Post Office warned customers of an outage impacting branches (Picture: Shutterstock)
A major outage took down Post Office systems, including at branches across the UK.
People trying to send out parcels ran into trouble after reports of a glitch affecting the Post Office this afternoon.
Outage reports for the Post Office shot up shortly before 3pm, according to DownDetector’s tracker.
Most of the problems were about a ‘total blackout,’ while others indicated there was a problem with the internet connection.
It is not known yet what caused the outage, but Post Office told Metro that it is ‘not cyber-related.’
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Post Office said the systems were back up and running shortly before 4pm.
A Post Office spokesperson told Metro: ‘There was a major outage across the Post Office estate this afternoon.
‘We are pleased to announce that service has now been restored to branches.
‘We apologise for any inconvenience caused to customers and the operators of our branches.’
Post Office posted on X to warn people of the glitch when it happened: ‘We’re aware of an outage impacting our branches. The issue is being worked on and things should be back to normal later this afternoon. Thanks for your patience.’
Frustrated customers took to social media after running into trouble at their local branches.
One woman said she walked ’25 mins to the Post Office in flip flops for them to tell me the system is down & come back tomorrow.’
Another customer said they spent ‘money I don’t have’ on a taxi to get to the Post Office to send documents into the passport office before a holiday on August 25 and a ‘very heavy parcel.’
‘F****** PO system down everywhere. So had to walk back with insanely heavy back worrying about getting passports on time,’ they said.
It comes after a spate of high-profile cyber incidents affecting the M&S and Co-op.
M&S online orders were back in action six weeks after the cyber attack in April, which cost the company £300 million.
Co-op admitted yesterday that all 6.5 million people on its membership scheme had details stolen in the hack, which left some branch shelves empty.
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