Social media has value!

Yesterday evening I received a worrying email. It was from a company advising me that they were no longer selling via Wowcher and that I would get a refund. That said they had a small supply of the items that were available and cold be bought directly from their website.

It looked as if they were offering for me to buy it again and get my original £50 back from some unidentified source.

I got worried when the "reply" email I sent off was sent back as undeliverable and their phone number went straight to voicemail, but told me it could not take any more messages.

I checked the Wowcher site and found that I would need to wait until morning before I could call them. So I did.

I phoned this morning and after a frustrating "press 1 for this, press 2 for that, etc" I got through to a guy who while knowing nothing of the problem was helpful, took my details a promised to get Finance to call me right back.

A couple of hours later I had heard nothing so called again. I got a different operator who then advised me that calls were 48 hour turn around. When I asked to talk to someone "now" I was told they were just a call centre and all they could do was take my number or I could email direct. I persisted and was put onto a supervisor who just said the same thing. This all felt very unsatisfactory. I knew it was not the call centre's fault but it did not feel anything like customer service.

I went online and googled to find direct phone numbers. I found one that went back o the same call centre and good number of complaints on websites about Wowcher's poor service. My heart was sinking, but I decided to try one thing.......with little hope of success.

I ran out my Twitter account and guessed with a tweet "@wowcher #poorservice .........". I must say I was then pleasantly surprised to receiver tweet back in a few minutes. This came from Wowcher and promised to get someone to call me shortly.

Around 10 minutes later "Umar"(?) called me explained the situation and sent me a proper email, promising refund or offering a substitute.

I have to say that Wowcher redeemed themselves to me, even if I think their call centre was as much use as a chocolate teapot. I have also seen first hand how one can use these social media tools to get past communication blocks. I am glad to see Wowcher do watch twitter......and act.

Credit where credit is due.


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