yup, message @richardbranson whatever you want to say, in 140 characters...if you use something like Digsby, it can shrink the text down a bit for you.

I remember calling Virgin Wines one time to find out something and spoke to someone in the UK (in Norwich if I recall correctly), perhaps as they have grown they have shifted where they provide their customer service, and maybe that's had a negative impact, but even in the last 2 months when I have contacted them I have had nothing but excellent service and fast resolution so I'm surprised, but will keep an eye on things.

Their service was absolutely top notch until I encountered a problem. I can't believe the speed at which they've washed their hands of me. We've gone from e-mails being responded to within 90 minutes (albeit with shifting stories) to ignoring e-mails for well over a week. They seem to be all sweetness and light when seas are smooth but disappear without a trace as soon as a wave appears.

Update: Some five hours after I tweeted Sir Richard, I received a very warm and apologetic call from a very nice customer service manager at Virgin Wines.

9.15pm on a Friday evening was a bit late for a call (had only just got the baby off to sleep), but I appreciated the gesture. She asked for a little more time to look into things and said she would get back to me on Monday.

Perhaps Virgin do listen after all, but it's a shame the amount of noise you have to make first...

tonrob, honey, it's time for you to sit down with a nice glass of wine.
You really put your work into this today (bless).

They really owe you a case of wine for all the PR you did for them today (I am not kidding).
x

I was more thinking about a pair of Upper Class returns to the destination of my choice - but hey, we can dream!

I actually did share a bottle of a rather nice Pinot Grigio with Mrs tonrob over dinner - one of the ones Virgin had supplied. It would have tasted even nicer if I'd have known that there was the possibility of a few miles to chase it down with.

good going

and sometimes, twitter can be helpful...depending on how the users participate with it.

I'll say to those disgruntled consumers consider waging social media war with the big boys - the lesson I learned over the last 24 hours is take screenshots of company FB pages once you've posted. There has been some strange editing going on the different Virgin pages' walls - posts disappearing and then reappearing when I called them out for doing this, and then later further deletion and replacing with their own posts to make it look like they had been proactive and helpful when nothing could have been further from the truth.

It's all depressing corporate spin, and what happens when social media is used to market instead of to actually engage in dialogue with your customers - which is a shame, as it's the latter that builds loyalty.

Reminds me of a story I read about how companies/"celebs" try to bury bad press by engaging agencies with hordes of people to create fake FB/Twitter/etc accounts to flood the media with positive news stories instead. Thus, Googling news stories about an individual/corporation will eventually result in the "good" news first, with the bad news pushed down the page.

Didn't work for Ryan Giggs though.

One celebrity I know is very proactive on removing anything negative from his Facebook pages. the forums on his own site however are full of negative (and positive) comments though.

And the story had a happy ending when a $170 case of free wine arrived on my doorstep today!

I called it first... send me a bottle of Spanish red please.
Good job, sproutman.

Excellent... but did you ever get those damned miles?!?

Yes I did - finally - and they even tried to offer me an additional 200 for my trouble. I was (almost) speechless - had to ask them if they knew what 200 Virgin Atlantic miles were worth. That's when the wine made a hasty appearance.