It feels like every week brings news of another massive outage of some airline’s computer network, resulting in grounded flights and stranded passengers. However, a new report suggests that it’s not that these networks are failing more frequently, so much as it is that the outages are now affecting more people — and those people now have all new venues for airing their grievances publicly. [More]
glitches
Computer Glitch Grounds All United Planes, Snarling Travel Plans For Many
By 1.23.17
Many United Airlines travelers found their planes grounded in the U.S. last night due to a computer glitch that kept all the carrier’s domestic flights from flying for about an hour. As is often the case in these situations, a lot of those people were pretty annoyed by the disruption. [More]
Busch Gardens: Errant Reservation Emails Were The Result Of A Glitch, Not A Hack
By 12.8.16
While it’s a very useful thing to receive an email confirming your upcoming reservation to a theme or amusement park, it’s not quite so helpful if you never made plans to visit that attraction in the first place. Busch Gardens is now reassuring folks who accidentally got an email about an impending trip to one of its parks that the errant missives were due to a glitch, and not an information breach. [More]
[Update] Delta Grounds All Flights Worldwide After Major Systems Outage
By 8.8.16
Update: As of 8:40a.m. EDT, Delta has lifted the full ground stop and some flights — “limited departures” — are starting to be able to take off. However, customers flying this morning should still expect lots of delays and cancellations, Delta says, and should check in with the airline before heading to the airport if you’re not there already. [More]
Target Website Crashes, Spoiling Shoppers’ Cyber Monday
By 11.30.15
Savvy holiday shoppers who didn’t want to fight the crowds on Black Friday may still be battling congested online traffic in order to obtain the plethora of Cyber Monday deals today. That’s especially true if you’re trying to score some goodies from Target, as the retailer’s website crashed this morning. [More]
Frontier’s New Reservation System Proving To Be A Headache For Travelers
By 3.13.15
There are bound to be a few hiccups when a company changes software for a program that is integral to business. But customers say the transition for Frontier Airlines’ new reservation system has been full of turbulence. [More]
Amazon Marketplace Glitch Brings Early Christmas To Shoppers, Nightmare For Sellers
By 12.15.14
Every once in a while a company will suffer an online glitch that leads to consumers purchasing items at bargain-basement prices. While most of the recent buying free-for-alls came courtesy of deeply discounted airline tickets, an issue on Amazon’s UK marketplace Friday gave new meaning to the idea of a holiday fire sale when thousands of items went were priced for a little as one penny (or 2 pennies if you’re in the United States). [More]
Target Says Glitch That Caused Sunday’s Long Lines Was Not Result Of Hack
By 6.16.14
If you shopped at Target yesterday evening, there’s a chance your wait in the checkout line was longer than usual after a vague “glitch” caused long delays at a number of stores around the country. The retailer is now proactively trying to calm concerns by saying that the hiccup was not related to any sort of data breach. [More]
Cops Have To Shut Down Pump After $.011/Gallon Gas Glitch
By 2.11.14
For a few hours during the overnight shift, a gas station in Illinois gave away an awful lot of free fuel, as a screwed-up (or screwed-with) pump was only charging customers a penny a gallon. [More]
Did Citibank Block Your First Purchases Of The New Year?
By 1.5.11
1/1/11 is a nice-looking date, as sets of digits go. But M. reports that the new date caused a hiccup on the debit card that she uses for her Citibank checking account. But, wait–a Citibank representative assured her that everyone had problems with their cards right after the new year began. Really? [More]
Have You Had Trouble Using Best Buy Gift Cards Online?
By 12.30.10
In recent days, we’ve received numerous complaints from people who attempted to use Best Buy gift cards to make purchases on the store’s website, only to end up frustrated and trapped in BB’s byzantine customer service maze. [More]
Progressive Direct "Glitch" Hikes Premium From $800 to $2,000
By 7.14.10
Kevin received a surprise when he checked the renewal notice for his car insurance recently. A 260 percent surprise, in fact, even though he’s not a bad driver and hadn’t been in any accidents. [More]
Amazon Offers $25 Gift Card To Disappointed Comics Fans After Epic Price Glitch
By 3.10.10
On Sunday, I heard rumblings of a wondrous event from my comics-loving friends. Amazon had marked lots of great graphic novels and other goodness from Marvel and independent publishers down to impossibly low prices. Lower than wholesale prices. Think $15 for a book that normally costs $125. Was it a clearance? A fire sale? A database error? Who cares? Time to go shopping. [More]
Revolutionary New Apple Service Bills Your AMEX Card For Nearly $50,000 In Music
By 2.9.10
I think we can all agree that Jobs and his crew at Apple are a bunch of visionaries when it comes to gadgets, online stores, and now getting really, really screwed by an iTunes purchase. Joel writes, “I just got a call from American Express stating that my recent purchase for iTunes plus for my entire library (cost $146) has been charged to my account over 300 times and is currently still being charged. I have called Apple to have them stop charging me and they told me the only thing I can do is cancel my card. There is no number for iTunes and I have sent multiple messages to them without response via email.” [More]
Mysterious JetBlue Creature Offers Free Tix To Passengers
By 2.1.10
If you wish hard enough on your next JetBlue trip, maybe the airline’s People Officer will magically appear and hand out free tickets. That’s what happened on David’s flight home over the weekend. To be fair, the free ticket giveaway probably happened because JetBlue asked everyone to show up two hours early due to a computer glitch. It’s still a much nicer airline story than what passengers usually send us. Also, this People Officer hinted to the OP about the airline’s future Wi-Fi plans. [More]
HP Face Tracking Camera Doesn't Track Black Faces?
By 12.21.09
If you want to take advantage of this HP web cam’s face tracking feature and you’ve got dark skin, you’d better, I dunno, sprinkle glitter on your cheeks first or something. The software doesn’t seem to be able to recognize you otherwise. [More]
Sprint Gives Stranger Full Access To Customer's Account, Shrugs
By 11.20.09
When Campbell changed his phone number with Sprint earlier this year, the company immediately assigned his old number to a new customer. They also gave that customer full access to Campbell’s account.
Student's Windows 7 Won't Work, CSR Transfers Him To Vacuum Seller
By 11.3.09
Chris is a student who bought Windows 7 through his university, then tried to install it to a new computer after his old one broke, but ran into problems. He called Microsoft customer service and ended up talking to Oreck Vacuums.
