Opinion

Subway Customer Pays For Complaint To Go Viral

Screen Shot 2014-03-05 at 11.42.54 AMIn another example that companies need to take all customer complaints seriously, a Subway customer fed up with a lack of response about a sandwich he bought that he claims included a dead cockroach paid to have his complaint go viral. The customer, Patrick Balfour, tried the normal complaint routes by calling and contacting Subway via Twitter but since he didn’t have a photo his complaint was ignored. So instead of moving on quietly, he responded to Subway’s promoted tweet asking about why he was being ignored. With still no satisfactory response, he decided to spend $90 for this promoted tweet: It was retweeted more than 100 times and favorited many times as well. In a follow up tweet, he said: “ All I wanted was to speak to someone and they made it almost impossible. Customer service was always the issue, not the roach.” And, Balfour reported four days after the promoted Tweet that he finally got a call from a Subway representative.