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Officers were called to seven Tesco Plc stores in the Manchester area earlier today, Greater Manchester police said. In London, the Metropolitan Police dealt with calls from three Tesco stores after large crowds gathered.

“The events of last night were totally predictable and I am disappointed that stores did not have sufficient security staff on duty,” Peter Fahy, chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said in an e-mail. “This created situations where we had to deal with crushing, disorder and disputes between customers. It does not help that this was in the early hours when police resources are already stretched.”

Tesco extended Black Friday discounting to stores for the first time today after starting with online sales last year. The phenomenon has caught on in the U.K. and worldwide over the last few years as the rise of the Internet has made the event a global phenomenon, with customers always being just one click away from the deals offered by U.S. retailers online.

“We have definitely hit a tipping point and this has become a permanent part of the British retail calender,” said Bryan Roberts, an analyst at Kantar Retail.

In Wigan, northwest England, two men were ejected from a Tesco supermarket after reports of several hundred people trying to enter, police said. Crowds of more than 500 were reported outside other Tesco outlets in the Manchester area.

Customer Disputes

Officers attending the Tesco stores in the London area made no arrests and no one was injured, Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer, also encountered difficulties with its website, with shoppers who clicked on Black Friday deals being greeted by an error message asking them to wait due to the high volume of visitors to the page. Tesco’s press office didn’t return a call seeking comment.

At Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Asda chain, there were “some incidents that we can’t condone” as a result of Black Friday events, Chief Merchandising Officer Andrew Moore said in an interview at its Wembley superstore, northwest of London, where about 50 specially trained security staff were on patrol.

‘Incredibly Busy’

“We take them very seriously and we’ll work together as a team to make sure we have the full learnings from what happened,” Moore said. “But also we had a lot of customers walking out with merchandise that they’re very happy with.”

While the Wembley outlet was “incredibly busy,” with more than 500 shoppers waiting in line outside, Asda “have learned a lot of lessons from last year in terms of where and how people queue,” said Kantar’s Roberts, who was at the store when it opened this morning. Last year, at an Asda in Belfast, Northern Ireland a woman was sent to the hospital after she injured her arm in a crush of shoppers seeking savings.

Britons are expected to spend 200 million pounds ($314 million) more today than the average, according to researcher Mintel. That’s about 20 percent more than a typical December Friday, and roughly double last year’s increase, Mintel says.

New Look, a 1,100-store clothing chain, is today running a “fashion frenzy” for the first time with as much as 50 percent off items including coats and sweaters. Marks & Spencer Group Plc is discounting fleeces by as much as 30 percent, while Topshop, owned by billionaire Philip Green, has cut the price of some warm clothing by as much as 50 percent.

Online Record

Department-store chain John Lewis is predicting that today will be its biggest ever day of online sales. Visits to its website in the first six hours were quadruple the level of Black Friday 2013, the retailer said by e-mail.

Amid the crowds at Asda’s Wembley store, some shoppers were satisfied with their purchases. Grace Faraday, a nurse, bought a bike for 40 pounds for her son for Christmas. She lined up earlier this year after missing out last time.

“Things are tight so you’ve got to tighten up the budget,” she said. Despite the turmoil, “people are leaving happy.”