Sainsbury's on-line ordering system thought it would try something new today, and opted for disappearing completely and taking the day's orders with it.

Customers trying to log on to the supermarket's online ordering service today were greeted with a couple of lemons and an apology. No, really, lemons.

The supermarket told us it's been busy contacting customers since their system went titsup yesterday afternoon to warn them that their orders would not arrive today, and offering them each a tenner compensation too. Sainsbury's would only attribute the problem to a "technical issue".

One reader was given a slightly different take on the issue when she was told a fire in a nearby building was preventing technicians getting access to the appropriate servers. It is not clear whether it is the fire that has caused the outage. The company denied the flame-grilled-server scenario.

Sainsbury's reckons all the customers with lost orders have been contacted or are being contacted, and offers the usual apologies for the inconvenience, but the servers remain down so no-one is in a position to try anything different for today at least.

In the meantime, customers might like to try something new, like using their feet to walk down the road and buy some food the old-fashioned way. ®

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