This week: sloppy tweeters

One of the joys of Twitter is the ability to have a direct public grumble at any organisation causing you misery. Rants that might have gone unheard will instead pop up in the timeline of, say, @BTbroadband, @BritishGas or @NetworkRail.

The companies may not respond, but you will have the satisfaction of knowing that someone at the organisation has seen your moan and - if you are lucky - may even have made a note of it. You may also succeed in encouraging others to join you in airing their wrath.

But if you are going do it, get their Twitter address right.

A major computer glitch at NatWest caused hundreds of the bank’s furious customers to tweet angry messages, such as “I WANT MY MONEY @NATWEST”.

Unfortunately, @NatWest was the Twitter handle of a 22-year-old English and media teacher from Newcastle-upon-Tyne called Natalie Westerman, who has been nicknamed NatWest since childhood.

Miss Westerman politely directed her abusers to @NatWest_help. “I am a teacher and when I recently told the children about what had happened they found it very funny,” she tweeted.

We hope she gets a massive pay-off from NatWest to buy her account name. In the meantime, we will try to be similarly polite with those who think @TES is the Twitter account for computer game The Elder Scrolls.