There is something very British about complaining, and something even more British about complaining about transport. But gone are the days when you had to write a series of increasingly irate letters to a customer complaints department, or hang on a phone line for 20 minutes to remonstrate about your late-running train or lack of leg room on a flight. Increasing numbers of people are turning to the internet to air their grievances – and getting some pretty speedy results.

Friends Stephen Brown and Ben O’Neill tweeted: “It’s been 41 days since @VirginAtlantic promised to respond to my complaint. Here’s my reference number. Sort it out Branson.”

It’s not exactly the most charming way to ask a high-profile billionaire to deal with your dispute. But, like the growing number of travellers taking to Twitter to grumble publicly about nightmarish plane and train journeys, the pair had good reason to be fed up.

“We’d spent £180 on our mobiles, phoning a Virgin Atlantic call centre from the Caribbean to sort out a ticketing error, so we’d emailed customer service to request compensation,” says Brown, a 24-year-old student.

“We were promised a reply within two weeks. But 41 days later, they still hadn’t responded. So we decided on Twitter – the way we saw it, we had nothing to lose.”

The tweet got an immediate response from Virgin Atlantic and, a day later, a customer service agent called to offer them £400. “It was amazing. We weren’t even sure we’d get all the money to cover the bill. We were very surprised.”

Brown isn’t the only passenger to fight back in this way. The Ombudsman Services, which provides independent dispute resolution for complaints across a number of different sectors, says 27% of us have used social media sites in the past year to get our complaints addressed.

This has not gone unnoticed. Major train operators now man their Twitter feeds 24 hours a day and, instead of the usual two to four weeks their customer service teams take to respond to complaints by post, 70% of “social media teams” will respond to negative tweets that very day, with one in five within the hour, according to training firm SMMU.

“If you want to get hold of someone high up in customer service, tweet the company – especially a train company,” says Will Roberts, a 20-year-old marketing manager who recently received £300 from East Midlands Trains after revealing that a rude conductor forced him to take an alternative route home. “I’d emailed customer services repeatedly; they took weeks to get back. When I tweeted, they called the next day.”

Twitter is now an “essential part” of Southeastern’s customer service strategy, says spokeswoman Michelle Ulyatt, and can be used to resolve complaints immediately. “For example, if passengers tweet us about antisocial or threatening behaviour, we can feed that back to the conductor on the train.”

When it comes to trains, the biggest cause of complaints is about delays. Although there are statutory minimum levels of compensation, each company sets its own levels to match, or better, them. The vast majority will refund 50% of the cost of a single and 25% of a return ticket if you are delayed for 30 to 59 minutes, regardless of the cause. Most will also refund 100% of a single, or 50% of a return, if the delay is over an hour.

To check the level of compensation, go to passengerfocus.org.uk/help/your-rights-to-compensation. Be warned, though, it will be paid in travel vouchers, which can be exchanged for tickets on National Rail services – but you can’t use them to book a journey online.

To make it easier to get compensation, many companies operate the Delay Repay scheme, which allows you to claim through the train operator’s website if you are delayed by at least 30 minutes.

Compensation is also often given if you receive a poor service or suffer significant discomfort due to a disruption to the normal schedule, or if the train becomes unsafe or unhygienic due to overcrowding, anti-social behaviour, litter or a lack of toilet facilities.

What’s more, although most train companies explicitly refuse to guarantee you a standard class seat unless you have reserved one, in practice some will agree to a refund. Virgin Trains, for example, says “there are frequently mitigating circumstances” when it is prepared to compensate passengers without reservations who have had to stand for long journeys.

Similarly, Southeastern says it will factor in “how strongly someone feels” about their complaint when deciding whether to offer compensation.

Train operators may also look sympathetically on requests for refunds from passengers who give up their reserved seats to those less able to stand, or those who book, say, a seat by a window or in the “quiet coach” and then fail to get one.

“Complain if you are unhappy with any aspect of your journey,” advises David Sidebottom, spokesman for independent rail watchdog Passenger Focus. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

When it comes to planes, the rules have changed recently. Under the EU’s Denied Boarding Regulations, “if your flight gets cancelled and you’re travelling with an EU-based airline to, or from, an EU country the airline must offer to rebook or refund your ticket,” says Ron DeKovan of myBarrister.co.uk.

Flights with non-European airlines, departing from EU airports, are also eligible. You can also get compensation of between €250 (£200) and €600 (£480) if the arrival time of an eligible EU flight is delayed by over three hours, depending on the distance you are travelling.

If an eligible EU flight is delayed by more than five hours, and you no longer want to fly, you are entitled to a full refund. You can also claim for necessary hotel accommodation, meals and two phone calls. However, if the delay was caused by “extraordinary circumstances”, such as bad weather, security risks or industrial action, you may not be entitled to any compensation.

If your flight is cancelled, you can claim between €125 (£100) and €600, depending on the arrival time of a rescheduled flight you’re put on.

Unfortunately, some airlines are refusing to pay out under these new rules while awaiting the outcome of a Supreme Court challenge. But MoneySavingExpert.com, which offers free template letters, recommends submitting a compensation claim regardless.

If you’re unhappy with your airline’s response, refer it to the Civil Aviation Authority’s free mediation service.

HOW TO GET A RESOLUTION

If you are going down the correspondence route, which is recommended to start with, always try to write your letter within 60 minutes of your bad experience occurring. “That way you’re more likely to remember all the details,” advises Ingrid Stone, whose book, Letters of a Dissatisfied Woman, details how she has received around £6,000 from 200 letters of complaint. “Be polite, respectful and factual. You’ll be treated more seriously.”

She also recommends taking photographs of the problem - if possible - to help others relate to it, and South Eastern trains spokeswoman Michelle Ulyatt agrees: “It helps us to see the severity of the issue.”

If you don’t fancy the idea of complaining alone, or are not sure how to word your complaint, the website Resolver.co.uk might be worth looking at. It is a free assisted complaints resolution service for consumers that helps you prepare letters or emails using appropriate wording and record your phone calls with the company you are complaining to via its smartphone app. It creates a case file for you that records all your contact with the company and sends you reminders about what you need to do and when.

Diane Stepney got £240 compensation from Thomas Cook using Resolver. “When I emailed customer services directly they failed to even acknowledge my complaint. Five days after I submitted the same letter via Resolver, they called and refunded me my money,” she says.