Why we (very occasionally) block accounts on our social media channels

We love that customers can always chat to us on social media, about anything from account questions to the world of future smart tech. We also love that our social media is a place where people can hold us to our word – and directly speak to our most senior team about any challenges or problems they’ve had.

We’re pretty unique in that our CEO Greg and several other members of our senior team hop on Twitter and help customers out every day – so if you’ve had a really rotten time, you’re able to speak directly to the leaders of the company to help resolve things.

We want to make sure that our social media can keep fulfilling these functions no matter what, so in some very rare instances, we might block an account on Twitter. The only times we’ll do this are…

1. If the account is spreading hate. We won’t tolerate discrimination, hate speech or bigotry of any kind in our mentions.
2. If the account is getting in the way of other people who need our help. Spamming us fills up our mentions and means others with urgent (sometimes emergency) issues might not get the help they need.
3. If the account is becoming a nuisance to other people. We know that when someone's frustrated they may just want to vent but if they repeatedly "shout" about the same issue it spams into the timelines of our followers – which just isn't cool. The only way we can stop that (whilst we sort the problem, if at all possible) is by blocking the account.

If you need our help, all you need to do is ask.

Our social media are important channels of communication for our customers – anything from highly complex account issues to urgent emergencies. If you’ve had an issue, we will absolutely help to resolve it speedily. Our DMs are open, and Greg’s DMs are open, and if you contact us for help there with the detail of what’s gone wrong, we’ll 100% be able to help sort things out.

But if people spam under our posts, they're not just virtually spamming at us – they're amplifying shouty notifications to all the humans who’ve liked or engaged with that post before them – and most of them are just other customers going about their days.

The issue is with us – not other customers – so to protect those people, and to keep our social media channels accessible to anyone that needs it, we might block spamming accounts temporarily.

At the same time of course, we’ll be working incredibly hard behind the scenes to resolve the issue speedily.