Online orders for hardware retailer Mitre 10 remain unavailable three days after the company first acknowledged difficulties with the website.
With Auckland currently in COVID-19 alert level 3 lockdown, the outage means there are many frustrated customers unable to access goods, and franchisees are unable to sell them.
A spokesperson told Newshub: "We're experiencing technical issues with our website and online ordering is temporarily unavailable. Our teams are working with urgency to resolve the back-end issues and get the site back up and running as soon as possible."
The company first acknowledged a problem with the site on Saturday with a statement on Facebook stating "our website seems to have a few gremlins causing havoc and it's taking a little longer than usual to untangle the cause".
That was followed up with an email to customers on Sunday blaming "technical issues", with the website meaning online orders were unavailable.
A statement posted to Facebook around the same time said the company was working "urgently" to get things back up and running.
"Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause, we hope to get this resolved as soon as possible and will let you know once it’s sorted. Thanks for your understanding."
On Tuesday morning the website has been updated this morning to include a link to a 'Personal Shopper' form with phone numbers for telephone ordering - along with a cautionary note.
"Stores will be dealing with existing orders at the moment too, so please bear with them if their phones or resources are under pressure, as we work to get everything back up and running as soon as we can," a representative wrote on Facebook.
Customers have taken to social media to express frustration about the situation, particularly those in Auckland who cannot visit a shop.
"This is quite an outage; three days now, any idea when we can expect to see it back up? This must be really hurting the franchisees in Auckland," one wrote.
Another asked why it was taking more than three days to bring the site back up.
"That is not a good look for your business," they wrote.
Others speculated the company could have been hacked or even subjected to a cyberattack but it's unclear exactly what the cause of the website's technical issues are.
