Argos apologises after IT glitch takes website offline
Retailer 'extremely sorry' after glitch causes confusion over orders
Retailer Argos has apologised after an IT glitch on meant customers' orders and Christmas shopping lists were deleted.
The error affected the Argos website over the weekend, causing customer orders that had already been paid for to be deleted and confusion over whether they'd actually be delivered.
The website is now back online after the internal fault was identified and Argos has said it's working to contact the thousands of customers who have been affected by the outage.
"We are extremely sorry for the temporary service issues our customers were experiencing on our website this afternoon. We have identified and fixed the issue and our site is now up and running," said an Argos statement.
"We apologise to any customer who has tried to contact us unsuccessfully today and we are working to respond to all enquiries as soon as we can," it added.
Argos has also warned customers about cyber criminals sending fake emails purporting to be from the retailer in an attempt to fool customers into divulging personal data.
However, the retailer has moved to reassure customers that the website glitch didn't occur because of a cyber attack and that an internal fault was to blame. The website is now operating as normal.
"Forty-nine per cent of our business starts online now, before anyone even comes into a store," he said.
Argos is in the process of modernising its stores, equipping them with tablets rather than the traditional, hefty catalogues.
"People are used to browsing and shopping online with tablets, and now it's not an alien experience to everyone," Sackman said.