Sadly, Twitter corporate accounts now all follow the same script "Gosh! That doesn't sound good! Let us put this right. Please DM us your customer number, surname, mother's maiden name, and blood type and we'll get right on to ignoring you."

Bah!

LinkedIn doesn't suffer from this. It's too full of THOUGHT LEADERS and CHANGE AGENTS who absolutely believe their own hype.

When I have a complaint about a company, and regular customer services just can't fix it, I cheat. I send a connection request to the CEO, or head of customer service, or anyone senior who looks like they might actually hold some sway.

After a month of my energy company sending me incorrect bills, and several hours on hold, I cracked and connected to someone senior there.

A few messages later, it was all sorted.

Similarly, when an employer's payroll company started messing me around, I went straight to the top. In this case, an executive had posted several times about their "award winning" team. So I left comments on their post asking if my poor experience with their company was typical of their service. Within a moment, I had a response.

And, eventually, they fixed my issues. No amount of speaking to regular customer services had helped to resolve the problems. Some grumpy comments on LinkedIn did.

To be clear - this is kinda a shitty thing to do. It's annoying to the recipients and will almost certainly piss off someone. It may damage your reputation as an AGILE PERFORMANCE EXECUTIVE if your network of talented individuals see you complaining. It's also part of the tragedy of the commons - if everyone does this, the usefulness decreases.

But... it works! And, perhaps, people at the top occasionally need to hear directly how badly their company is letting down customers.

The rot seems to start firmly at the top, with CEO Dick Stead.

A few months ago, a company arranged to send me some delicate electronics for urgent testing. They selected Yodel for a "guaranteed" next day delivery.

By noon on the day of delivery, this is what Yodel's tracking site was showing. I found it curious that it was marked as "Delivered", especially given that it takes more than 30 minutes to drive from Reading to my house. Oh, and that I don't live in a bloody service centre!

I spent the afternoon trying to talk to Yodel's customer services team - online, on Twitter, and on the phone. None of them were able to help, they wouldn't contact the depot, refused to phone the driver, and generally made it clear that they really would rather I just went away. At one point they said that I couldn't raise a complaint because I wasn't the sender. They had no idea where the parcel was or when I was likely to get it.

I won't bore you with the saga of every deception Yodel subjected me to. The next day I decided to cut through their bullshit and emailed the CEO - an hour later and I'd received an email back from Dick saying he had contacted the local office and they were looking into it.

Within 30 minutes and I'd received a call from a local manager saying that the parcel had been found and that it would be with me later that day. Result!

Then I received this from the CEO:

What kind of man thinks that firing someone for making a mistake is acceptable? Who then sends those details to a customer? Is it meant to make me feel big and powerful - that I got someone terminated? It doesn't. It makes me feel sick that a highly paid CEO would just casually sack someone and then brag about it to a member of the public.

Now - maybe I'm being needlessly touchy. Perhaps the driver was on his last of 15 warnings and had spent 6 weeks on an intensive training programme to help him get better - but given Yodel's reputation for staff abuse, I highly doubt it.

Or am I'm just mortified that my (entirely legitimate) complaint has lead to someone losing their job?

Either way - a disgruntled delivery driver knows I was responsible for his firing and also knows where I live. That's not a nice feeling.

Well, the solution's simple - from now on I don't accept deliveries from Yodel.

• If I buy something and I receive a Yodel tracking ID, I'm cancelling the order.
• If a Yodel driver turns up, I'll refuse to accept delivery.
• If a client wants to send me something, I'll gladly lower my fee if it means they don't use a company lead by such a git.

In short, I am firing them - and I suggest you do the same.

A little history

It turns out I've never had a good experience with Yodel.