Email glitch gives NJ folks a scare when they are told they missed their appointments

SEWELL, N.J. - A Gloucester County mega vaccine site had an apparent mega mistake, as some folks got a scare when they received an email saying their appointments were canceled.

Luckily, the mistake was cleared up.

"So it is from the system and not somebody tinkering with the system, that you can tell?" asked FOX 29’s Hank Flynn.

"No, it’s definitely not someone that we can tell that’s tinkering. They said it was a Microsoft error and they corrected it," replied Gloucester County Administrator Chad Bruner.

Bruner says 16 to 18 emails went out overnight from the state server telling people they’d missed appointments the day before the actual appointment. Phil didn’t bite on the pump fake.

"I ended up calling the Department of Health and they told me to reach out here. But before I could do that I got the other email saying it was just an accident," Phil explained.

Some folks were suspicious right away. Trenton is a state government and how would they be doing anything outside of normal business hours?

"Because there was no Department of Health logo at the bottom of the email and first of all, it got sent out at 00:23 in the morning. They don’t send emails out in the a.m. that early!" one man remarked on the glitch.

"And, we got halfway up here from Mays Landing and my wife looked at her phone and she said the appointment is for the 9th. I said ‘What happened here?’" Frank commented.

The mix-up almost duped Frank and his wife. Like other folks, the answer came via a second email while they were trying to sort out the first.

"And, then last night, around 9 p.m., my wife got a thing on her phone saying that they made a mistake! Sorry, you missed your appointment – we made a mistake. So, we are back here today. We’re going to wait and we are going to get our shot," Frank added.

Bruner has been here most days since the site opened January 8th. He says the glitch only emailed a small fraction of people and it’s been fixed. But, anyone receiving an email of this kind should always check in.

"Yeah, if they get an email like that, they can forward it to us. Actually, some of the people that reached out to us this morning. They did forward it to our public information officer and it is from that system and they verified that it was and they corrected it," Bruner commented.

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