The state-owned postal and logistics firm says that its Posti.fi web portal was been down from at least 5.30 am to 3:30 pm Sunday due to an IT glitch.
"The problems were due to a widespread telecommunications problem at Posti's service provider Tieto," Posti's communications director Ulla Parviainen told Yle.
The company announced that its site was back up and running shortly before 4 pm.
Due to the malfunction, Posti's customer service chat lines and Omaposti services were not working properly. With the online chat lines down, Posti's traditional telephone call service was overloaded.
Paper routes from memory
Some customers were calling to enquire about Sunday morning newspaper deliveries, which were delayed in some areas. For instance the leading daily Helsingin Sanomat warned its subscribers of delivery disruptions around 7.30 am.
The disruptions were apparently due to delivery staff's inability to access subscriber information. However a Posti manager in charge of early deliveries, Eikka Urpilainen, told the news agency STT around midday that some 95 percent of papers were eventually delivered, as distributors remembered the correct addresses.
Posti's corporate website, Posti.com, was accessible. There were notifications of delays on its Finnish version but not the English version. The state-owned company's site does not carry any information in the second official national language, Swedish.
4:10 pm: Updated with news of service being restored.
