Unhappy with how British Airways was handling the issue of his father’s lost luggage, businessman Hasan Syed decided to pay Twitter to promote a tweet, garnering far more attention than the usual avenue of disgruntlement.
Using promoted tweets, advertisers who want to reach a wider audience pay for their tweet to be given high prominence in feeds of relevant companies and users. It can also be retweeted by others.
The promoted tweet bought by Mr Syes reads: "Don’t fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous."
Mr Syed purchased his paid-for tweet via Twitter’s self-server ad platform for an undisclosed sum. He targeted New York and UK markets with the tweet.
The decision to highlight BA’s customer service came following a trip his parents made from Chicago to Paris at the weekend, during which his father lost his luggage.
Just hours hours after the tweet went live, it was picked up by news website Mashable, and has now been read by thousands ofTwitter users, some retweeting and commenting.
"Sorry for the delay in responding, our twitter feed is open 09:00-17:00 GMT. Please DM [direct message] your baggage ref and we’ll look into this," responded the BA Twitter account.
The idea that the ad platform of large corporations can be hijacked by members of the public is an interesting trend, thinks Shashank Nigam, chief executive of aviation consultancy SimpliFlying.
"The implications are tremendous for the future of airline customer service, especially on social media," he said in his blog.
"Airlines are going to have to start having 24/7 customer services and maybe they need to train up call centre reps to respond to messages on Facebook and Twitter."
