Asos IT upgrade causes global delivery delays

A systems maintenance glitch over the weekend halted the processing of orders and has resulted in a backlog of deliveries for global online fashion retailer Asos.

The retailer, which says it takes an Australian order roughly every six seconds, has struggled to keep up with deliveries since the weekend glitch and has temporarily suspended its premium express delivery options as a result of the backlog.

Update 10/02/2014: Next day and express delivery options now appear to have been restored.

An undisclosed number of deliveries have been delayed despite the retailer's efforts to process the additional workload.

“Eeek! We’ve had a few tech issues this weekend & so a few of your packages may be delayed. Our delivery wizards are on it, so those little (or big) silver bundles should be with you as soon as possible,” a statement on the Asos Facebook page read.

It advised that customers who placed their orders between 12:00 am on 3 February and 11:00 am on 6 February GMT (11:00 am 3 February and 10:00 pm 6 February Sydney time) would have received conflicting shipping advice due to a "tech glitch”, which now appears to have been resolved.

The problems have also prevented some order confirmations from being sent.

At the time of writing, Asos social media channels continue to recieve hundreds of queries and complaints about the delays and withdrawal of delivery options.

@RhiSophie We've had some site updates which has caused delays in processing orders. At this time we aren't offering express shipping.

— ASOS Australia (@ASOS_Au) February 5, 2014

Asos did not provide detail on the technical cause of the glitch. An Australian spokesperson said: "We regret any inconvenience we've caused our customers and are currently communicating with them directly to express our apologies and offer compensation."

The Asos website was built in-house on the .NET framework, and is supported by a Sitecore content management system, according to the report. Asos uses Red Prairie software for warehouse management, Merret for stock control and Metapack for its global distribution.

In December 2013, Asos said it had 7.9 million active customers, a 41 percent increase on the previous year.

The systems outage does not appear to have affected Asos customers' ability to browse and order via the website, unlike Australian department store Myer whose entire online shop was down for over a week during the post-Christmas shopping peak.