Am I being over-sensitive in finding the above retweet from @virgintrains appalling? The original tweet from ohbex was fine (if he/she was pleased with the service then they are very welcome to say so) but I personally think Virgin are wrong in using it for marketing purposes.
Many people have had their travel to/from work, friends and family disrupted this week, and the problems aren't yet over. Anyone who has been monitoring Twitter will have seen many posts highlighting Virgin Trains' monopoly of the fast line into Euston. While the London Midland fast services have been switched to the slow line where they have crawled behind the all-stops trains, the Virgin Pendolinos have continued to roar past, apparently untouched by the weather.
If this were the first time that @virgintrains had decided to forward a passenger compliment during a difficult period for travellers using other operators' services then it wouldn't be so bad, but they have 'previous' on this.
Unfortunately, even if Virgin Trains read this blog post they probably still wouldn't get the point, so we should probably just be grateful that @londonmidland has a much better idea of what is and is not appropriate ;-)
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Once saw them RT'ing someone's Tweet that wasn't even for Virgin trains. Said Tweeter pulled them up on being rudely RT'd, especially when Virgin don't run a London > Brighton service. Seems like they don't require IQ tests to run some Twitter profiles...
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree. It's admirable to have pride and passion for the organisation you work for but there's a line that shouldn't be crossed.
ReplyDeleteFortunately our own @londonmidland seems to understand that Twitter is first and foremost for providing operational customer information and getting feedback from passengers. Marketing is a secondary purpose.