CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company, accidentally made millions of computers crash worldwide last week.
To apologize, it gave its partners $10 Uber Eats gift cards, according to people who received the cards.
On Tuesday, an email was sent from CrowdStrike with the gift card, recognizing the extra work caused by the incident on July 19.
The email thanked and apologized to recipients, offering them a treat.
The email, sent by Daniel Bernard, CrowdStrike’s chief business officer, was shared on social media. In the UK, the gift card was worth £7.75, equal to $10.
On Wednesday, some people who tried to use the gift card got an error message saying it had been canceled. TechCrunch confirmed the gift card was no longer valid.
CrowdStrike’s spokesperson, Kevin Benacci, confirmed they sent the gift cards but said Uber flagged them as fraud due to high usage.
Last Friday, CrowdStrike released a bad update that broke about 8.5 million Windows devices, causing the “blue screen of death” error. This outage delayed flights, halted surgeries, and disrupted businesses worldwide.
CrowdStrike has been updating the public on their efforts to fix the problem. They said a bug let faulty code pass inspection and apologized for the issue.
The CEO, George Kurtz, and chief security officer, Shawn Henry, both apologized publicly. Kurtz promised transparency on what happened and steps to prevent it in the future.
Henry expressed deep regret on LinkedIn, saying the past 48 hours had been the most challenging in his 40-year career.
