Asda customers were greeted with a card machine technical fault that took several hours for the store management to resolve prompting anger outbursts.
Chaos at @asda@AsdaServiceTeam South Shields as tills and card payments stop working. I have cash but still waiting ages! #sortitoutpic.twitter.com/4TzzDDYRqx
— Tim Hines (@Tim_Hines) 30 October 2016
Card payment machines in Asda superstores across UK broke down recently, leading to a buzz on twitter over the issue.
Frustrated, stranded clients turned to social media platform twitter, to express their anger as they waited in long queues to pay cash for their purchase.
Gordon Carr @CarrsyToon wrote: “Thanks very much @asda I have lost my ‘extra’ hour today waiting at Boldon store as tills stopped working! 45 minutes with no explanation.”
Natalie Jones @pureangel40, painted a picture of what was going on saying: “Every card reader in every @asda store is down, people are scrambling to the cash machines to pay for their shopping”.
To prevent further outburst from angry clients waiting in long queues, Asda put a notice in the stores informing clients that they were only dealing with cash transactions.
Shopping is bad enough without this greeting as you arrive @Asda Complete chaos ? #AsdaGate pic.twitter.com/ACezE9Un4W
— Elaine Giles (@ElaineGiles) 30 October 2016
By 1.42pm, the crisis that started early morning, had not yet been resolved, prompting more angry tweets.
Jim Bentley tweeted: “@asda no backup, no redundancy system. We’re just stood here like cattle waiting for your systems to start working again. On Sunday.”
Asda clients at the Cardiff Bay store shop recently.
Responding to the crisis on twitter, the Asda Service Team @AsdaServiceTeam said: “We’re aware of an issue with our store’s accepting card payments & are working to fix it asap, we’re sorry for any inconvenience caused”.
The problem was resolved at around 4pm in most stores.
When contacted, the Asda press officer, Ms Jennifer Devlin, declined to have an interview with InterCardiff on this issue and only stated the fact that the problem “affected all of our stores in the UK and Northern Ireland”.
Ms Devlin said she did not have any other information on the detail around the cause of the card machine breakdown and referred InterCardiff to a statement an Asda spokesperson released earlier on Twitter responding to the many clients expressing their disappointment with the store.
The statement published by a local media house read: “We are in the process of resolving a technical issue with our card payment system in stores. “We’re continuing to process payments as quickly as we can but apologise to our customers for the inconvenience this has caused”.
When Inter Cardiff visited an Asda store in Cardiff Bay, a week after the incident, the situation had gone back to normal and shoppers were using card machines without any trouble.
All the customers we spoke to that day had not been at the Cardiff Bay Asda store during the card crisis.