Angry Customer Hasan Syed Insults British Airways With Promoted Tweet After Losing Luggage

An angry British Airways (BA) customer has made headlines after he chose a very innovative way to make sure his complaints are heard.

Air passenger Hasan Syed was left disgruntled after his father's luggage was lost by BA while his parents travelled from Chicago to Paris at the weekend.

While most passengers resort to simply tweeting their bad experiences, Syed decided to take complaining to a whole new level. He bought a promoted tweet so his complaint would reach as large an audience as possible.

Promoted tweets are usually purchased by big corporations and agencies for marketing purposes. They can be purchased on Twitter's self-serve ad platform and such tweets appear on the top of users' feeds to ensure visibility.

Using Twitter handle @HVSVN, Syed went ahead and made his complaint, saying on Monday night: "Don't fly @BritishAirways. Their customer service is horrendous."

Syed paid $1,000 (€759, £640) to promote the tweet, and told news website Mashable that he aimed the message at the UK and New York markets.

Syed has tweeted details of how well the campaign works, revealing the promoted tweet received a total of 14,600 engagements and 76,000 impressions.

Before the ailine could respond, an apparently angry Syed posted a second message which read: "I refuse to stop running Twitter Ads until @British_Airways finds the lost luggage."

Around four hours after the original message, BA responded from its own twitter account, writing: "Sorry for the delay in responding, our twitter feed is open 0900-1700 GMT. Please DM your baggage ref and we'll look into this".

A spokesman for the airline told the BBC: "We would like to apologise to the customer for the inconvenience caused. We have been in contact with the customer and the bag is due to be delivered today."

Syed eventually posted a final, victorious tweet, saying: "I got what I wanted. I win."