Over this past week, I’ve had the misfortune dealing with cable (Comcast) being down and just today, my email being out (an issue with Network Solutions).   Both times, I vented with 140 characters (or less) on Twitter.  Of course, I had to use my Treo to whine about Comcast.  But what happened in both cases really surprises me.   Apparently these big corporations have their own “David G’s” out there with their own Twitter profiles and alerts set up to address issues brought up on the internet.

Here’s my Tweet:

pulling out my hair…network solutions email seems to be down…argh! No emails for me.

And the response I received minutes later.

netsolcares @mortgageporter Hi this is Gerry from Network Solutions. I’m sorry your having issues. If you’d like to contact me I’ll see what we can do

I just got off the phone (after holding for over 11 minutes) with Gerry @ Network Solutions and they narrowed down what my issue was (too technical for me to explain) and the good news is, everything is back up and working.   And it’s the weekend.  I’m amazed.

The Comcast response and issue was very similar.   A “tweet” from me saying Comcast is out…no email or internet and this reply from “Comcast Scott” within moments

comcastscott @mortgageporter how often has this been happening? Can we help

Along with this one

comcastcares@mortgageporter Keep us updated

and

comcastscott @mortgageporter glad to help! Keep those tweets coming

By the way, if you have Twitter and you find your Comcast or Network Solutions services not working, you can always tweet these fella’s…they react quickly.  I am impressed and would have never pictured large corporations utilizing social networking this way.

So for all of you who are not utilizing Twitter because you think it’s a fad, I encourage you to check it out.  It is what ever you make it.  I’ve found it to be real useful for communicating what I doing during the day, like providing live rate quotes, in a consultation, writing a blog post, etc.  And I’ll post something “non-business” every once in a while like what I’m cooking up for dinner.

If you do sign up (it’s free and easy to do) please “follow me” or at very least, send me a tweet!