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‘A minute to scan each item’: Supermarket agony as tech glitch hits South Island Foodstuffs stores


Many New World supermarkets across the South Island have been experiencing till issues.

MARTIN DE RUYTER/Stuff

Many New World supermarkets across the South Island have been experiencing till issues.

Supermarket customers endured agonising waits at the till on Wednesday afternoon when a tech glitch hit Foodstuffs’ computer systems, leaving shoppers waiting a minute at a time for items to scan.

The glitch lasted hours, affecting New World, Pak’n Save and Four Square supermarkets around the South Island with customers from Christchurch, Nelson, Timaru, Dunedin, and Invercargill contacting Stuff about it.

A Timaru shopper said she was caught up at the town’s Pak’n Save supermarket for more than two hours.

She said she spent more than an hour in a queue to pay for her groceries. “The payment wasn’t the problem, it was the transaction causing the problem. They had to wait about a minute to scan each item.

“After a while, the store stopped customers from entering, so they could clear the backlog.”

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A Christchurch shopper said he was “stuck in line for 1.5 hours” because he has a large family and was doing a big shop.

Another shopper was in a Pak’n Save supermarket in Blenheim just as the computers went down. He waited for over an hour before reachign the till.

“Once I was there I noticed a few of the items they scanned didn’t have the specials that were advertised,” the customer said. “I decided to leave my trolley full of food and leave.”

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Foodstuffs said it was only South Island stores that were affected by the problem.

“We would really like to apologise to customers who have been trying to shop during this time, we know the system being offline is an inconvenience,” a statement said.

Foodstuffs confirmed this issue was not caused by a cyber-attack. “It was simply an IT maintenance issue which unintentionally destabilised the stores’ online environment.”

The tech glitch affected stores including New World, Pak’n Save and Four Square. (File photo)

The tech glitch affected stores…

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