Waitrose has apologised to its customers after an IT glitch led to thousands of online orders cancelled minutes before they were scheduled to arrive.

Many of the affected shoppers took to social media on Wednesday to complain that their deliveries would no longer be arriving.

The upmarket grocer admitted on X – formerly Twitter – that a “large volume” of orders had been affected by a technical problem.

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A Waitrose spokesman told The Telegraph that the glitch had since been resolved.

“We’re very sorry that some customer orders were impacted following a technical issue,” he said.

“We’ve apologised to affected customers, and will be offering them a goodwill gesture.”

The exact number of disrupted orders is not known but online sales account for 14% of Waitrose’s sales in the year to 28 January 2023, down from 17% the year before.

Waitrose was forced to apologise to customers earlier this year after an IT glitch left many shelves bare across its supermarkets over the May Bank Holiday.

The technical issue meant essentials including fruit and vegetables were not delivered as a system update took longer than expected.

The supermarket told customers on X that the two IT issues “are in no way connected”.

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