Why you should talk to companies on Twitter

I think Twitter was born because we all just needed a place to vent about things.

I regularly complain about anything and everything on Twitter. Waiting in line, traffic, service at restaurants, my internet connection crapping out, my baby not sleeping -- you name it, I've probably complained about it at least once in 7,000 tweets.

Lately I've been making a point to search for a company's Twitter handle before I tweet about them. In my opinion, Tweeting directly at them gives me a better chance of being heard than not adding their handle at all, and if nothing else happens, I've drawn attention to it.

Case in point: You're all up-to-date on my cell phone drama. And yes, I've tweeted about that NUMEROUS times, going back months. At the beginning of the most recent meltdown, I tweeted the following:

Samsung responded right away by asking me some details about the phone and where I'd gotten my replacement phone. The manager of the account offered to take a look at the phone for me and send the service request link. Unfortunately, I couldn't go without a phone because we don't have a home phone, but the fact they offered was pretty darn cool.

Fast forward a few weeks to the Loaner Phone debacle. I tweeted this:

Of course, Sprint didn't respond because they sort of suck at customer service (both online and through the stores).

But that single Tweet was re-tweeted by someone with over 1000 followers and re-tweeted again by some of her followers. By the time that tweet trickled out of the Twitter stream, it had the potential to be read by thousands of current Sprint customers and future Sprint customers -- who might not become customers because of what they read.

Ok, that's a long-shot. I'm not Heather Armstrong and neither are any of you. None of us are getting any free washers out of a Twitter rant.  What I'm saying is that if a company is on Twitter, they have opened themselves up to these types of messages and it's in their best interest to respond.

Many times I'm not even asking for them to do anything. I just want them to listen. I want them to be  accountable for the products they sell.

Here is an example of a company who does it right.

I had three Restaurant.com certificates worth $10 each for a restaurant that closed. I was able to trade them in for credit on the Restaurant.com website but it would only allow me to trade in $10 at a time instead of using all $30. There weren't any restaurants I was interested in that offered $10 certificates, so I tweeted:

Within minutes, someone from Restaurant.com had Direct Messaged me in an attempt to solve this problem. They were able to  And you know what? They did. 

And because they listened to little old me, I'm much more likely to be a return customer.

Do you complain to companies on Twitter? Have they ever responded to you?

Loaner Phone Part 2: Text message bonanza

I'm used to having lots of apps to play with on my smart phone, including Twitter, Facebook and TMZ. Now that we have a baby in tow, there are times when Hub will run in to a store and leave us in the car, especially if the baby is sleeping. I missed my Samsung Moment the most when we were running errands.

I was sitting in the car at Lowes getting bored while Hub shopped and the baby slept. What to do, what to do? I decided to take a virtual tour around my Loaner Phone and see what I could get into. They weren't able to download my contact list to this phone, so the only numbers I had were those of the people who had already texted me. I scrolled further and realized that not only were the contacts still in the phone, all the text messages were, too.

Hot diggity dog!

This guy's whole world was opened in front of me. Not a word was spelled right, unless it had something to do with drugs. More wuz, ur, bros, brahs, kno, wat, wassups, dams than you can shake a stick at. There were pleads for more weed, lots of text flirting and this little number:

White Girl T: Gas is $4 a gallon I'll take u but u gotta put $15 in my gas
PG (Phone Guy): I am good man dam like

Then there is this one, which I'm still trying to figure out:

Back Door: Im at rondia house now bruh come threw ima buy what i can frm ya when i get in.

(Buy what, pray tell? Probably selling some Tupperware or something.. Yeah, that must be it.)

And this one:

PG: Dis me way u at?!

But nothing is quite as spectacular as the text fights between PG and what appears to be his number one lady love, in the contacts as "My Bay". From the look of these text messages, I think they have the same kind of relationship me and my Samsung Moment have.

My Bay: So i guess i'm suppose to be dumb all of a sudden your phone has no service you couldn't talk to me while in the house your phone hung up you don't call back one thing about it mama didnt raise no fool it hasn't been the same its cool though i pick up on stuff very quickly just kno i kno

The next day....

My Bay: Luv u hope you have a good day today
PG: Thank you bay and u too
My Bay: Missin you bae

The next day.....

My Bay: You can keep your attitude you get mad for stupid reasons i swear damn but you say i like to argue besides my baby still runnin a fever ask questions first

And it goes on and on and on. It was fascinating. In fact, when Hub got back into the car that night he was all, what are you looking at? And I'm like, THE MOST AMAZING SERIES OF TEXT MESSAGES EVER. I mean, I couldn't make this stuff up.

I can't say I was too incredibly sad to see Loaner Phone go yesterday, but I can say that I erased all my OWN texts before I sent it in.