They Broke The Code — Literally

(I work for a company that offers digital marketing services, among other things. In order to track the campaign’s performance, we need to add a small piece of code to the client’s website. Most of the time we are able to add this ourselves, but occasionally the client has contracted out their web services and we must get in contact with a third party. Recently, a campaign that was generating huge success has suddenly flat-lined. After hours poring over the campaign I finally determine that there is a flaw with the code, which was installed by the third-party web company six months ago. Here is my email exchange.)

Me: “Hey, can you guys please re-add [code] to the site? We had it on there before but I’m not sure what happened.”

Contact: “Our service team is unable to add [code] to the site at this time as there is already existing [code] on site. This code was sent to us two months ago, and we updated it as requested. It is not recommended to have multiple [code]s running at the same time but it can be done. Please advise if we are to remove or replace the existing [code].”

Me: “I can’t speak to what to do with the current [code], but ours needs to be re-added as soon as possible. [Client]’s campaign has already experienced a negative because it was removed.”

Client: *cc’d on email* “Oh, yeah, we had them remove [code] to put our marketing intern’s on there. It’s for her final class project. Just add both codes.”

Me: *now exclusively to the client* “Did you know that they had removed our [code] from the site to place your student’s there?”

Client: “Yeah, we didn’t think it would be a huge deal because she’s running her own marketing for us and it’s all the same code.”

(After digging in a bit further, it turns out that not only had they basically sabotaged their own campaign, they were also running digital marketing to compete with their existing digital marketing campaign as a way to get out of their contract with us!)