Will your M&S order arrive for Xmas?

MARKS & Spencer’s customers who have ordered Christmas gifts online face an anxious wait for the postman, amid a delivery backlog caused by Black Friday.

The retailer temporarily removed the option for next-day delivery, and warned that products purchased over the internet may not arrive for up to ten days.

The delays, caused by a surge of orders during last month’s flash sales, will almost certainly affect those shopping today, Manic Monday, which is set to be one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

Stores are now offering deeper pre-Christmas discounts than last year as they attempt to shift unsold stock, and industry experts predict that up to £7 0million will be spent online today – the equivalent of £ 20,000 a minute. This total would be around 40 per cent higher than last year.

However, Marks & Spencer is already struggling to cope with demand – despite boasting last year, at the opening of its Castle Donington distribution centre in the East Midlands, that it could handle a million items every day. One disgruntled shopper wrote on the firm’s Facebook page: ‘Thirteen WORKING (ie, Mon-Fri) days wait for free/standard delivery ... you’re having a laugh. We’ve had orders from China delivered quicker than that and at a similar cost too.’

A spokesman for M&S, which re-activated the option for next-day delivery yesterday, said that its website’s delivery options had been changed in order to provide customers with an ‘accurate’ expectation of waiting time. He added: ‘The vast majority of orders are delivered on time. If we do miss a delivery date, we will do all we can to rectify it.’