Wednesday, April 12, 2017

The United fiasco

It's everywhere so I might as well add my 2 cents.

United has had really bad customer service for a long time.  I wrote about that in my post here.  In this particular case, they crossed the line--getting law enforcement to throw someone off the plane instead of sufficiently incentivizing some of the passengers to voluntarily give up their seat.  And had the passenger not protested, but just deplaned silently as asked to, we would never have heard about this incident or how airlines routinely throw passengers off overbooked flights or how badly airlines in general, or United in particular, are treating their customers.

There was a time when airlines took pride in their hospitality but that time is long gone.  I'd be willing to wager, there are a bunch of senior level management folks sitting a meeting room at United's office talking about how to repair the airline's image at minimum cost, rather than actually talking about how to improve the customer experience.  The sad truth of the current economic environment is that most companies use marketing and PR to show they care when, in reality, they do not.

United got caught because they just happen to be at the absolute bottom with respect to customer service.  Most other airlines are only marginally better.

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