Play.com faces 'system error' problems

Some customers registered with the Play.com have experienced difficulties with the website over the weekend. It seems a large volume of customers have found order dispatch notices in their email inboxes despite not ordering from them.

The emails contained personal details of other members of the Play.com site. None of the information included financial details. The problem seems to have been widespread, with members who called a customer service line finding they were unable to get through at first because the lines were busy. One customer of Play.com found over 80 emails from the site when he accessed his in box. After speaking to a member of staff via the helpline, it was explained that Play.com was having a "massive problem." The amount of customers who have been affected by this problem is as yet unknown. It is also unclear how many emails were sent out. There has been much discussion about the problem on various forums on the Internet and the blame seems to have been placed on a "system error." A statement issued by Play.com and published on the BBC website said: "We were alerted to an incident that appears to have affected some customers for a short period of time in the early hours of this morning, and the first thing we'd like to say is that we apologise for any inconvenience our customers have experienced as a result. "We'd like to reassure our customers that the cause of the incident has been identified and resolved. We take these matters very seriously and are now investigating how this incident occurred in the first place, so that we can prevent it happening in the future."