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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.
Even though that particular instance didn't happen, getting someone else's old phone number, or a number close to another number (or a business listing the wrong number somewhere), is common enough that I'm sure people play similar pranks all the time. Coming up with a fictional example of something doesn't prove that that kind of thing happening is an urban myth. Another example would be stringing along telemarketers in various funny (?) ways. Just because it's been featured in stand-up routines, sitcoms and sketches, that doesn't mean people aren't actually doing it.
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.
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.