Delivery disaster after 'surge in online shopping'

High Street retailers like Argos and Tesco are struggling to deliver orders made online after an unprecedented surge in internet shopping, it has emerged.

Some Marks and Spencer customers are facing a 10 day delivery delay and Amazon has reported problems with its next-day delivery service after Black Friday.

There were 5.5million orders made on Amazon on Black Friday, which averages at 64 items every second.

As a result there were delays for people who expected next day deliveries under the Amazon Prime service.

Overall, problems emerged for other household names such as Asos, Ao.com, Currys PC World, River Island, Very, Littlewoods and Debenhams.

Many of the companies struggling to deliver on time have used the courier firm Yodel - they have been forced to apologise after some parcel collections were delayed by 48 hours because of the huge jump in seasonal sales.

A spokeswoman for Yodel reassured customers normal service was expected to resume on Monday, but there was currently a one-to-two-day delay on new parcels coming into sorting centres.

Workers were trying to clear the backlog and this was expected to last until Saturday.

In a statement, Tesco said Yodel had advised some Tesco Direct Click and Collect orders had been delayed.

The supermarket apologised to customers effected and said it was working with Yodel to resolve the problems as quickly as possible.

Argos confirmed they had struggled with the number of orders made on Black Friday, but assured customers its home delivery service was now working properly.

Some £810m was spent online on Black Friday - 50% more than was expected - and demand was so great it broke delivery systems.

A further £660m was spent on Manic Money, adding to delivery woes.

And to make matters even worse, a shortage of drivers in the transport industry slowed deliveries even further.

Jonathan Smith, chairman of InPost UK, which offers click and collect lockers for web purchases, explained: