Over the past few days I've found myself in the centre of some twitter controversy, which is what appears to be the unfortunate right of passage for most bloggers. I've been mulling over whether to write a post explaining what has gone on in detail or not, after all a 140 character limit on Twitter makes it a limited outlet for opinions. If you follow me on twitter then you may have already seen parts of what has been going on but to put it into context for those of you who have not, I have unfortunately been personally targeted by the person that runs the twitter page for Lifehouse Spa. I got into contact with them initially as I thought it would be a great idea to feature a review of the spa on my blog and for that reason enquired as to if they'd like to work with me on this. I then got a response stating that they would like for me to go ahead with the review however they asked that I pay a press rate for my stay to which they would add a complimentary treatment at the Spa for me to write about, which I completely understood. A couple of emails and agreements later I asked if a three night stay would be possible, as I would be paying for this I didn't see that it would be a problem but expected to be offered a two night stay as agreed in a previous email. I then received a reply stating that the two night stay was never offered and neither was the free spa treatment to which I responded by copying and pasting their offer from the previous emails. At this point I was starting to receive a cold vibe from the person handling PR for Lifehouse Spa and felt as if communication with myself was becoming a burden for them, not the greatest way to treat a potential customer. In the end I decided to decline their final offer of a two night stay at press rate as I didn't feel comfortable with the idea of reviewing the Spa without as little as a complimentary Spa treatment to review on my blog. I think it's important at this point to state that the press rate is 2/3 of the normal price so obviously I was left feeling deflated with their broken promises and sent a tweet to Lifehouse to explain this. An hour later I decided to delete the tweet as I had not received a response and thought I should leave the disagreement to myself and not involve the world of twitter.
A few hours on from the deleted tweet I received a threatening email from the woman in question about the tweet and decided not to respond as I had already dealt with the situation. I feel it's necessary to include the email in this post just to put my point across about the threatening tone that I believe borders on blackmail.
I then logged into Twitter to find a whole host of offensive tweets directed towards myself trying to ruin my reputation. As I said before, I never at any point asked for a three day complimentary stay at the Spa, which means that they decided to lie about myself to all of their followers. Not to mention their snipe at my age, I'm very unsure as to what relevance that has to my dissatisfaction with their way of handling things. As you can see from the tweets below it was obvious that they came from the same person as the email above from the threatening tone directed towards me.
Personally targeting a blogger for simply having an opinion via a company's Twitter page that you handle the social media for is an extremely unprofessional step to take as it is but then things turned from nasty to something that mirrors a hate campaign. The person in question then decided to take to the Twitter pages of the Hotel companies that she handles the social media for to try and tarnish my reputation further by retweeting the nasty comments on the Lifehouse Spa Twitter page on all of those company pages too. So in total that is a whopping 12 companies that she took upon herself to include in the hateful comment and put all of their reputation at risk by doing so. I can confirm that I have been in contact already with all of the companies and received replies stating that they had no idea what was going on and that they would remove the tweet.
I would like to receive an apology from Lifehouse Spa for attempting to put my name as a reputable blogger on the line for the sake of one woman's lack of professionalism, I don't take being lied about lightly. I'm very touched by all of the lovely tweets that I have been receiving offering support and would like to thank everyone for that.
UPDATE: Last night I received the following email threatening legal action if I do not remove my tweets and blog post. I think it's obvious from this post that I have never tried to 'attack' this individual personally which is why I have kept her identity anonymous. Since when did writing a tweet complaining about the bad service I have received a justification for these kind of threats.
UPDATE: Last night I received the following email threatening legal action if I do not remove my tweets and blog post. I think it's obvious from this post that I have never tried to 'attack' this individual personally which is why I have kept her identity anonymous. Since when did writing a tweet complaining about the bad service I have received a justification for these kind of threats.