Zynga Puts Random Stranger In Customer Support Role 158
An anonymous reader writes "A server error has meant that for the past few months, a man not associated in any way with social gaming powerhouse Zynga has been getting customer support emails. When Zynga failed to return his messages, he started replying to the customers himself. Hilariously." Sadly (though perhaps some of his correspondents would disagree), the glitch has now been fixed.
meh! (Score:3)
Quite a creative reaction to a corporate screwup. :-)
Re:meh! (Score:5, Funny)
Quite a creative reaction to a corporate screwup. :-)
And it was probably just as effective as the actual fix.
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Re:meh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:meh! (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually had to fact-check that one. Not because I thought you were lying but because I didn't think Zynga could be even more overt assholes than they already were. Sure enough you're right.
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Congratulations. You have won the Cynics badge.
No matter how bad you think things can get, Realitiy will always go one better.
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Clot! Now I've got to get a rag to clean up the coffee I spit all over my keyboard and desk, after RTFA.
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Re:meh! (Score:4, Funny)
Quite a creative reaction to a corporate screwup. :-)
Creative? I thought it was rather meh.
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Well, not everyone can be a Mark Twain, but his idea was good.
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My fault... I read it and I was still too dense to get your joke :)
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Quite a creative reaction to a corporate screwup. :-) /em>
I'm not so sure it's a corporate screwup. It seems more like some Apache admin wasn't too careful about populating the ServerAdmin value for the virtualhost with a legitimate value.
This is probably one person's mistake, that noone else responsible for Apache server administration happened to spot.
These are supposed to be webmaster contact addresses provided by the server, for reporting to provide more information for troubleshooting p
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That's the initial error (which may or may not have been a corporate fuckup). The corporate fuckup was their inability to route due notification of the problem to the correct people in order to get it fixed or even to acknowledge they had received the notice.
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The corporate fuckup was their inability to route due notification of the problem to the correct people in order to get it fixed or even to acknowledge they had received the notice.
Most companies don't provide a notification or support mechanism: unless you are their customer.
And usually it will just be someone following a script. If your problem isn't in their script, normally you will be screwed.
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And if that causes the company to ignore an important notification, it is a fuckup no matter how fucked up everyone else is..
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You just described the nature of the problem, and tried to say "See? No problem! As designed!" Good jorb?
Re:meh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:meh! (Score:5, Funny)
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Quite a creative reaction to a [corporate] [screwup]. :-)
Quite a creative reaction to a [corporate screwup]. :-)
I see what you did there.
Re:meh! (Score:5, Funny)
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My office telephone number was one digit off of the number of a hotel. So occasionally (once a month or so) we would get calls for people enquiring for the hotel.
So when hiring I told my new secretary that if she answered a call and got the question "how much do you charge for a night?" that this caller most likely expected to have a hotel on the phone, and was just enquiring for a room. And indeed we have had exact that kind of calls.
Hotel changed their main number a few years ago so those calls have stopp
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To be fair, the Microsoft guy just got there and this has been going on for months. It's more like it got fixed when he got there, but that's not nearly as entertaining.
Re:meh! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not illegal to open emails sent to your account for somebody else, it's just not good manners to do so knowingly. The prohibition on opening mail only applies to mail sent through the postal system. Now, it might arguably apply to UPS and FedEx, but as far as I know, it doesn't. Email itself definitely is not protected in that manner.
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But, those weren't coming to a doctor or a lawyer and those would be completely different situations. What's more, doctors and lawyers shouldn't be using email as it's not secured. My doctor uses email, just to notify me that I've received a secure message.
There is no identity theft here, Zynga was informed that the email was wrong and they chose not to do anything about it. Given the messages he sent, if anybody bought into it, they deserve whatever they got.
Misrepresentation (Score:2)
That's kinda the point: depending on the specific circumstance, impersonating someone over the mail could thrust you into a world of shit, so the only safe thing to do is avoid it. Good humor is good, but in this case I find the ensuing hilarity does not justify the risk.
The email was sent to a particular address; it was responded to from the address to which it was sent. The respondent nevery laid claim to "Zynga" anywhere in the response.
If there is any misrepresentation going on, it is misrepresentation of the support contact email address by Zynga. You could also argue "theft of services" by Zynga.
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Incorrect.
The email was delivered to the address it was addressed to. If you own that address then the mail was sent to you, as intended. Do some research on those email disclaimers. None of them are worth the electrons they are displayed with.
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If you already have legal obligations, the disclaimer is superfluous. I am not sure what you mean by risk management, but if your management scheme consists of using a boilerplate disclaimer then you are doing it wrong. Remember we are talking about emails going to unintended recipients. Not email going between business partners.
Relevant links from page one of the google search. In all email disclaimers are useless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_disclaimer [wikipedia.org]
http://www.economist.com/node/18529895 [economist.com]
http:// [chicagotribune.com]
Oh! "Borrowing" Some UI Stuff, Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, it belonged to Eric Mueller, who owns the domain themepark.com, which he uses for his web design firm.
Given Zynga's code of ethics (or lack thereof), I would wager this e-mail found its way into "their" product by way of their mission statement [slashdot.org] which probably transcends game ideas into directly taking web designs that are, by definition, available to anyone with an HTTP connection. Stay classy, Zynga.
Re:Oh! "Borrowing" Some UI Stuff, Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Given Zynga's code of ethics (or lack thereof), I would wager this e-mail found its way into "their" product by way ...
No, it was the email given in the standard Apache 500 Internal Server Error message, as you can see in the article. They put ***@themepark.com as contact address on the fb.themepart.zynga.com server.
It was a configuration mistake, not a stolen site.
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Makes me wonder why anyone put that email in at all, when they had no control of themepark.com?
Re:Oh! "Borrowing" Some UI Stuff, Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
it's obvious they were using themepark as a codename for the project when doing development.
that's pretty fucking zyngalike right there though. "hey, let's make a clone of theme park, you remember, that old bullfrog game?" "yeah that's awesome I'll create the project right now.. what should we call the project.. hmm.. I know, themepark!"
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I was a developer on Coasterville. The original code name was "ResortVille", and was pitched as a game for creating elaborate resorts made up of hotels and vacation activities. The creative leads later narrowed the game's scope to a Theme Park fiction. Two of our senior developers had worked on Bullfrog's Theme Park game 20 years ago, so our team chose to codename the title "themepark".
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Given Zynga's ethics of code (or lack thereof)...
ftfy
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which probably transcends game ideas into directly taking web designs that are, by definition, available to anyone with an HTTP connection. Stay classy, Zynga.
Dang right... stealing Apache error pages.
Wait a minute.... remote visitors can't download httpd.conf... how would Zynga get the ServerAdmin value then?
Are you suggesting they hacked into their servers and got their Apache configuration too, because the Zynga folks don't know how to configure Apache?
Or perhaps some insider from theme
Souds like a dick move (Score:2)
I could see people not familiar with technology, e.g. my mom, who would think that clicking slowly 5 times was a real thing. Then, regardless of how many times I explained to her that it doesn't work like that, there would have been the on
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I admit that the emails he sent were pretty funny, but, the people asking for help weren't the ones
...
*p.s. - the canada day one was the best.
M,E,H (then, of course, click 3 times)
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yeah they were people making money for zynga.
stock reply would have cost him time(money) without providing any fun.
what would have been really funny though would have been to send them to GoG to request theme park to be added to the lineup.
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Ohh go get a sense of humor, I'd laugh my ass off if I were a customer that got one of those emails.
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laughing at somebody else who might not happen to know as much as you simply because of their ignorance is...
The basis of all humour.
You ever read "A Stranger in a Strange Land"?
First place I saw that concept.
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Hey, I've only used it as my sig for a decade (Score:2)
It's the human condition to make fun of the misfortunes of others, as well as make fun of ourselves. If you can't laugh about the world around you, you'll die an unhappy person.
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I admit that the emails he sent were pretty funny, but, the people asking for help weren't the ones not fixing the email address screwup. He could have easily had a stock response set up to respond to each of these describing Zynga's mistake and unwillingness to fix it.
I wonder if this will be used by Zynga later in a UDRP dispute as evidence of bad-faith use of the domain.
If they named their game themepark; I imagine Zynga wants to be the domain registration owner of themepark.com.
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I can imagine anyone would get a bit tired of receiving unrelated support requests after a while, especially when the responsible party won't fix it. It's hard to blame him for trying to at least have some upside in the form of funny replies.
he COULD have suggested things that would harm the users or their computers. That would be a dick move. He could also have suggested things so that the users end up attacking Zynga servers.
Zynga's lucky (Score:5, Informative)
Zynga's lucky he treated the barrage with a sense of humour.
He could have easily gone into "rant mode" about how people got his email address, torn a strip off them, and pissed off their customer base right royally.
No surprise that Zynga screwed up, though. They're kind of famous for doing that -- as well as ripping off other designer's game ideas.
Zynga should hire this guy (Score:5, Funny)
He's more helpful.
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well they fixed the problem now that they hired another guy to answer the mails.
Don Mattrick's reaction? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder what reaction one should expect from Zynga? Ummm... let try:
1. sues the hell out of Eric Mueller for identity theft?
2. "randomly" assigns Eric Mueller as CEO?
3. Don Mattrick starts throwing brown bears and folding chairs?
Other ideas? C'mon... we're speaking of a dying craporation here... be merry, creative (meh)
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Sad to say, I am fairly convinced that they already have looked into the option of suing the guy. Hopefully, concluding that it will not be an overall win to do so.
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Sad to say, I am fairly convinced that they already have looked into the option of suing the guy. Hopefully, concluding that it will not be an overall win to do so.
well yeah, at least they would do wise to choose another court than one they had been sued at for copying competitors games.
@themepark.....
Re:Don Mattrick's reaction? (Score:5, Funny)
1b) Double down on the stupid and accidentally sue their actual support person.
My Oma did this too (Score:3, Interesting)
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while funny it costs you a lot of money: the second (outgoing) line you need, the extra calling cost for the outgoing call - plus it has your own lines occupied.
Re:My Oma did this too (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My Oma did this too (Score:5, Insightful)
But was the hotel advertising the wrong number? If not, there's really not much they can do. Sure the hotel could change their number, but that would be a lot more hassle than you may suspect. They'd have to reprint business cards. They'd have to reprint advertisements, which could get expensive.
Not only that, but no matter what number they choose, it's going to be close to someone else's number.
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My number is one off from Domino's pizza if you write your 0 as a 6 accidentally. We have had several calls for Domino's over the years (less since they changed their crust). Mostly, I just tell them they have the wrong number, but this one stoned guy called me 3 times in a row at the same number, despite me telling him twice what the actual number was. The third time I just took his order and I assume he went hungry.
I also had a number that was the combination of part of a Disney number and DINE which w
Origin of story (Score:4, Informative)
Explained here [snopes.com]
Re:Origin of story (Score:5, Informative)
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I can vouch for this - I'm one of those people.
For some odd reason... I haven't been phoned by a telemarketer in months. I can't imagine why.
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One house I lived in used to get a lot of wrong numbers, we set up the outbound message on the answering machine to "Blind, Drunk and Legless, Solicitor at the Bar".
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I do have a first person account of a similar mixup...
Years ago I worked for a company called Metro Link (not the railway, but a Linux/Unix software development shop). We owned the metrolink.com domain name, which in itself caused a lot of confusion. At the recent Red Hat Summit I met a few railroad folks (IT engineers, not railroad *engineers*) and they all knew the railroad.
There was another company that made a fish finding device called a HummingBird Fish Finder. As luck would have it, our 800 number w
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The previous owner of our house went bankrupt. The first couple of years we were getting bailiff at the doorstep at all sorts of hours asking for him and not believing us when we said we didn't know where he was or how to find him.
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Snopes, and debunkers generall, are unreliable. They're so interested in debunking that explaining away one case is treated as explaining all cases.
N.B.: This doesn't mean that they are always wrong. That would be a form of reliability. Just that they give (and believe?) glib explanations that aren't necessarily correct. I can easily believe that one particular instance of that was a humor column. That sure doesn't mean that's the explanation of all such reports.
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Re:Nice try but (Score:5, Interesting)
It may be a fake, but it's damn close to something I'm dealing with. My user name, Quirkz, is also a domain I've had for ages. There's a venue that opened a couple of years ago that calls itself Qirkz. People are constitutionally unable to type a Q without typing a U, so I get tons of email for bookings and confirmations and ads and all sorts of junk. One professor had an entire class full of students try to contact me about summer internships, and then I got a bunch of laughing replies when I responded "No, no! That's the wrong address and I'm sick of this junk."
For a while I tried forwarding requests, including interviews with the BBC, but that felt like a job. Then when I was running an online game I tried a standard response which explained both businesses, hoping maybe a few people would also be curious in what I did, but that didn't seem to help and I don't have the game anymore. Now I just delete the email, but it's still unsatisfying.
I haven't ever really considered intentionally disruptive behavior, mostly because that'd be even more work, and I'm just not quite that malicious (or funny). I really don't know a way out. I'm mostly hoping they'll either eventually rebrand, or somehow the slow trickle of business lost to failed emails will clue them in and make them change.
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I'm in the States, they're in Australia. I'm pretty sure they'd laugh it off. And other than the stray email I get there's absolutely zero business overlap, so I'm not sure there's any real trademark infringement.
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You have my sincerest apologies from all of Australia. I've just had a quick look at their website, and other than looking like it clawed it's way out of Geocities by the skin of it's teeth, the venue itself looks like it is the product of nightmares triggered by a combination of the consumption of bad shellfish and a clown phobia.
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Priceless!
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BOFH (Score:2)
'nuff said
Not good from a business point of view (Score:2)
He's a business owner and he did this in the name of his business. Probably not a good business move but I'm glad he did it because it's pretty funny.
Wrong number (Score:5, Interesting)
Similar thing happened to me with a phone number. (Score:3, Interesting)
I got a worse one which happened to me personally...
About 10 years ago a local heating/boiler/airco installation company put accidentally my phone-number as the 24/7 support number on their invoices.
(The last digit of mine is a 3, theirs had a 2. Probably a typo by whoever made the design for their logo on the pre-printed invoice-paper.)
So I started getting calls for repair at all hours of the night.
Usually by quite pissed customers, whose heating had broken down on a cold night, who grabbed the latest invoice to look up the number.
So I pick up, still half asleep, and someone yells at me "That @#@$%@ heater is broken again, send someone to XXXXX asap".
Before I can respond they have already broken the connection.
About 1 hour later I get another (very) angry call "Where the bloody *@^%#%&@ is that blasted mechanic @&*#^@#^*&".
Again connection broken before I can get a word in.
Had 4 of these calls the first night. 7 the night after.
Worst thing was that I couldn't disconnect the phone.
I didn't have a cell-phone at the time and my father was in hospital with a critical heart-condition.
Every time that phone rang it could have been the hospital.
I also had on-call duty for my job.
The 2nd night, on one of the calls, I got someone reasonable on the phone who explained to me who they were thinking they where calling.
So I contacted that company the next day.
To their credit they send a new mailing to all their customers that same day, but I kept getting 5 to 10 of such calls per night, for 2 weeks running.
After that it gradually petered out, but I still get one every 3 or 4 months when someone finds the number on an old invoice.
Needless to say I got a cell-phone that same week for real emergencies and an answering machine for the land-line during the night.
(Can't do without the land-line. Still need to do dailup to ancient industrial controllers with 4800 baud modems. )
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but I kept getting 5 to 10 of such calls per night, for 2 weeks running.
I think this says more about the quality of their products / services than it does about their screwups.
Could be a lot worse... could've been the fax line (Score:3)
Soda Machine. (Score:2)
I have a very common email address that was somehow not taken. Apparently someone had put my email on a Soda machine in some Canadian Law office and unfortunately for me, the machine took their money.
Some lady from this office must have sent me about twenty emails about the machine 'eating' her Coins. I ignored it at first and finally I had to tell them that the email address they were contacting, was not the correct one. So after I got the lady to get the address on the Soda machine, I proceeded to contact
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For almost a year I have been getting calls from the Quebec area wanting to talk to William Marshall in the US Treasury. Next one I get I'm just going to have to tell them that Mr. Marshall no longer works at the US Treasury and has been dead for almost a century.
Try taking AOL cancellations (Score:4, Funny)
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Had the same with a credit card company's customers. It baffled me how callers could argue and tell me that I am the credit card company in question. Been drunk at work but never so much so I'd forget where I'm working.
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Yeah, my number is one digit off from some company's support line, I get their calls all the time. I've been tempted to start messing with them but never have, yet...
I know that feel... (Score:2)
I contributed to the user documentation on an open source project many years ago. We used the software on our systems, so my email address was listed among the contact information for support on our copy of the distribution.
Of course, no one set the correct contact information on their own installations (in hindsight, I should have set the email addresses to null before distributing) and I still get support emails from clueless users to this day.
Speaking of wrong numbers (Score:2)
Oswald_rods.mp3 [mischkemadness.com]
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1-800-222-2222 is a sex line.
Which one are you more likely to call if you remember "poison control hotline is a 1800 number with a lot of 2's " ?
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It wasn't the company I worked for, but it was one that I had to send people to several times a month. As soon as we found out, and couldn't get that company to respond to us, we just sent them to that companies website.
As hard as this is for some slashdotters to believe, Microsoft always took care of our calls seriously and forwarded us or our reports to the right people immediately. Things were resolved as fast as could be e
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Happened to a friend of mine a few years ago. His number got mixed up with some guy who did maintenance for a bowling alley. He'd come home and there'd be several frantic messages, telling him that the ball return on lane 6 is jammed. They always called when he was out, so he couldn't tell them it was a wrong number. Not too long after that, the bowling alley closed. Maybe if my friend had fixed their ball return, they could have stayed in business.
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My land line used to be a marine repair company. Every now and then I'd get super long detailed messages about nautical problems. Usually I'd pass them on to the company.