This is not the way it should be, but it is the way it is. So far this year I have had three issues with companies where things weren't done or went wrong and each time the solution has been the same. Bollocks to their own support systems.

Use them, sure. If you can find a customer support email on the site – and well done if do, they are always hidden – then send them a message and start a clock. Each of the three I had problems with claimed some quick turnaround; I think two of them promised 24-hours and in one case I was specifically paying to get that speed.

Doesn't matter. Doesn't work. If they say 24 hours, leave them for a day and get on with anything else you can do. Then on hour 25, hit social media. Obviously you're always going to be polite but actually, there is such a thing as weaponised politeness. If you're a nutter in twitter, nobody notices and nobody cares. But if you're calm, rational and stating how a firm has failed, that gets you support immediately.

Seriously, immediately.

I was doing this across twitter, Facebook and Google Plus for one recent issue and before I'd finished, I had direct messages from support teams. Two of them.

One of the cases is still ongoing and as much as I understand that problems happen, this one enrages me because it is entirely the firm's mistake and they've accepted that. But I'm still having to pursue it.

Still, I have got human contact there now because I went public. And the other two issues from another two firms are resolved.

So while your instinct and assumption and normal reaction is to contact a firm's support, don't see it as a reasonable thing to do and definitely don't assume it will work. Instead, the email to the firm's support is step one and you are going to be taking step two in public.

It's tedious and it's aggravating and it is a waste of time, but as long as you know it's the way things have to go, you can schedule it and hopefully get on with something else. You've had the support email where they say they're escalating your problem: that's all you're doing to. They get their shot at fixing it privately, then you escalate it through social media.

I don't like this, I loathe complaining about things that I know are just happenstance but since they're happenstancing to me and they have to get sorted, I now have to be the one to get them sorted. And the way to do that is as quickly and thoroughly and widely as possible.

I wanted to say this to you because the third of these businesses is making me eat my desk in madness but I know I'm not alone. Take a look at this blog from writer and artist Gigi Peterkin who looks at it from an American angle.