A rather kind Duncan Bannatyne enlisted his 54,000 Twitter followers to look for a lost travelcard recently after a young woman made the appeal, knowing that a similar plea had also just worked for him.
Alex Schillemore had lost her £4,000 season ticket and remembered that the Dragon’s Den star had used Twitter for an appeal in a similar situation when his wife had lost a dress on a train – he actually managed to get it back after the appeal spread the word.
‘I thought he would be sympathetic to my cause so I sent him a message. He “re-tweeted” for me.’
The train company staff apparently would not give her a replacement because she had already lost two tickets in a year (to be fair to her – once when her handbag was stolen and again when she moved house), so she tweeted Bannatyne saying ‘Please RT… I lost my 4k ticket on the 16.30 from Waterloo to Portsmouth Harbour…’ and within a few minutes, he had posted her message on his own page so it could be read by the 54,000 that receive his updates.
Bannatyne’s spokesman said he was ‘trying to use the strength of his following on Twitter. It worked for him, so he probably thought it might work for her’.
Very nice of him. What’d be even nicer would be him buying her another travelcard (!) but here’s hoping it turns up…
Gemma Carey, www.bluewoodtraining.com, March 2010
