Nika Dixon

I came across this post by Amber MacArthur of the Toronto Star and just had to share. It’s a great article and covers a lot of what the internet and social media are all about these days — especially where corporations are concerned!

Here’s a recap:

Many Canadians followed the saga of Tanner Bawn’s broken wheelchair yesterday in no small part because the proverbial bad guy in the picture was our oft-derided national airline, Air Canada.

The 10-year-old boy, who is fighting a terminal illness, travelled to New York City Wednesday to live out one of his final wishes, but his motorized wheelchair was damaged during transit. While Air Canada was, in fact, in the process of fixing the damage, it still took them 24 hours to communicate that to the public.

That was about 23 hours too late. The Wednesday night after Tanner and his aunt, Catherine Connors, tweeted the following message, directed at Air Canada:

So. @aircanada killed Tanner’s wheelchair. We’re now stuck at La Guardia. #tutusfortanner

What followed Wednesday night and all day Thursday, were thousands of Twitter comments from Connors’ community, many of whom were horrified that hours were passing by without any assurance from Canada’s biggest airline that the boy’s broken wheelchair would be fixed or replaced.

Amber then goes on to give Air Canada (and other businesses) a good look at how to deal with Social Networking. It’s a great read so please check out the full article!

- Nika