How NOT to use twitter for business…

I love social media. I love companies that embrace social media. I love companies that hire smart people to use social media.

I’m one of the few people that also loves to travel. I enjoy flying. I started a Travel & Tourism course at TAFE before heading off to do some actual travel and tourism.  I love to collect frequent flyer points, and I’ve taken about 5 trips using said points. I was stoked when I got online this weekend and saw that I could actually look at trips to Australia on QANTAS using my American Airlines points. In the past, you had to call someone. You could only redeem domestic flights with AAdvantage miles. So, while I’m having a bitch here, I’m not really mad. I’d just like to point out how NOT to use Twitter as a company.

I sent out this tweet, knowing American Airlines is very responsive on Twitter, and was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. Here’s the quick reply I got.

This would be a great answer, if I hadn’t been specific about Premium Economy. I had actually looked at many dates, because I was trying to see if there was any Business tickets available. There was only two I could see, and not anywhere near the dates I wanted. Also, there was none headed to Australia, only the return flight back to the US.

So I responded, and here where the fail comes in….

The first fail is obvious. It’s QANTAS, not Quantas. It irritates me when people can’t spell Qantas. The second is more subtle. I was asking about Premium Economy. To be fair, you can’t expect everyone to know what other airlines offer, so maybe this person doesn’t understand what Premium Economy is, since American doesn’t offer that particular class. Also, most Qantas flights I see from the US no longer have First Class anymore, so that’s a double class fail…

Basically though, while it’s great for companies to be super responsive, it’s not helpful if your twitter person can’t spell or know what products you offer.

Guess I’ll be using my points to sit at the back of the plane, unless a couple Business flights open up. Why save miles if you can’t use them to pamper yourself right? I’ve never flown Premium Economy on Qantas, (or Business International for that matter) so was really hoping to try it out. I figured I’m small enough a Premium Economy seat might feel like a Business class seat does to regular sized people.  Oh well, maybe another time. I’ll just have to cross my fingers along with the rest of the plane and hope for that elusive OpUp. 😉