Woolworths checkouts hit by national outage

Registers have reportedly shut down at all Woolworths stores across Australia due to a technical outage.

The supermarket's social media team responded to the complaints on Twitter by saying IT issues occurred.

"We apologise for the inconvenience this caused our customers", the spokesperson said.

UPDATE 4.50PM: STAFF at Wooloworths Caneland Central are unloading shopping trolleys full of stock abandoned at registers this afternoon.

As usual, customers took to social media to vent their frustrations and test out their ability to come up with humorous short takes.

"Registers are offline so customers are standing in queues with baskets of food that they can't buy", she said.

Customers were asked to leave many stores after the registers failed to function.

Shoppers took to Facebook across Australia to complain about the outage and accused the supermarket chain of "ruining dinner plans".

Woolworths has 995 stores across Australia, which means the outage affected close to 500 stores today. Staff said every register in every store nation wide has shut down.

SBS News has contacted Woolworths for comment.

EARLIER: A NATIONAL technical outage has halted trading at Woolworths stores, causing chaos for shoppers as their trolleys bank up and stores are shut down.