M&S Stops Online Orders and Gives Refunds After Cyber Attack

Marks & Spencer (M&S) has stopped taking online orders because of a cyber attack.
The company is trying to fix the problem but says it may take some time.

Problems started last weekend. On Tuesday, M&S confirmed it had been hit by a "cyber incident."

Now, it has completely paused online and app orders for clothes and food.

If you placed an order on Friday, you will get a refund.

M&S shares dropped by 5% after the news, but later recovered.
Online shopping was still paused on Saturday morning.

Ongoing Problems

M&S has also had issues with:

• Contactless payments

• Click & Collect orders

• Gift cards not working

The company says:

• Gift cards, e-gift cards, and credit receipts cannot be used right now, either online or in stores.

• If you received an email saying your Click & Collect order is ready, you can still go pick it up.

• Stores are holding parcels, so they won’t be sent back.

Some customers are frustrated because they were told the gift card problem was fixed, but it wasn’t.

One person said they tried to use their gift card four days in a row without success.

Even so, many people have praised M&S staff for being helpful during this difficult time.

The company asks customers to be patient with workers, who are doing their best.

Many customers still have questions about their existing orders, returns, and refunds.

Good news: if you buy M&S food through Ocado’s website, you are not affected.
Ocado runs on a different system.

What’s Happening Behind the Scenes

M&S has told government agencies about the cyber attack.
The National Cyber Security Centre and the National Crime Agency are helping M&S deal with the situation.

In a message to investors, M&S said pausing online orders was part of their "proactive management" to keep customers safe.

Experts say the attack could hurt M&S financially because about 25% of its sales are online.

Even a short pause could cause losses.

Other big companies have had similar problems recently:

• Last Christmas, Morrisons had trouble with online orders.

• In January, Barclays Bank had major IT problems.

• In February, several banks, including Lloyds, had outages, delaying payments.