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Sony Forgets To Pay For Domain, Hilarity Ensues
First time accepted submitter Dragoness Eclectic writes Early Tuesday, gamers woke up to find out that they couldn't log in to any Sony Online Entertainment games--no Everquest, no Planetside 2, none of them. Oddly, the forums where company reps might have posted some explanation weren't reachable, either. A bit of journalistic investigation by EQ2Wire came across the explanation: SOE forgot to renew the domain registration on SonyOnline.net, the hidden domain that holds all their nameservers. After 7 weeks of non-payment post-expiration, NetworkSolutions reclaimed the domain, sending all access to Sony's games into an internet black hole. Sony has since paid up. SOE's president, John Smedley, has admitted that the expiration notices were being sent to an "unread email" address.
Hole in someone's head, maybe - after all, a simple spreadsheet to track something this basic or a reminder in a calendar with alerts with someone assigned to keep an eye on things would take care of things like this. They're lucky it wasn't held hostage...
I immediately thought this too, but you try ringing one of these corporations and see how far you get.
Wow, giving the company 7 weeks before Network Solutions took the site down? That's going way above & beyond. The average luser like me would be taken down the day of expiration.
This sort of lapse has happened in every company I've worked in, big and small, when the person formerly responsible for this kind of thing leaves the company and someone else has to pick up their responsibilities. Sloppy, unorganized? You betcha. Also what I've come to expect.
]The real problem is that Sony couldn't be arsed to register the domain names using a working e-mail address that actually goes to the person at Sony who is responsible for such a thing.
Not quite, it should be a special purpose email like domain_registration@sony.com rather than an employee email. However the special purpose email should forward to those responsible, involved or overseeing the particular thing. The special purpose email should not be something that someone is supposed to log in to.
Hilarity Ensues
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Now, if some domain squatter had taken over the name the moment the domain expired, that would be funny. Giving them 7 weeks is just ... well, sad.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Anyone on Slashdot who gets smugly superior about this and how "stupid companies are" is just being a hypocrite. We have ALL forgotten things in our lives. We've all forgotten an event we were supposed to be at, a bill we were supposed to pay, something we were supposed to bring with us. It happens.
What's more, everyone has been in a situation where something didn't happen because they, and everyone else, assumed someone else was going to deal with it. You don't go and check on everything that ever happens around you or involving you, you mentally categorize things you are and are not responsible for and ignore the latter.
So ya, companies, which are made up of people, can fuck up too. It's amusing, but perfectly normal.
Must have been "support@sony.com"
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
SOE's president, John Smedley, has admitted that the expiration notices were being sent to an "unread email" address.
The same one used for customer service inquiries.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I have been doing web work for a decade, and I can tell you this happens all the time. In fact, older employees in marketing have told me horror stories about 800 numbers and mailing addresses that were never set up, misprinted, or never updated.
I always tell clients that they should set up emails that describe the job/function, like marketing@example.com and webmaster@example.com, and make sure that those emails go to a distribution list that goes to at least two people.
You wouldn't believe how often critical accounts and webforms are only accessible with the email addresses of Sally the Secretary or William the Webmaster. When they leave, no one knows there is a problem, until it is a big problem.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey