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Zynga Mistake Puts Random Stranger In Customer Support Role

kotaku.com

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Re: Zynga Mistake Puts Random Stranger In Customer Support Role

#21

Post by goatforce5 »

I've owned a domain for 10+ years that's spelled correctly and is kinda neat and i'll do something with it some day. A few years back a start up got some funding, tried to buy my domain several times, and ended up going with a variation of the domain, but minus a vowel. eg, if i owned flicker.com, they ended up with flickr.com (it's neither of those domains, BTW).

I semi-regularly get support emails for them. If i'm in a good mood and see the email as it comes in, i'll tell them the correct email to use (no one has ever thanked me for that, as it happens). Normally I just ignore them, or don't notice them for a few days.

I find it mildly amusing when there's a series of emails from the same person with panic escalating over a few hours.

"Where is my project?"

"I need this for my report in the morning!"

"I'M GOING TO SUE YOU!"

Re: Zynga Mistake Puts Random Stranger In Customer Support Role

#22

Post by recursive »

speeder wrote: post #3

Troll.programmer? Placeholder forgotten there? How.the guy email.ended there in first place? EDIT: whooo! I write a question, downvote-fest!!! For context, I was the first comment, and I was genuinely curious. But thanks for the downvotes and no reply.

Curious about what? Your "question" is non-sensical.

Re: Zynga Mistake Puts Random Stranger In Customer Support Role

#23

Post by panacea »

nicholassmith wrote: post #7

I think I'd do the exact same thing in his situation, you can either be angry about it or have some fun with it.

They're semi-funny reply emails, but I don't really understand how he was having fun with them. Doing it for the lulz of punking individual users trying to get help?

Seems a bit like being a bully on an individual kid.

Possibly cathartic though if he's being swamped by misdirected support emails... maybe?

Re: Zynga Mistake Puts Random Stranger In Customer Support Role

#26

Post by smoyer »

recursive wrote: post #22
speeder wrote: post #3

Troll.programmer? Placeholder forgotten there? How.the guy email.ended there in first place? EDIT: whooo! I write a question, downvote-fest!!! For context, I was the first comment, and I was genuinely curious. But thanks for the downvotes and no reply.

Curious about what? Your "question" is non-sensical.

If I'm decoding it correctly, I think a description of how his e-mail ended up in Zynga's game would in fact be an interesting story.

Re: Zynga Mistake Puts Random Stranger In Customer Support Role

#27

Post by fastball »

cinbun8 wrote: post #14

Misleading those users was unnecessary. From the user's perspective they are stuck between Zynga and Eric who decided to have some fun with them. I wonder how much time he had on his hands to toy around with feedback emails everyday. Would an email filter with an automatic response not have sufficed ?

Users of Zynga products deserve a wake up call.

Re: Zynga Mistake Puts Random Stranger In Customer Support Role

#28

Post by sam_pointer »

willvarfar wrote: post #4

So Zynga was originally going to call the game "Themepark" but Eric already had that domain, and so they changed it to "Coasterville"?

From experience, it is quite common to have internal code-names for Facebook games for the purposes of preventing leaks from development canvas apps and the like. These are usually related to the general gist of the game. To coin a made-up example, 'SimAir' might be called 'flying' internally.
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