Thameslink has been threatened with legal action by Poundland after comparing its poor service to the bargain shop’s chocolate.

After a customer complained about delays and cancellations as Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) implements a new timetable, the company tweeted: “Very sorry Kevin. Appreciate at the moment the service is less Ferrero Rocher and more Poundland cooking chocolate.”

Poundland’s retail director, Austin Cooke, took exception to this, writing in a statement to Thameslink CEO Charles Horton that GTR had “no right to use our name to describe poor service,” explaining Poundland had served 8 million shoppers last week and had a “pretty good idea about what great customer service is”.

He continued: “If you don’t want to hear from our extremely twitchy legal team, we suggest you remove your tweet.”

Thameslink then deleting the offending message and wrote: “Very sorry team for using your name here. I have removed the offending tweet.”