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Zynga Puts Random Stranger In Customer Support Role
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.
Quite a creative reaction to a corporate screwup. :-)
And it was probably just as effective as the actual fix.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
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 which probably transcends game ideas into directly taking web designs that are, by definition, available to anyone with an HTTP connection. Stay classy, Zynga.
My work here is dung.
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
He's more helpful.
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)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
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!"
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Several years back a new hotel opened in Niagara falls. Their phone number was 1 digit off my grand parents number. They started getting several calls a day, all hours of the day, looking to book rooms. They called the hotel several times and asked them to change their number but they refused and told my grandparents they should change theirs. My grandparents had that number for over 30 years so they refused. Eventually they got sick of being polite and telling people they had the wrong number, so they started "taking bookings". The situation was then quickly resolved when the hotel started having people showing up expecting a room. Hotel changed it's number and life went on. I know it sucked for the people who expected rooms, but they tried to be nice and polite for a few months.
Explained here
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't post any of the customer responses. That would be the best part.
Quite a creative reaction to a corporate screwup. :-)
Creative? I thought it was rather meh.
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.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
not a shocker that they didnt respond to them. when they bought dopewars from my previous employeer they never even told us admins that we were no longer working for them. The sooner that zynga dies the better for everyone.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Were you trying this in the title? From TFA: " I talked to the engineers and they suggested holding down the M, E, and H keys, and while you have all three keys held down, try clicking the button then."
The G
Many years ago a buddy got some new phone lines. One had just been a reservation number for an extremely large restaurant. After a few days of folks trying to make reservations through him he called the restaurant and offered them the number back if they'd pay the transfer fees. They declined. So he started taking reservations. "Four for the Ponderosa Room at 7pm? Under 'Caruthers'? Not a problem; please check in with the Hostess when you arrive." After a week of this he called the restaurant back, and offered them their reservation number back. For just the fees? Oh no, assholes, now it's gonna cost something! He got some nominal amount, just 'cause he was pissed about his time & trouble.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
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. )
When I was in university, my buddies had a phone number that closely matched a big pizza place. If you hit the second number twice, you got his phone. It was funny at first and then got annoying, so if the phone rang after 11, there was a good chance it was an order. We would answer appropriately, and take orders. We would even hit the computer keyboard making it sound like we are typing in the information. Well, one day it happened, we got a complaint call from a customer wondering where their pizza was. Redial is awesome. So we told her we ate it and promptly hung up the phone. Misspent youth? No!
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
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.
I worked in a call center where our 800 number was similar to an AOL support number. We would frequently get people calling to cancel and they would refuse to believe that we were not AOL and we were just trying to keep them as billable customers. Oh well...
Patience is a virtue, but haste is my life.
Probably because they were too full of cursing, anybody that has ever had to work helpdesk can tell you there is nothing more pissy and foul mouthed than an irate customer.
But this being Zynga, the same bunch of numbnuts that hired the "just deal with it" guy from MSFT to be their new CEO? honestly this doesn't surprise me. what DOES surprise me is how long they have managed to stay in business when their entire "business" is built around ripping off others IP. Go look up the papers EA filed against Zynga and you'll see pretty much every "game" they have is just stolen property, they'd find some indie game that is starting to get buzz and have some Chinese coding house whip up a knock off (some times so exact that even the artwork is damned near pixel perfect copies) which they put up on FB reap the rewards.
Personally as much as I hate the current IP minefield it just goes to show the indie game devs are easily fucked over, after all you couldn't just take the exact same script that they used for the latest Transformers, change the names by one letter (bumblebee becomes rumblebee and so on) and not get sued, or take the latest hit song and record a note for note knockoff and slap it on iTunes without getting busted, but Zynga can take some indie devs life's work, change a couple of sprites and the name and then make a pile of cash without worrying about squat. Hell if it weren't for them getting greedy and going after EA properties most of us would have never known its just a rip off house.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.