A major IT mess up has hit supermarket giant Tesco this week, with customers across the UK left without their groceries after orders placed online were cancelled en masse.

The Mirror reports that the bug meant that many of the firm’s distribution centres were not being forwarded orders, with around a tenth of shoppers negatively impacted.

Another problem is that the issue was not localised, but rather spread its tendrils into systems nationwide, meaning cancelled orders were common in every part of the country.

A spokesperson for the retailer admitted that its home delivery service for grocery orders had been struck down by a glitch and that work to remedy it was ongoing. An apology was issued to any customers who had been impacted by this issue, as well as a call for them to get in touch with Tesco’s customer support team to rearrange delivery of unfulfilled orders.

Tesco has not created a standard offer to compensate those affected, but reports suggest that certain individual customers have been able to secure discount vouchers to save £10 when they place their next order via safe shopping online.

Experts have warned that it is incidents like this which can damage consumer confidence and trust in the e-commerce experience, especially as in this case it seems to be the final phase of the delivery process that has been hit by a bug.

Shoppers also want to be reassured that any retailer they buy from will be able to protect their personal information and provide a secure platform to conduct payments. While no breach seems to have occurred in this case, any sort of disruption can damage the reputation of a company and call into question the rest of its practices in the IT sphere.