Sainsbury's website goes into meltdown leaving thousands of families without their weekly shopping

Thousands of families failed to receive their weekly shopping and many more faced misery today after Sainsbury's website was shut down.

It developed a fault on Tuesday and there is no clue about when it will be back on line.

The fault affected around 10,000 orders that were due to be delivered yesterday and rivals immediately began to try to cash in on the failure.

The major technical glitch continued today and staff were forced to continue with the task of contacting all customers expecting deliveries.

Asda placed an advertisement on Google offering free delivery to Sainsbury's customers, a potential saving of the £5 charge.

The Ocado website also announced plans to fulfil any orders from customers let down by Sainsbury's - and offered substantial discounts.

Tesco also moved in yesterday to take advantage of the problems at Sainsbury's.

Its website is offering new customers £5 off their internet grocery orders.

Those trying to log-on to the Sainsbury's site were met with the headline 'We're sorry'.

It read: 'We have temporarily frozen our online home delivery website having identified a technical issue.

'We are contacting customers directly whose deliveries have been affected. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes you.'

Staff rang customers yesterday to alert them that their shopping would not be arriving and offering £10 in compensation to be used against future orders.

It is not known when the service will be back to normal.

A spokesman said: 'We froze our online home delivery website late Tuesday afternoon when we identified a technical issue and we are contacting customers whose deliveries have been impacted.

'We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.'

The company said customers who ordered goods to be delivered on Thursday should still get them.

Sainsbury's stressed there was no suggestion that people's personal details were at risk.

The spokesman added: "It's a technical glitch that meant that customers' orders were not not being processed properly.

"We don't want to put the site back up until we are 100 per cent sure the problem has been resolved."

The website crash comes as Sainsbury's latest financial report showed its sales lagged behind rivals like Asda and Tesco.

The supermarket , which runs over 500 supermarkets and more than 300 convenience stores, said yesterday underlying sales rose by 3.5 per cent.

The company's disappointing trading figures would have been worse was it not for an impressive performance from its online operation.

Sainbury's online grocery business attracts 90,000 customers a week.

Industry analysts said that Sainsbury's would be able to deal with the crisis.

Mike Watkins, of the market research firm Nielsen, said: 'We know online is a key area of growth for Sainsbury's but in the grand scheme of things it still accounts for a very, very small proportion of their total sales.

'Also, online supermarket shoppers tend to  be more loyal than high street shoppers.

'We expect most will attempt to get back on tot he website at a later date, rather than migrate to a rival.'

Mandy Minichiello, of  Tesco.com grocery said: 'Over a million satisfied online customers rely on us to deliver their groceries when they have asked us to, so, we can fully appreciate just how concerned and  disappointed many Sainsbury's online customers will be right now. 

'Tesco.com is very much open for business and we’ll be happy to help  them.'