John Lewis website down: Black Friday deals and offers unavailable as online shop suffers outage

'Sorry about the wait,' customers told

The employee-owned department store chain, famed for its Christmas adverts, chalked up its worst festive-season sales growth in a decade (Reuters)

John Lewis's website has broken in the middle of Black Friday.

The British retailer – which like just about every major shop in the UK and US is running a series of deals and offers to mark the day – seems to have been overwhelmed by the interest and its website has broken down.

"Sorry about the wait, please try again soon," a message on the site reads.

"It's our Black Friday event so we're busier than usual," an explanation continues. It gives people an easy way to refresh the page and reminds them that John Lewis's offers are available in its shops, too.

The company is offering a wide variety of deals on everything from televisions to smart home gadgets, and clothes to furniture.

Just as it does the rest of the year, John Lewis keeps its commitment to being never knowingly undersold on Black Friday. That means that it will match deals from rivals as they go up during the shopping day.

John Lewis is far from the only retailer to be hit by problems during the major shopping day. Both Facebook and Amazon, for instance, had problems with their platform – companies were unable to post ads on Facebook in the approach to the day, and Amazon suffered a data leak that made customers' information available online.

Cyber security experts recommend that users are careful over the day, with a wide variety of criminals and cyber attacks laying in wait to catch people searching for deals.