Customer pays to promote his tweet complaining about British Airways

If you were sick of tweeting your dissatisfaction and receiving no response, how far would you go to get noticed? In the case of one Twitter user, handing over some cash to pay for a promoted tweet wasn’t outside the realm of possibility — he has essentially taken out an ad to warn others about flying with British Airways.

Hasan Syed (@HVSVN) says he refuses to stop promoting the following tweet until the airline finds his lost luggage:

While Syed has been gaining a fair amount of support (or at least incredulous reactions) on Twitter from fellow unhappy passengers, British Airways seems to have largely missed the angry mentions. Syed tweeted the airline directly before he paid to promote the tweet and says he waited over seven hours for a response, as the airline only responds on Twitter between 09H00 and 17H00 GMT. According to Mashable, Syed took out the ad late on Monday night, where it appeared to users in New York City and the UK.

What is taking @British_Airways customer service so long? They've had over a day to figure this out.

—  (@HVSVN) September 3, 2013

@British_Airways how does a billion dollar corp only have 9-5 social media support for a business that operates 24/7? DM me yourselves.

—  (@HVSVN) September 3, 2013

@British_Airways jesus. I have been following you already. Did you even bother to check?

—  (@HVSVN) September 3, 2013

While Syed hasn’t confirmed how much promoting the tweet is costing him, he seems to be making use of Twitter’s self-service ad platform, which allows you to set a daily limit and target your message to users based on anything from their gender to geographical location and recently mentioned keywords and usernames. While he says it’s “not about the money at this point”, he will be charged every time a user favourites, retweets, clicks on or replies to his promoted tweet until Twitter drains his budget. While this lesson in service is definitely coming at a price for the customer, it remains to be seen how much this level of negativity will cost the airline itself.