Chase.com goes down due to third party DB issues, apologizes...eventually

From Data Center Knowledge:

"The Chase.com online banking portal is back online and processing customer bill payments that were delayed during lengthy outages Tuesday and Wednesday, the company said this morning.

The Chase web site crashed Monday evening when a third party vendor’s database software corrupted the log-in process, the bank told the Wall Street Journal. Chase said no customer data was at risk and that its telephone banking and ATMs functioned as usual throughout the outage."

Unfortunately there was no communication during the event, and finally got a message out to customers that visited the website four days after the first outage:

The "we're sorry" message is well done, but overall...not good.

Domino's using transparency as a competitive advantage

From the NY Times:

Domino’s Pizza is extending its campaign that promises customers transparency along with tasty, value-priced pizza.

The campaign, by Crispin Porter & Bogusky, part of MDC Partners, began with a reformulation of pizza recipes and continued recently with a pledge to show actual products in advertising rather than enhanced versions lovingly tended to by professional food artists.

The vow to be more real was accompanied by a request to send Domino’s photographs of the company’s pizzas as they arrive at customers’ homes. AWeb site, showusyourpizza.com, was set up to receive the photos.

A commercial scheduled to begin running on Monday will feature Patrick Doyle, the chief executive of Domino’s, pointing to one of the photographs that was uploaded to the Web site. The photo shows a miserable mess of a delivered pizza; the toppings and a lot of the cheese are stuck to the inside of the box.

“This is not acceptable,” Mr. Doyle says in the spot, addressing someone he identifies as “Bryce in Minnesota.”

“You shouldn’t have to get this from Domino’s,” Mr. Doyle continues. “We’re better than this.” He goes on to say that such subpar pizza “really gets me upset” and promises: “We’re going to learn; we’re going to get better. I guarantee it.”