United Airlines: Unbelievably Stupid
by Miki SaxonIt’s amazing to me how just plain stupid some companies are and, worse, maintain that stupidity for years.
United Airlines is a good example.
In 2009 it damaged the Dave Carroll’s guitar. Carroll spent 9 months trying to get United to fix it, which they refused to do.
So Carroll, whose band is Sons of Maxwell, posted “United Breaks Guitars,” a musical video on YouTube.
The video went viral and UAL’s stock dropped 5%.
Six years later the video has garnered 15 million views, 83 thousand Likes, 21 thousand comments and is still being passed around.
You would think they would learn something from that experience.
Last month, United personnel once again stuck their foot in it when they first refused to provide hot food to an autistic teen, although they finally relented.
The girl was fine, but the idiot pilot called for an emergency landing, called the paramedics and the cops.
When the officers started to leave, the captain stepped out of the cockpit and said something to them, Beegle said. They then asked her family to leave, she said.
“He said, ‘The captain has asked us to ask you to step off the plane.'” Beegle said. “I said, ‘She didn’t do anything’ … But the captain said he’s not comfortable flying on to Portland with [Juliette] on the plane.”
All of this with the full support of management.
United said its “crew made the best decision for the safety and comfort of all of our customers and elected to divert to Salt Lake City after the situation became disruptive.”
Passengers who witnessed the whole thing and posted videos said it was total bunk.
Of course, what UAL did to this child was far worse than breaking a guitar, but it goes to show their motto is still “the customer is always wrong, no matter what.”
