COSMETICS company Lush were forced to take down their website again this year as thousands of people rushed online for some Boxing Day bargains.

Customers were tweeting the Poole-based firm to say the website had crashed over an hour before the online sale was due to go live at 10am.

Since then, tens of thousands of people have been stuck in an online queue, unable to access the full website.

Many people have taken to Twitter to complain about the issue to the company, which faced a similar problem last year due to the high volume of web traffic it experienced.

The company posted a message shortly after 12pm which said: “We are experiencing such high traffic (Yes, even more than last year) that we’ve had to form an orderly line. You’re in the queue at the moment, but stay put and you’ll be through to the site soon.

“Don’t forget, you can head out to the shops and get some fresh air while you do.”

At 2.30pm the site was taken down altogether for maintainence and it was not until 6.34pm that it was back up and running.

More than 400,000 people were queuing to get on the site by late afternoon, according to Lush's 'your place in the queue' placeholder screen.

People were also queuing outside the Lush store in Bournemouth before it opened its doors today.