Moscow — Russian retailers were left counting the cost of a holiday-season glitch that may have caused billions of roubles in lost sales, after the failure of some internet-connected cash registers required by the government to cut down on tax avoidance. "A retail nightmare came true today, when cash registers refused to work and sales stopped," Dmitry Alexeev, head of electronics retailer DNS Digital Store, said on Facebook on Wednesday. "Retailers across the country are cursing. What could be worse than losing the chance of trade in the days leading up to New Year?" The crash affected about 9% of the market and cost companies as much as 10-billion roubles ($170m) in lost revenue, according to Russian online retail lobby group AKIT. The company that produced the registers, Shtrikh-M, said in a statement that some of its machines failed to work properly on Wednesday and that technicians were trying to resolve the problem quickly. Businesses that reported difficulties included Magnit...
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