The Power of Online Social Media (Namely, Twitter)

If you know me at all, you know I Tweet (as in use Twitter like it's part of my religion.) But somehow it didn't dawn on me that Twitter could be the answer to all our problems or at least some of them.

The story goes like this.

Over a year ago, Heather Armstrong (yes, the Dooce) raised a hub-bub when she tweeted about the problems she was having with her very expensive Maytag washing machine (the link is to her blog post about the whole episode.) She received a very quick response and got it fixed. The thing was (or what I remember getting out of the situation), people were up in arms that she was able to use her webbernet famedom to "bully" a brand into getting what she wanted. In the past week, I've learned that you don't have to be an internet icon to have Twitter work for you.

For about a month and a half, Pat and I have been getting almost daily automated calls from Compass Bank. The recording references a person who does not live at our number nor is a person we know. It reports that their account is in arrears and they need to visit their local branch to fix the problem. For over a month we put up with this. We've tried yelling at the recording as well as (more logically) calling our local Compass Bank to get it to stop. Of course, the bank employee who answered really couldn't fix the problem. But, we tried anyway.

Last week, after ANOTHER one of these calls, Pat suggested "Why don't you tweet it?" So I typed in:

"I REALLY wish Compass Bank automated call would STOP calling us daily. We don't know they person they're calling & they're NOT at our # !! "

Within MINUTES of that tweet, I got a response from @bbvaCompass asking me to follow them back and then DM (direct message) them the information. We DMed back and forth a few times, and by the next afternoon I was informed that our phone number had been removed from their database. Since that date, we have not received another one of those automated calls from Compass!!

The power of Twitter did it.
I've been on Twitter since the end of 2007 and do sometimes get frustrated and annoyed when I get an auto-follow from a wine lover's group because I mention I'm drinking wine or an auto-follow from Realtors of America because I tweeted that our house if for sale. (Please note, I'm making these groups up. . .no offense to anyone in particular if these are real groups on Twitter.) However, when something like this happens, when we're able to solve a problem by simply tweeting it, it really makes me see the power of online social media. Granted, the reasons I tweet are the social aspect, being nosy by glimpsing what others are doing/thinking, and promoting my jewelry. But, come to find out, it solves problems too. AND, you don't have to be Dooce for it to work!!

**As a side note, I want to say that I am not affiliated with Compass Bank, was not paid or asked to write about this, and do not even have an account there. Yet, they did make our days a little less annoying!! And also, @bbvaCompass agreed that I could blog the positive experience I had with them.**