Tesco has fixed a problem which forced the supermarket chain to apologise after hundreds of shoppers reported issues with placing online grocery orders.

Consumers took to social media on Wednesday to complain that a wide range of groceries were showing as unavailable when they tried to check out and complete their shop.

Some said everyday items such as bread and milk were marked as out of stock when they tried to pay for their online order.

According to the website downdetector.com, which tracks site traffic, Tesco’s website started to experience problems shortly after 9.30am on Wednesday, with more than 200 faults logged by 2pm. Outages were reported on the Tesco app and website by customers based everywhere from Surrey to Scotland.

One user of Downdetector said they contacted customer service at 11.30am and were told that the supermarket chain knew of problems with its app and website and that they were being worked on.

In some cases, Tesco customers were reporting 20 or more items in the online shop being affected.

However, by 5pm the supermarket, which is Britain’s largest grocer, said the issue had been resolved.

A spokesperson for Tesco said: “We have fixed an issue that prevented some customers adding items to their online shopping baskets earlier today.

“All customers can now update their baskets as normal. We are really sorry for the inconvenience.”