Angry Customer Buys Promoted Tweets To Bash British Airways 286
An anonymous reader writes "After the airline lost his father's luggage (and presumably was less than helpful in resolving the issue), one man decided to use Twitter's self-serve ad platform to issue a warning to fellow travelers in the New York and UK markets. The tweets have gotten the attention not only of media outlets, but also of fellow airlines. A JetBlue executive even retweeted it. While companies use the platform to target customers, it's interesting to see it being turned around."
Re:Incoming (Score:2, Insightful)
every airline loses luggage and has rules on how much they will reimburse you
yes it sucks, but it happens to every airline every day. this is like the idiots who switch wireless carriers every week because of some perceived slight in customer service or they can't get 10 bars at home 24x7
4 hours to respond (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Incoming (Score:3, Insightful)
But is it libel if it's true?
Prove it. In court. Under absurd amounts of cross-examination conducted by an army of lawyers.
Oh, and court cases take time, time which cuts into you earning money, time which can be trivially manipulated by lawyers familiar with gaming the system.
But maybe it's true after all! Once you're long since bankrupt, maybe someone will care!
Re:Incoming (Score:5, Insightful)
every airline loses luggage and has rules on how much they will reimburse you
Yes, but some airlines/airports lose luggage more often than others. And some airlines are more helpful than others when they do lose the luggage.
Re:4 hours to respond (Score:5, Insightful)
he tweeted it 7:57pm. in england its the middle of the night
in the US people are relaxing with families
this will really turn me off from flying BA because they didn't respond to a tweet at night
Re:now i will never fly BA (Score:2, Insightful)
people need to learn how to pack fragile objects
no one is going to take special care for your one package and make the plane late.
Re:Incoming (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? They all do it so it's ok? What's your point? They deserve every bit of bad press for losing luggage.
Re:All PR is good PR (Score:4, Insightful)
They might lose luggage more if it results in others paying to promote their brand name! Folks down the road won't remember why BA is in the forefront of their subconscious when they go to purchase tickets... Smart of Jet Blue to try to get in on the attention too.
This is one of the big problems with trying to warn folks off bad service, you really need to promote every company save the one you aren't a fan of or it just ends up good for them in the long run.
All PR is good PR is only something said when there's bad press by people who want to keep their jobs. And it isn't true. If it were everyone on /. would love Microsoft.
Re:4 hours to respond (Score:3, Insightful)
I heard that airlines operate in multiple time zones.
Re:now i will never fly BA (Score:2, Insightful)
Relevant quote (Score:4, Insightful)
"Remember: every member of your 'target audience' also owns a broadcasting station. These 'targets' can shoot back."
-- Michael Rathbun to advertisers, in n.a.n-a.e
Re:now i will never fly BA (Score:4, Insightful)
If your guitar, packed in a non-ATA case, gets crushed because turbulence causes some other package to land on it in flight, that's the traveler's problem. If it's broken because an airline employee deliberately throws it to the ground 10 feet below instead of putting it on the conveyor like the other luggage, that's the airline's problem - regardless of what the contract says.
Re:Incoming (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but some airlines/airports lose luggage more often than others. And some airlines are more helpful than others when they do lose the luggage.
And some customers are real douchebags who take affront at everything and are unreasonable no matter how hard the agent is trying to help.
Bottom line is - we don't know where the line is in this case. This guy may have a completely legitimate grievance, or he could be raising hell because BA wouldn't compensate him $500 a bag or give him 10,000 free travel miles. We just don't know.
Re:Incoming (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't mean that some companies aren't so egregiously bad at customer service that you wouldn't walk away from doing business with them.
Exactly. The one thing you can always do is vote with your money.
When the german Bahn AG (train company) was stupid to me about a 40ÂâÂdispute, I told them that in my business position I control a couple thousand Euros in travel budget going their way - or not. They blew me off, I told my secretary to always check alternatives and book them if they're the same or slightly more expensive from now on.
When O2 was stupid to me about my (rather small) mobile contract, I told them they could be nice to me or I'd cancel my much larger phone and DSL contracts as well. They didn't listen, so I move all my business elsewhere. When I got the usualy retention call, I told them why.
It is unlikely that your move will get as much attention and most likely it'll all get lost at the customer service level. I used #o2sucks on plenty of my FB postings while the above crap was going down, but I don't think it got very much attention.
But someone has to start. And if you move your business away from the crap companies, they won't even notice. But if a thousand people like you do it, they'll start to notice. And if ten or a hundred thousand do it, they just might smarten up. And if they don't, they might go belly up and good riddance. But someone has to start, so be that someone.
Re:Incoming (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only is this entirely plausible, on the basis of anecdotal evidence, but any attempt to sue him for libel for such an innocuous comment would be doomed to ignominious failure.
He is perfectly at liberty to express his dissatisfaction with their service. If BA doesn't like it, they can always try pulling up their game.
And for what it's worth, a shitlist is as just as useful as a recommendation. As every corporation knows, a satisfied customer might tell a couple of people, but a dissatisfied customer will tell at least ten.
I used to maintain a shitlist (LG electronics goods are at the top), but now I check reviews before I buy. I'll sometimes accept one negative review in 10 as an outlier, but 3 or more is usually enough of a flag to tell me to look elsewhere.
Re:Incoming (Score:4, Insightful)
Traveling from New York to Hungary, I have had baggage delayed twice. American Airlines had a special car drive the bags 2 hours to my location the next day, and gave a $100 reimbursement for emergency replacement of items for that missing day.
British Airways is another story. The bags hadn't arrived in Vienna when we arrived. The whereabouts were unknown, but the next day they showed up at the airport. We couldn't communicate with the airport baggage handlers directly to give them our address; we needed to fill out a form with BA and they would telex -- TELEX -- the information to the airport. Then, we would need to wait for a phone call between working hours to give them directions how to reach our address. Every day, when the phone call never arrived, we would call BA back, and discover that the information was garbled--that an address in Hungary isn't a local phone number, that it needs an international country code, that we are not at our origin since we left it via airplane so there is no point in calling it. After 3 days, the information was allegedly straightened out. From that point, there was no longer a reason for them not to call us. Since there was still no way to contact the airport, we had no choice but to call BA every few hours and plead with them to get the airport to call us. All they did was tell us they sent these pleas via telex, and it was a one-way communication so there was no way to receive a direct response. They could not or would not give us a phone number directly to the people they were sending the telexes to. We sent messages to BA customer service headquarters, since the BA staff in Vienna were not helping. Their customer service never responded, not even with an automated message.
After a week of no clothing, our own deodorant, or toothbrushes, we looked up the address of the airport on the web and tracked down a working phone number for the baggage handlers. They delivered the bag the next day, though with reluctance over the distance and the country border. We never did hear from BA customer service, and we never got a cent for the inconvenience, because we needed receipts for our items in order to get any money.
Just fuck them. I understand that the company was at the mercy of Austria's sadistic concept of customer service, but the organization should still be held responsible for those it hires or contracts. For contrast, I once complained to AA when the TV in my seat wasn't working on an international flight, and I got a $100 voucher (which I never used). No airline is perfect, but there is an expectation on customer service in fixing problems that is lacking with BA.