Glitch takes Woolworths checkouts offline around the country

The New Daily
Apr 16, 2018, updated Oct 22, 2020

Woolworths has apologised after a technical glitch knocked out thousands of registers across the nation for close to an hour, forcing some stores to shut.

About 500 of the grocery chain’s 995 stores were affected between roughly 4pm and 5pm AEST.

Registers came back online within an hour, a spokesperson confirmed to The New Daily.

“We can confirm that an IT issue impacted registers in some of our supermarkets for a short period of time this afternoon,” the spokesperson said.

“The registers are now back online in all our stores. We apologise for the inconvenience this caused our customers.”

Woolworths is still working to find out the cause of the IT problem, but has ruled out a cyber attack.

On social media, shoppers around Australia said they had been told to abandon their trolleys and leave the store.

“Was in Woolworths when the computers went down – poor staff trying to cope and frantic calls to IT,” Liz Green wrote on Twitter.

At Haymarket, in Sydney, staff shut the store and were turning people away, telling them to “come back in about an hour”, with similar stories emerging across the nation.

Woolworths is Australia’s largest supermarket chain, with close to 1000 stores.

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