People have been queuing since 7am on Friday to grab online delivery slots for their Christmas groceries.
This week, supermarket giant Tesco released the first of its festive delivery slots, for those who want to avoid the in-store rush to pick up their food and drink for the 25th.
Since the start of the pandemic, supermarket deliveries have been in huge demand, and Tesco now has more than 1.5million delivery slots a week available.
Christmas bookings were opened at 7am on Friday, to those who have signed up for delivery saver - and almost immediately the system was flooded with shoppers, The Mirror reports.
At 8am Tesco Tweeted: "A lot of people are using our website and app at the moment. So we're temporarily using a virtual waiting room to help manage the flow."
At 8:30am, Tesco site was so busy people were struggling to even log on.
Shoppers were trapped in a virtual queue, seeing nothing but a message reading: "You are currently in a queue - we'll put you through as soon as we can.
"Our website is really busy right now, we're temporarily limiting the number of people using it.
"Please wait and keep the website open and you'll be put through automatically. We're sorry for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience."
Plenty took to social media to vent their frustration, with one person tweeting: "Peak 2020 - trying to get a Christmas delivery slot from @Tesco like you're trying to get tickets for Glastonbury."
Another wrote: "Just wondering how long is normal to spend waiting to book a Christmas delivery slot with @Tesco? I've been staring at this ideal Christmas lunch now since 7am. At this rate it'll be Christmas before I get in!"
Many got through eventually, but they had to have patience.
One woman said: "Most stressful thing of the day - finally got the Tesco Christmas delivery slot booked. Only one hour and 40minutes after it opened."
A Tesco spokeswoman told Mirror Money: "Demand for online slots over the festive period is high, and we have more slots this Christmas than ever before. We are experiencing high volumes of traffic to our website and Groceries app and are temporarily limiting the number of customers using it.
"We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused and would like to reassure customers that there are still slots available for both home delivery and Click & Collect over the Christmas period.”
