How Airlines' Twitter Customer Service Ranks

I have written in the past that a good way to get airlines to respond to your complaints is to post them on Twitter. Some airlines are better than others, though, at addressing complaints on this social networking site. "Which ones?" you ask.

Well, the folks at Airfarewatchdog.com had the same question, so they picked six airlines and monitored their tweets to see how good their customer service on Twitter was. Here's what they found:

-- JetBlue and United Airlines got the highest ratings (A). "Not surprisingly, 'hip' JetBlue, which is known for being very brand and service-conscious, gets higher marks than some other airlines," says Airfarewatchdog.com President George Hobica. And, according to Airfarewatchdog.com's grade sheet, United's customer service is better on Twitter than elsewhere.

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-- Southwest Airlines and American Airlines got a B+ and B, respectively. Both respond well to customers' tweets but aren't a good source of information for deals and news.

-- Delta Air Lines and Virgin America got the lowest ratings (C). The comments about Delta indicate that its customer service on Twitter is the worst among the six airlines.

For more details, see Airfarewatchdog.com's grade sheet, which shows the sample tweets, service level and comments.

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