Software security giant CrowdStrike is offering some users $10 Uber Eats gift cards this week as an apology after it crashed millions of computers around the world and sparked massive disruptions due to a failed update, according to multiple reports..
On Tuesday, social media users posted screenshots of vouchers they received from a CrowdStrike email address that offered them the Uber Eats gift card as a way to make amends for last week’s outage.
“We recognize the additional work that the July 19 incident has caused. And for that we send out heartfelt thanks and apologies for the inconvenience,” one email read. “To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!”
The email ended with a voucher code, valued at $10 or £7.75 in the U.K.
However, users who tried to redeem the vouchers found they had been canceled. On Wednesday, some users claimed they received an error message once they entered the voucher’s code.
CrowdStrike in a statement Wednesday denied sending out gift cards as a blanket apology to users, saying it was sending the vouchers to certain employees — “teammates” — and associates who had to deal with frustrated customers on the day of the meltdown.
“CrowdStrike did not send gift cards to customers or clients. We did send these to our teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation,” a CrowdStrike spokesperson said in a statement.
The company said Uber “flagged [the offer] as fraud because of high usage rates.”
CrowdStrike’s gesture follows the release of a faulty update last Friday that left nearly 9 million Windows computers inoperable. While the company rolled the update back around 90 minutes later, the damage was done and millions of computers had downloaded the update.
While millions of consumer computers suffered deadly blue screens on Friday, the outage also caused massive disruptions at airports and hospitals. Dozens of airports around the world, including the U.S., saw flight delays and some hospitals had to stop surgeries.
On Wednesday, CrowdStrike explained that a bug in the validation process allowed the botched update to deploy. The company said it would be adding additional layers of validation to prevent any future crashes.
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