Shelves are stripped in sales shopping frenzy

A sales frenzy has broken out across Staffordshire and the Black Country, with store shelves stripped of bargains and shoppers pushed over in the jostle for cut-price goods.

Hundreds of thousands of people across the region have been hitting the shops in the hunt for offers. Dozens of cars queued to get to stores on the Orbital Retail Centre in Cannock.

Shopper Jamie Matthews was heading to the centre to pick up some groceries from Sainsbury's but turned back when he saw the queuing traffic waiting to get to the sales.

He said: "Traffic was queuing around 500 yards to get on to the retail park which was bustling."

Elsewhere, traffic crawled back from Dudley's Merry Hill Centre as far as Lye, just over a mile away. One family from Wales, visiting relatives in Hagley, near Stourbridge, told how they saw shelving in River Island completely emptied of goods.

A cordon had to be erected outside a jeweller's for a queue of about 30 people waiting to get links put on their bracelets to attach Pandora charms.

James Durant, aged 29, from Criccieth, whose father, Glen lives in Newfield Road, Hagley, said: "It was just stupid. It took us 45 minutes to drive from Lye High Street to Merry Hill and then half an hour to find a parking space.

"Inside it was a free for all in places like Next and in River Island they'd moved racking because there were no clothes left in a large part of the store."

His wife, Gemma, who was with their children, Caitlin, 10, and Isabella, four, said: "We saw one older woman fall over in Debenham's and another outside Sainsbury's, caused by the sheer volume of the crowds.

"It was a wasted trip for us because we had wanted to exchange some goods – but were told, after queuing, that there were no refunds because it was so busy."

In Wolverhampton, sales at the Next store at St John's Retail Park were more than 10 per cent up on the shop's target figure.

Birmingham's Bullring general manager Tim Walley added: "Hordes of shoppers are making the most of the seasonal discounts."