The Customer Service 'Nuclear' Option

I dislike using the term, or euphemism 'nuclear' outside of specific cases but here I believe it's appropriate. I believe so because this is the very last method I use when dealing with crappy customer service on something ordered, a service requested or even just a response to a critical question. I accept going to this point that I want the object or service bad enough to threaten the company with never using them again, and that no matter how much I want the product I can walk away.

This option is Twitter.

I restrain serious complaining on most slights as a matter of principle, but know I have used this method in five cases. Continental Airlines, Sears, Audi, DirecTV and one other I actually cannot remember at this point. To qualify them for my ranting on twitter, there was significant cost in dollars, time and customer service basically telling me to 'go f--- myself' and suck it up. In all of the cases I was at the point of losing a decent amount of money, or getting stuck in a bad spot, so i went to twitter and ranted. And ranted I did well.

I mention those cases because I got a response, and figure since each responded to me, I figured I should rank the response, effort and try to give some feedback, which I shall over the next few days. Some responses kinda sucked, some were great, but the root problem I have with all of the companies, is it took too much time. I wasted at least 3 hours on the phone, internet, etc for each one...with even 1 hr being too much time. But being that customer service is dead in my mind..each one did perform to a greater or lesser extent.

More to come on my use of twitter as a ranting tool for results, with rankings.