United removes first-class passenger to make room for 'higher-priority' traveler

The other issue is to stop overbooking every single flight and allow some slack to handle these unexpected situations that inevitably come up.

User surly UX. Was going to book an impromptu multi-legged trip between San Francisco, Iowa and Arizona.

American Airlines quoted a price, but the only available seats cost (around) $33 - $58 extra for each flight -- total was $200 extra. Bait and switch? So, I switched to Delta.

But Delta's antique web design wouldn't allow a change. So, I attempted to talk to a Human. Voice menu was a bit schizoid: transitioning from voice to a touch-only menu. Love the response: "your selection was invalid" Who designs these things? A Lost in Space fan? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWwOJlOI1nU

Then I get to the part where it says: "You may choose to have us call you back ... or stay on hold ... wait time is over 3 hours". So, I cancelled.

So two days ago my 2-month old Dell UltraSharp monitor broke with flickering and some cosmetic damage. I reached out to Amazon rep because I bought from there. The repr and I spoke and did some testing. Eventually he said he would help me make an exception by sending me a replacement without any fees, a pre-paid return label, and do a two-day guarantee shipment, despite the return window has already passed (it was April 6th, last week).

I got my new monitor today, and I am happy.

The repr said because of my purchase history. I am a good customer to them, someone who have bought probably couple thousand dollars worth of goods from Amazon over the years.

AWS itself also offered to eliminate all of the charges on my account after a huge spike on billing (which is believed to be the results of network attacks) under no questions.

This is how you build a $300B company. You take constant short-term losses over long-term gains.

United Airline has a long fucking way to learn how to treat its customers. If customer B's flight had a mechanical failure, should do this:

UA: "Sorry, we have a mechanical problem, do you wish to take the next flight? We will offer you a voucher."

B: "No. I need to get there on time."

UA: "Do you wish to take an economy seat? Our first-class is full."

B: "No. I am a priority seating customer." (UA: "I understand. We will ask if anyone on the current flight is willing to give up."

UA: "HEY PEOPLE ANYONE WANT TO GIVE UP THEIR SEAT FOR X AMOUNT OF MONEY AND INCENTIVES?"

UA: "Okay no one. Increasing. We still have a few minutes left to auction a seat for an economy seat swap."

UA: "Sorry Sir / Madam. No one is willing and the flight is destined to leave now, so we can't hold up the 365 passengers onboard. We are sorry for your inconvenience, we will see if other airlines have seats available and we can help arrange a flight for you based on your continued support of United Airlines."

Now either B take it or leave it. Done. One airplane's delay is a delay for other 100 flights waiting to leave the airport on time.

Win 100 customers over 1 customer.

This is grade-school manner, fucking grade-school manner. Change your policy now if you are so serious about good customer service and fear of law suits.

Actually now I come to think of it, airlines should build an auction/seat auction app.

Which means increased costs, especially since every other airline is also overbooking flights. Free-market is an asshole in this case: gotta overbook to compete.

Clear regulation stating that a passenger may not be forced to leave for any but safety reasons once they're seated, rather than leaving it up to a contract, and providing sufficient funding to whichever organization enforces that regulation?

One of the more promising candidates for the cause of such great expense for various services and projects in the US versus other (generally more-regulation-heavy and more-worker-friendly) OECD states, as recently discussed on here (following a Slate Star Codex post on the topic) is the risk/expense of relying so heavily on contracts and lawsuits to sort out this kind of stuff on a case-by-case basis rather than simply stating that things will be a certain way through regulation, removing (or at least greatly reducing) the uncertainty.