Woolworths was trending on Twitter on Monday afternoon as reports of a technical outage in stores across the country swept social media, with customers complaining of long lines and an inability to purchase any products.

The glitch, which occurred at around 4:00PM AEST, lasted for around 30 minutes and affected a large number of Woolworths Supermarkets and attached BWS stores.

Customers described scenes of chaos in Woolies supermarkets, while Coles customers reported that the rival’s stores were struggling to deal with the volume of customers coming through the doors.

Staff reportedly told customers to leave and come back later, or leave their shopping in the store.

ALL #woolworths checkouts have stopped working. UTTER CHAOS NATIONWIDE. pic.twitter.com/3ipU8o0tYF

— Steph Boulet (@StephBoulet) 16 April 2018

In a statement Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci confirmed that there had been an outage that related to an update pushed to its IT systems. “At 4pm today we experienced an unexpected outage for approximately 30 minutes in a large number of Woolworths Supermarkets and attached BWS stores. This was related to an update to our IT systems,” he said.

“Our systems ultimately self-corrected themselves and we were back and open for trade across most stores by 4:30pm, with all stores now operational. This type of incident should not occur and we apologise unreservedly to our customers and store teams for the inconvenience caused.”

Nationwide IT issues at @woolworths – stuck at the front of the #Malvern queue unable to process any transactions! #woolworths pic.twitter.com/qKZxTKvgaG — Hannah Walravens (@hannahwalravens) 16 April 2018

Access exclusive analysis, locked news and reports with Inside Retail Weekly. Subscribe today and get our premium print publication delivered to your door every week.