Woolworths' technical problem causes distress to customers

Jun 1, 2015 15:19 GMT  ·  By

A massive data leak occurred on Saturday morning in Australia when Woolworths, the largest grocery store chain in the country, erroneously emailed more than 1,000 individuals a database with almost 8,000 gift cards worth over AUD1.3 million ($990,000 / €900,000).

Some of the recipients of the database began a shopping spree, spending the vouchers of other people, in locations hundreds of kilometers away from their true owners.

Gift card owners find others already used their vouchers

The vouchers were part of a promotional campaign that allowed customers to purchase them with a discount of 7.5% via Groupon, and could be spent immediately at any Woolworths supermarket.

The value of the shopping codes was of AUD100 ($76 / €70) and AUD200 ($152 / €140); they could be redeemed both online at Woolworths’ website and at brick-and-mortar locations.

Multiple customers discovered that their AUD200 vouchers had already been spent by the time they checked their balance online.

Woolworths cancels vouchers, but not soon enough

Later on Saturday, Woolworths shot out a new round of emails to those purchasing the vouchers informing that the tickets had been cancelled and could not be used, according to Sidney Morning Herald.

However, this attempt to fix the issue resulted in more distress to some of the company’s customers, who did not see the communication.

One individual, making his weekly grocery shopping had to leave the products at the store after trying to pay for them using his gift cards. Just like in the previous cases, someone else had already shopped with them.

More than this, the supermarket staff told him he was using stolen vouchers, bringing more embarrassment upon him, since he did not have enough money in the wallet to pay for the products.

Contacted by Sidney Morning Herald, Woolworths did not comment the incident in more detail and simply said that it experienced “a technical fault with an e-voucher offered to customers this week. We are working to resolve the issue and are assisting customers.”

The number of customers affected by the incident is not known, nor is the value of the prejudice Woolworths suffered.