What would you do if an airline lost your luggage? Complain to a manager? Send them an angry email? Take it to Twitter?

Fed up with the way British Airways was handling the issue of his father’s lost luggage, businessman Hasan Syed decided to complain about it.

But when he didn’t get the response that he wanted, he took the matter to a whole other level. But instead of putting out a regular tweet, Hasan Syed paid for a promoted 140-character message that read: “Don’t fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous.”

Promoted tweets are generally bought by advertisers who want to reach a wider audience. The paid-for tweet is given high prominence in the Twitter feed of the relevant company but otherwise acts as a normal message and can be retweeted by others.

Hasan Syed purchased his paid-for tweet via Twitter’s self-service ad platform for an undisclosed sum. He targeted New York and UK markets with the tweet.

In this particular case, the tweet appears to have been successful:

We would like to apologise to the customer for the inconvenience caused. We have been in contact with the customer and the bag is due to be delivered today British Airways told the BBC.

Hasan Syed’s not the first disgruntled customer to take on an airline via social media. Dave Carroll and his band put United Airlines on the defensive in 2009, when their video “United Breaks Guitars” went viral. It details how United failed to reimburse Carroll after his guitar was broken in 2008

Short URL & title:
A new way to use social media to take on a big corporation — http://www.torbenrick.eu/t/r/ike

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