Thousands of orders for Asda’s George clothing range have been plunged into chaos ahead of the new school year after a botched IT upgrade.
Swathes of customers have been left out of pocket because of problems at the troubled grocer’s fashion brand. Money was taken from some shoppers but their orders were not sent, while others were unable to return items bought online.
It has fuelled a wave of customer complaints at Asda, which attempted to upgrade George’s online system earlier this month.
The changeover took place as part of an £800m IT project dubbed Project Future, which is being overseen by Asda co-owner Mohsin Issa. It is the second IT update to go wrong under the project, after a previous payroll software update left thousands of staff without the correct wages.
One Asda worker said up to 7,000 George orders had been affected by the IT meltdown, sparking anger among parents who have not received school uniforms for their children.
They said: “The changeover came into effect for George orders earlier this month and since then it has been absolute chaos.At one point, they told us that there were over 7,000 George orders where money was taken but it wasn’t put through.
“It has taken up to 10 hours for some customers to get any response to their complaints.”
The employee in question heaped blame solely at the door of Asda’s management, criticising the decision to pursue a changeover at the most popular time of year.
They said: “It’s just such poor management because this is the time of the year when George makes the most sales.
“And ones that need to be done at a certain time, whether it be people going on holiday or school uniforms. There were so many people complaining, saying ‘I’ve ordered my school uniform and the order hasn’t gone through’.
“From a planning point of view, they should have really anticipated doing this at a time when there were less George sales, rather than at this time of year.”
Evidence of the chaos is clear on social media, where Asda’s customer service team has been inundated with complaints.
One customer said: “What’s going on with the George customer service? I returned some items but [have] not been refunded for them all. No one answers the phone and there is no other way to contact?”
Another asked: “Is there a reason my George Asda orders are not showing on my account this evening please? Made six different orders but none are showing and have not been sent a email but money taken?”
It marks the latest setback for Mohsin Issa’s Project Future, following the payroll crisis earlier this year.
Asda’s chairman Lord Rose told The Telegraph earlier this month that Project Future was “mission critical” to its turnaround plan, although he admitted “there have been some glitches along the way”. The company is replacing a host of computer systems operated until now by its previous owner, Walmart.
The latest disruption will increase pressure on Mr Issa, who is fighting to turn around the company’s fortunes amid a rapid decline in its market share.
Lord Rose said earlier this month that he had been “embarrassed” by Asda’s performance and urged Mr Issa to step back from running its day-to-day operations.
Asda’s market share has fallen from 14.8pc when Mr Issa and his brother Zuber acquired it for £6.8bn in 2021 to 12.7pc in July. Meanwhile, the German discounters Aldi and Lidl have gained ground.
Zuber Issa sold his stake in Asda this year as part of a separation of some of the Issas’ business interests.
George, which is the UK’s leading children’s wear retailer, has so far been one of the few positives for Asda this year.
Bosses said just weeks ago that its clothing revenues rose 3.9pc in the second quarter, although this was before the latest disruption.
Asda said it was working to resolve the IT problems at George as quickly as possible.
A spokesman said:“As part of building a bigger and better Asda, we are delivering Europe’s largest IT transformation, involving the separation and upgrade of over 2,500 systems from Walmart.
“Earlier this month, as part of this process we migrated 9.6m historic Georgeorders onto our new George.com platform. The overwhelming majority of these were completed successfully and the platform is trading well.
“However, we are aware of a number of issues with some historic customer orders. We sincerely apologise for this and any inconvenience caused andare working hardto resolve them as quickly as possible.”
