Bargain hunters flocked to the Boxing Day sales yesterday on the promise of some of the biggest discounts in a decade.

From London to Aberdeen, shoppers queued in the early hours for reductions of up to 80% as stores rushed to clear stock after a difficult December and compete with internet retailers who began slashing prices as early as Christmas Day.

An estimated 3.6 million people went online to look for bargains on Christmas Day and spent £52m, according to the Interactive Media in Retail Group. Clothes and household appliances proved most popular. Marks & Spencer, PC World, Currys and Argos all launched early online sales as fears grew among retailers that after January, consumer confidence is likely to drop significantly. High street retailers responded yesterday by dramatically reducing their own prices.

Expectation of large discounts saw shoppers pour into the Lakeside shopping centre in Essex where footfall, the number of customers through the doors, rose 29% on last year. The House of Fraser tills rang up £1,000 a minute in the first hour of trading.

Retailers at the Trafford Centre in Manchester reported more shoppers than last year with 10,000 cars parked by 9am and 500 people queuing for the beginning of the Next sale.

On Oxford Street in London prices were reduced by up to 80% and hundreds queued outside Selfridges department store before the launch of its sale at 9am.

"It was manic out there this morning," said Jace Tyrrell, spokesman for the New West End Company.

"Bargains are available that we haven't seen in a decade. Retailers have had a tough time this December so the sales are like a second Christmas for shoppers."

Yesterday's rush to the shops is expected to be surpassed today with even more shoppers turning out on what analysts expect to be the busiest shopping day of the year. The Next sale starts at 5am on Oxford Street, followed by John Lewis and M&S nationwide.

"We are extremely optimistic," said Andy Street, managing director of John Lewis. "We have fantastic special purchases and we have been helped by the hype surrounding the sales this year." A Timberland three-in-one cargo jacket will sell today for £98 - almost £100 less than usual.

The sales follow a difficult December for retailers. In the week before Christmas the number of shoppers was down by 8% on last year, according to retail analyst Experian. It had expected fewer people than usual, partly because many fashion retailers began discounting before Christmas. But the retailers' aggressive discounting appears to have persuaded shoppers to come back. Some queued from 4am at Berryden Retail Park at Aberdeen and more than 10,000 an hour passed through the MetroCentre in Gateshead. At least 100,000 shoppers thronged the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield.

David Bishop, 25, an advertising manager, queued outside Selfridges in London to buy a Christmas present for his girlfriend Serina Raymond, 23. "She got something to open on Christmas Day, but this is the big one," he said. He bought her a Gucci shoulder bag for £213.50, down from £305. The biggest crushes were for the sales at the concessions for Gucci, Miu Miu, Dior, Dior Homme, and Chloe, Selfridges spokesman Alistair Scott said.

The British Retail Consortium's director general, Kevin Hawkins, said clothing, furniture and white goods should see the biggest reductions, with sales of household goods having suffered because of the slowdown in the housing market.

"It all depends on just how much stock retailers have been left with after Christmas," he said. "This year it looks like they might have more than they would want."

Christmas turkeys: The unwanted presents

An estimated £1.2bn was spent on unwanted gifts this Christmas and hundreds of them began appearing for sale on the internet yesterday.

The average cost of the "turkeys under the tree", as the unwanted presents have been dubbed, is £20 a person, according to a survey by YouGov for eBay, the auction site.

Presents for sale yesterday included a Bart Simpson bicycle for £30, a radio-controlled helicopter for £6.95, a Corby tie press for £5 and an iPod Nano for £40. Anyone wanting a stripey jumper or pair of slippers had a wide choice.

Most mysterious was a wrapped present which "doesn't rattle but smells lovely". It had been intended for a 22-year-old woman whose boyfriend had left it under the tree before the couple split up following "a massive argument on Christmas Eve".

Yesterday her mum had put it up for sale, with the encouragement that he always used to buy her nice things, so this was likely to be good too. Any money would go to charity.

Elsewhere, a father lamented his son's lack of interest in his gift of a state-of-the-art Nokia mobile phone. "There are too many things the phone can do for him to understand," he said. "These phones are all the rage, just not with my son."

Nearly half of the 18-to-34-year-olds questioned in the survey said they would consider selling unwanted gifts online, but 4% simply planned to throw their dud presents away.