41–50 of 109 posts
I'm not necessarily saying that United did something wrong though. Planes can have mechanical issues and there are a bunch of reasons why the mother may not have been contacted in time. But not knowing where your child is should definitely get more attention than the typical "they told me to turn off my iPhone" kind of complaint.
Part of me feels bad for United here. They're bound to make some mistakes when flying millions of people around the planet every day. But thanks to social media, all it takes is one of those mistakes to turn into a viral blog post -- and now you've got a PR crisis. Not defending United or saying they didn't screw up. They did. But dang it, as an entrepreneur, that business seems really f'ing complex and I feel for th…
1) They didn't notify the parents when the child was first re-routed. While this is a serious mistake, and not something to dismiss when you're considering sending a child with United, I think it falls into that small error rate that might appear when you're serving millions of customers.
2) When the parent contacted customer service they weren't immediately helpful. This, to me, is the point when they start earning the "name and shame" treatment. If a parent calls with an issue related to an unaccompanied minor this should immediately be raised to the level of "take this very seriously" customer support.
3) They only refunded the chaperone costs of the ticket. After making a serious mistake, they didn't issue a mea culpa and do everything in their power to make up for their mistake. After what the child and parents went through, it should be a no-brainer to refund the entire ticket price. If they are making mistakes of this level so often that they can't afford to refund the tickets in situations like this the "small error rate" defense no longer applies.
4) They blocked the account of someone trying to resolve the issue. This looks extremely petty and makes it appear as an "us" vs. "them". In a PR war you never want to be up against a wronged child. Guaranteed outrage.
The combination of these factors make me think its totally appropriate to name and shame. Of course social media reactions should be a concern for every business, but if you don't monumentally and repeatedly make mistakes you have a lot less to worry about.
I guess my point is, don't paralyze yourself by fear of making mistakes. When (not if) you do make a mistake, own it and respond appropriately.
Part of me feels bad for United here. They're bound to make some mistakes when flying millions of people around the planet every day. But thanks to social media, all it takes is one of those mistakes to turn into a viral blog post -- and now you've got a PR crisis. Not defending United or saying they didn't screw up. They did. But dang it, as an entrepreneur, that business seems really f'ing complex and I feel for th…
I propose a solution to this and all related problems. It is a law that every legal entity in the United States must maintain a public, permanent record of any and all complaints against it. They may choose to publish individual responses, but this is not required. This would solve the problem of aggregating complaints. The first line of defense of a large entity is information asymmetry: they isolate the customer, m…
This is a difficult problem to solve, one that we have been working on for a while at PublikDemand. We have hoards of people with the same complaint against a company and are trying how to best unite them and allow them use the collective voice to demand change.
Airlines need to start charging enough for their child chaperone service to operate it with the level of care and communication required. $150 seems low for a high touch personal service with brand/life-threatening failure modes.
$150 isn't enough to make sure the kid gets to their connection or someone calls the parents when something goes wrong?
Part of me feels bad for United here. They're bound to make some mistakes when flying millions of people around the planet every day. But thanks to social media, all it takes is one of those mistakes to turn into a viral blog post -- and now you've got a PR crisis. Not defending United or saying they didn't screw up. They did. But dang it, as an entrepreneur, that business seems really f'ing complex and I feel for th…
The entrepreneurial lesson to be learned here is not to sell items you can't provide.
This clusterfuck would NEVER have happened back then (at least never happened to me..) -- kids travelling alone were treated like royalty.
I'd randomly get bumped up to First Class, be able to use the nice lounges in airports, and got put up in really nice hotels when flights were delayed too long. All this amidst a constant stream of little delights (candy, toys, snacks, compliments from the stewardesses for being well-behaved).
Ah, those were the days!
/end curmudgeonly old fart mode.
Why post it to a blog? I mailed Jeff Smisek directly l about a problem I had at SFO and he responded in two minutes. On a Saturday.
All this reminds me of when I used to fly internationally as an "Unaccompanied Minor" in the early 90s. This clusterfuck would NEVER have happened back then (at least never happened to me..) -- kids travelling alone were treated like royalty. I'd randomly get bumped up to First Class, be able to use the nice lounges in airports, and got put up in really nice hotels when flights were delayed too long. All this amidst…
The idea of them ignoring/abandoning a kid would've been met with riots back then.