Earlier today, India’s legendary cricketer Sachin Tendulkar blasted British Airways’ customer service on Twitter saying, “Angry Disappointed and Frustrated – Family member’s waitlisted ticket not confirmed despite seats being available” and then following it up with another tweet, “And luggage being tagged by British Airways to wrong destination and don’t care attitude”. He hash-tagged the tweet “#NeveronBA”.
If the normally-composed Tendulkar’s angry rant on Twitter was not enough of a PR fiasco for British Airways – Tendulkar has 8.41 million followers on Twitter and, within hours, both his tweets were retweeted and liked thousands of times – the airline tweeted back what appeared to be a standard template response, “We’re sorry to hear this Sachin, could you please DM us your baggage ref, full name and address so we can look into this for you?” Then Twitter hell broke loose for British Airways.
The airline’s response quickly started trending on Twitter and hundreds of livid fans of the world’s most famous cricketer tore the airline’s reputation to shreds on social media. Taking a cue from the cricketer’s uncharacteristic scathing criticism of the airline – Tendulkar is renowned for never losing his cool on or off the cricket ground – angry Tendulkar fans trolled British Airways and dissed everything from the airline’s food, baggage handling and staff behavior.
Responding to Tendulkar’s tweet, one sarcastic fan called Ani tweeted, “Well done @British_Airways you have managed to piss off god”. Another Lily d’Penha tweeted, “Always advised Sachin to fly Lufthansa but he never listens…” Another tweeter Sehban put things in perspective, “Sachin 8.1M followers, British Airways 772K followers. Not cool at all”. Ravi Shankar Mishra said, “I don’t know about the rest of the world, but it definitely is Friday the 13th at British Airways”
A Twitter user Dennis Does Cricket tweeted, “British Airways just killed their brand in India with one extremely funny tweet.” Within hours it appeared that British Airways’ Twitter account had been flooded with a barrage of tweets and displayed a “rate limit exceeded” message.
13/11/15 Saritha Rai/Forbes
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If the normally-composed Tendulkar’s angry rant on Twitter was not enough of a PR fiasco for British Airways – Tendulkar has 8.41 million followers on Twitter and, within hours, both his tweets were retweeted and liked thousands of times – the airline tweeted back what appeared to be a standard template response, “We’re sorry to hear this Sachin, could you please DM us your baggage ref, full name and address so we can look into this for you?” Then Twitter hell broke loose for British Airways.
The airline’s response quickly started trending on Twitter and hundreds of livid fans of the world’s most famous cricketer tore the airline’s reputation to shreds on social media. Taking a cue from the cricketer’s uncharacteristic scathing criticism of the airline – Tendulkar is renowned for never losing his cool on or off the cricket ground – angry Tendulkar fans trolled British Airways and dissed everything from the airline’s food, baggage handling and staff behavior.
Responding to Tendulkar’s tweet, one sarcastic fan called Ani tweeted, “Well done @British_Airways you have managed to piss off god”. Another Lily d’Penha tweeted, “Always advised Sachin to fly Lufthansa but he never listens…” Another tweeter Sehban put things in perspective, “Sachin 8.1M followers, British Airways 772K followers. Not cool at all”. Ravi Shankar Mishra said, “I don’t know about the rest of the world, but it definitely is Friday the 13th at British Airways”
A Twitter user Dennis Does Cricket tweeted, “British Airways just killed their brand in India with one extremely funny tweet.” Within hours it appeared that British Airways’ Twitter account had been flooded with a barrage of tweets and displayed a “rate limit exceeded” message.
13/11/15 Saritha Rai/Forbes
