Aldi shoppers were forced to abandon their trolleys in supermarkets across the country over the weekend after an IT glitch blocked all card payments.
Customers reported notices being put up at dozens of branches on Sunday stating that only cash would be accepted.
It meant that many people had to leave their trolleys and baskets and go and find cash machines - if they came back at all.
Notes left outside the branch in Maidstone, Kent, warned shoppers, saying: "Cash only due to national IT issue, sorry for the inconvenience."
Others posted about the inconvenience with some saying they wasted two hours in store only to have to leave their food behind.
TJ Gallagher said on Twitter : "For anyone wondering what no deal will be like I think I just got a taster when I was in a busy queue at Aldi and they announced that all the card machines were down and everyone had to pay with cash."
"All Aldi stores worldwide not taking card payments," another wrote.
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Others were disappointed at the lack of notices put up in stores to warn customers of the temporary outage.
"Absolute chaos at the check outs as not accepting card payments, staff have no idea what to do and are screaming at customers to go to a cash point, elderly people in the queue getting quite upset at the sheer lack of compassion from staff, no apologies at all," a customer said.
Gemma Keaveney said: "I understand card payments were not going through today. I was in your Southend branch today. There was no announcement made or notices on the door to let customers know. So customers were filling up their trolleys unaware until got to the tills. Not handled very well."
Another shopper Tweeted: "Chaos in Aldi today I'd got a trolley full of shopping get to the till and card payments not working due to visa so had to leave my shopping and find a cash machine at least Sainsburys had staff telling you at the door before you got your shopping."
However the grocer later responded on social media and blamed the inconvenience on a Visa outage.
"We're sorry to hear this. Visa were experiencing issues with card payments earlier, but you're welcome to send us a DM about this if you'd like to discuss this issue with us further. Thanks," a Tweet wrote.
An Aldi spokesperson told Mirror Money: "We apologise to customers who were inconvenienced by a technical issue whereby electronic payments couldn't be made for a very short period in some of our stores."
