Marks & Spencer has been forced to stop selling some of its popular meal deal offers due to the ongoing cyber attack. The attack has now entered its third week and has caused significant stock availability issues across M&S‘ store estate.
This has caused the supermarket to pull some of its popular meal deal options from sale. One store at Victoria Station in London has put up signs which read: “Due to availability issues, we are temporarily unable to fulfil this meal deal. Please bear with us while we work through this.”
The meal deals affected are its lunchtime offer, which includes a drink, sandwich or salad dish, and a snack such as crisp or fruit. These are often sold in the retailer’s smaller outlets in train stations, airports, and petrol stations.
The dine-in meal deals – priced between £6 and £15 – offer various combinations of starters, mains, and desserts, and have also been paused. A spokesperson for M&S commented: “Customers can still buy meal deals in our rail station stores but there are pockets of limited availability for some items. We are working hard to continue getting our products into stores.”
WHATSAPP GROUP: Get money news and top deals straight to your phone by joining our Money WhatsApp group here. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don’t like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you’re curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
NEWSLETTER: Or sign up to the Mirror’s Money newsletter here for all the best advice and shopping deals straight to your inbox.
The cyber attack started over the Easter bank holiday weekend. Initially, customers reported problems with using contactless card payments and the Click and Collect service, and then on Friday last week, the retailer paused orders through its website and app.
Last week, M&S confirmed that some of its stores faced “limited availability” on products due to the hack, which left some supermarket sites with empty shelves. Alongside this, M&S has also experienced issues with a “small proportion” of products it supplies to Ocado, which delivers M&S online orders and is part-owned by the retailer.
According to reports, M&S employees have been forced to move away from internal communication channels and are using personal messaging accounts to manage ongoing operations.
For all you savvy savers and bargain hunters out there, there’s a golden opportunity to stretch your pounds further. The Money Saving Club newsletter, a favourite among thousands who thrive on catching the best deals, is stepping up its game.
Simply follow the link and select one or more of the following topics to get all the latest deals and advice on: Travel; Property; Pets, family and home; Personal finance; Shopping and discounts; Utilities.
The attack has been linked to a gang of teenage hackers and is believed to be ransomware. This is a type of cyber attack that freezes systems until a ransom is paid. However, M&S has not yet confirmed the nature of the attack, nor the scale of the breach.
The cyber hack wiped more than £500million off M&S’s stock market value last week, and the retailer is reportedly losing around £3.8million a day in lost sales for its online clothing and homeware ranges. According to its latest financial results, one third of M&S’s clothing and household goods sales in the UK are through its online platforms and were worth around £1.2billion.
From universal credit to furlough, employment rights, travel updates and emergency financial aid – we’ve got all of the big financial stories you need to know about right now.
Sign up to our Mirror Money newsletter here.
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.