Argos apologises after website goes offline

Argos has apologised after its website was offline for several hours.

The site is now back after what is believed to have been an internal fault affecting the site on Sunday.

Separately, the company said it was aware of people receiving scam emails masquerading as having been sent from Argos.

The company advises customers not to hand over personal details after receiving unsolicited emails. It said it had not suffered a cyber attack.

Argos said in a statement on Sunday: "We are extremely sorry for the temporary service issues our customers were experiencing on our website this afternoon.

"We have identified and fixed the issue and our site is now up and running.

"We apologise to any customer who has tried to contact us unsuccessfully today and we are working to respond to all enquiries as soon as we can."

Last year, Argos's website suffered problems for two days following a revamped design of the site.

It displayed an error message on some computers, but not others, saying access had been blocked because of a "high volume of visitors".