Asda’s website went down for thousands across the country, leaving shoppers unable to access their orders or place new ones.

The majority of the problems appeared to be with the app, with over 1,000 complaints registered on DownDetector.

The outage is affected those in Manchester, Nottingham, London, Glasgow, Plymouth and Birmingham.

Issues first arose around 3pm this afternoon, but appear to also be with the company’s website.

The trial is currently taking place at the Ashton-under-Lyne supermarket in Greater Manchester, and everything from grocery items and clothing, to electrical products can be returned via the machines.

Customers simply have to scan their receipts and the product’s barcode before depositing their return into either a cupboard (for groceries and electrical goods), or into a bin (clothing).

Alexander Lacy, Asda’s senior manager – retail front end service, said in a LinkedIn post that the changes would help reduce ‘queue times’ at customer service desks in-store, which were a ‘key pinch point’ for shoppers.

He added that a simple return via the machine should only take ‘around 30 seconds’. Pretty neat, huh?

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