all the information you need for now and I want to give you my personal reassurance that all our teams are doing everything possible to fix this issue as quickly as we can.”