If this is a sign of things to come, be prepared. Health & beauty giant Boots saw the start of its “biggest ever” Black Friday online sales event repeatedly crashing its webstore, frustrating consumers.

The crash, which coincided with the retailer’s ‘£10 Tuesday’ deal, when it offers beauty and healthcare products for a major discount, saw customers complaining they’d been locked out of Boots’ website on Tuesday morning. Others said the company’s app was failing to load, reported The Telegraph.

Some customers were shown a message admitting the service was “rather busy with Black Friday shoppers” and telling them they’d been “temporarily placed in a virtual queue”.

On X (previously Twitter), Boots customer service staff told shoppers: “We are currently experiencing some issues with the system and we are looking into it. In the meantime please keep refreshing or call us so an adviser can place the order for you”.

A spokesman for Boots said it had experienced “extremely high demand” on its website on Tuesday.

They added: “To manage demand, a temporary queuing system was put in place for a short period of time. The site quickly returned to normal.”

In the days building up to official 29 November Black Friday, Boots said it has over 22,000 promotions running throughout the month.