Myer is striving to limit the damage of its major website crash, apologising to frustrated online customers and offering specials and free postage when it is back online.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The website was still down on Monday night, five days after it initially experienced problems on Christmas Day.
During the busiest shopping period of the year, the website was replaced with a colourful banner and a message reading ''we are currently experiencing technical difficulties''.
A senior lecturer in consumer behaviour at Deakin University, Dr Paul Harrison, said the technology failure and the associated bad publicity would be troubling executives.
Myer has previously been criticised for its belated entry into the online market. It launched its myfind.com website in 2011.
The Myer brand was taking a hit online. Social media users complained about the crash and slow responses to their queries.
Tweeter @aychaysea wrote, ''In the time that the Myer website has been offline, I've ordered and had something delivered from Amazon in the US.'' Another, @Thefinnigans, tweeted, ''You are NOT serious!!!!!! Myer is taking 7 days to fix its ONLINE Store Website. What Mickey Mouse company is that''.
Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes said on Boxing Day he understood the company had upset ''quite a few'' customers and expected the website to be back up ''in the next couple of hours, maybe earlier''.
But in a statement on Facebook on Sunday, Myer said ''We've identified the cause of the issues and are now implementing the fixes. We'll take a few days to test everything before we bring the website back up to make sure everything is working and stable.''
The company said it would scrap postage fees and boost the number of online-only specials when the website was back up.
