‘A total f*** up’: Tesco Christmas shoppers report huge queues and crashing website

Tesco has apologised for the issues

Christmas shoppers struggle with mammoth Tesco queue and crashing site (Nicholas T Ansell/PA) (PA Wire)

People seeking to secure a Tesco Christmas delivery slot have complained of a digital queue of more than 100,000, wait times of more than an hour, and a repeatedly crashing website.

Delivery Saver customers were permitted to book a slot from 6am on Tuesday 15 November but, despite logging on early, shoppers reported that the queue was opened before the advertised time.

One customer wrote on Twitter that they’d logged on at 6am only to find they were number 136,000 in the queue.

“Come on @Tesco – started at over 136,000th in the queue at 6am (slots opened at 6!?), and after almost two hours of waiting, the app isn’t working!!”

Others reported being “kicked out” after waiting hours. “So glad I got up early to join the @Tesco Christmas Delivery queue, only for the app to crash when I was about 15 minutes away and push me back 180k places. Swell,” wrote another.

Others took a more lighthearted approach to the online fiasco.

“When you know Christmas will arrive before your turn in the @Tesco [queue]”, wrote one, while another quipped: “As a child I woke early for Xmas. As an adult I wake early to book a @Tesco delivery slot :-)”.

“Youngsters queue online for Glastonbury tickets. Us middle agers queue for Tesco slots. #Tesco #EveryLittleHelps”, wrote another.

A Tesco spokesperson said: “We're currently seeing a high number of visits to our website and Groceries app and some customers are temporarily having difficulty logging on or placing orders.

“We're really sorry about this. There are still slots available for both home delivery and click & collect over the Christmas period and we're working to get things back up and running as quickly as we can. In the meantime, we recommend that customers use our website to place their order.”