If your productivity plummeted Friday due to a pandemic that caused Windows to crash due to a faulty software update, Crowdstrike, the company that accepted responsibility for the problem, may have offered to compensate you with a $10 UberEats gift certificate, a modern-day version of the teddy bear in a gift shop wearing a little T-shirt that says “Sorry.”
It’s very small and, well, Thoughtless According to TechCrunch, it looks like at least some of these vouchers won’t actually work, so this is probably worse than nothing.
Four days later, Delta is still affected by the CrowdStrike outage, and here’s why:
On Friday, technicians and bystanders around the world watched as an estimated 8.5 million Windows machines displayed a catastrophic “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) on their monitors. Computer paralysis caused chaos at major airports in Amsterdam, Berlin, Dubai, London and across the United States. Hospitals had to reschedule surgeries, businesses ground to a halt, and I myself encountered delays while trying to check in for jury duty.
The emails with the coupons attached appear to have been sent on Tuesday. In the attached message, CrowdStrike acknowledged that the glitch caused “extra work” and said it “sincerely appreciates and apologizes for any inconvenience caused.” As an apology to users, the email said, “We’ll treat you to your next coffee or late-night snack!” and included instructions on how to redeem the gift cards online.
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But Crowdstrike may have to apologize soon for its supposedly botched apology, since some recipients say their apology gifts were canceled before they had a chance to use them: When TechCrunch tested one of the vouchers, it received a message saying the card had been “canceled and voided by the issuer.”
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has already promised to be fully transparent about what went wrong, but he will likely come under pressure to follow through on that promise as the U.S. Congress has asked him to testify before a House committee.
The company explained on Wednesday that the issue occurred while an emergency “Rapid Response Content” update was in progress, and that content validators didn’t catch the destructive code before the update was released to the world. Systems-wise, it still hasn’t explained why there was such a gaping hole in Crowdstrike’s quality control process.
The $10 coupon is a small, symbolic gesture that’s clearly not intended as atonement for the full scale of the disruption. Rather, it seems to represent CrowdStrike’s attempt to remain in good graces with affected partners and clients. But the canceled redemptions suggest that even the smallest acts of contrition from Crowdstrike may contain glitches.
Updated: July 24, 2024 1:31 PM PDT CrowdStrike issued the following statement: “CrowdStrike has not sent gift cards to customers or clients, but has sent them to teammates and partners who have been assisting customers through this situation. Uber has flagged this as a scam due to high usage.”
