Asda Deals paused its £30 online offer after shoppers used the promotion for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 instead of the weekly shop it was designed to cut. First-time customers had been able to take £30 off an online basket of £60 or more if they agreed to marketing emails.
One Asda employee said their store had been inundated with over 1,000 orders. Another said the express had been over 1,000 items all day, showing how quickly a simple sign-up deal turned into an operational problem.
£30 offer, £60 basket
The offer launched last week and was built for first-time online customers. It required a £60 minimum spend and an opt-in to marketing emails, a structure that was meant to reward bigger grocery baskets rather than low-margin add-ons.
Shoppers quickly found a different use for it. One shopper posted on X a receipt showing packets of sweets and the game, while a TikTok post urged people to register with multiple email addresses to maximise savings. That pushed the promotion beyond the ordinary first-order discount it was meant to be.
Call of Duty orders hit stores
One shopper on X said their Asda did not have Call of Duty or had cancelled it. Another said Asda took away the code and offered a £5 voucher because Modern Warfare 4 was unavailable.
Those reports show the gap between the promotion Asda sold and the orders it received. The deal was aimed at groceries, but customers used it to buy electronic items and the game, forcing staff to deal with orders that did not fit the original terms.
Asda pauses the offer
Asda said it had paused its new online customer offer after becoming aware of a significant number of orders that do not qualify. For affected shoppers, that means the £30 discount is no longer available to use while the company looks into what happened.
Whether Asda restores the offer, changes the rules, or processes the cancelled orders in another way is still unanswered. For now, anyone trying to use the promotion only has one clear guide: the order must qualify under the £60 spend and email sign-up terms, or it is at risk of being pulled back.
