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(File photo).
photo: Unsplash/Clay Banks
Retail NZ said it was “disappointing” that some retailers had to deal with aggressive customers during the global IT outage.
The global services sector is recovering slowly Serious software updates It was released on Friday (NZ time) by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
Airlines, healthcare, shipping, finance, TV networks, transportation networks and more around the world were affected by the faulty update, which caused computers running Microsoft Windows to crash severely and could not be easily recovered by a simple restart.
New Zealand Retail Association chief executive Carolyn Young said more than half of its members in New Zealand had been affected. Some members reported “abusive customer behaviour”, she told Saturday morning is “disappointing”.
“People are very anxious about payments not going through because they know they have money in their accounts, especially early in this phase, people don’t know the banks have stepped in, and this is a global problem.”
“People in supermarkets and various other places were trying to buy items they needed that evening and were unable to do so. So they were frustrated and, unfortunately, their frustration came out in heated and fairly confrontational conversations with retail store staff.”
Young’s advice to retailers open Saturday is to check their systems and alert customers entering stores to any potential issues.
Eftpos has remained online during the disruption and she also advised retailers to ensure their businesses did the same.
“There is an agreement between banks on how Eftpos transactions work in offline mode, so retailers may need to contact their terminal provider to ensure everything is ready and suitable, but it is more likely that Eftpos or cash will complete the transaction than some contactless transactions, which need to go through a different gateway.
“Cash is king, Eftpos is second.”
Yang said the incident showed how much businesses rely on technology and how interconnected everything is.
Woolworths resumes operations
(File photo).
photo: supply
Meanwhile, Woolworths NZ said all its stores had reopened on Saturday morning, but some checkouts were still affected and online shopping was not yet available.
About a dozen stores were forced to close on Friday due to an IT glitch.
Woolworths NZ store director Jason Stockill said the company had been “working through the night” with IT operators, including in Australia, to resolve the issues.
“The good news is that our online bar business is back in full operation this morning.”
He said the checkout system failed on Friday and could not be restored even after a restart.
“All supermarkets are experiencing the same issues, several of our stores have had so many checkouts out of order that we are simply unable to operate normally.”
We have decided to close those stores that were affected.
“Customers are understanding – this is a global issue and no one is panicking too much about it.”
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