Mark Blevis

In October I wrote about a terrible experience I had with United Airlines (see United Airlines nightmare).  The post was less about an emergency landing and more about a culture of company-first, lack of cooperation within the company and public fighting between the customer service department and the people working the gates for the airline.  My experience was that the employees took pleasure in speaking ill of other employees, departments and the company itself, and management happily dispensed the phrase “we’re sorry, there’s nothing we can do”.

I wrote a second time to say that United Airlines was withholding $1800 of my money, some of it from expenses incurred after they cancelled a flight I was on and refused to provide me with accommodations, transportation and meal vouchers.  A majority of that money relates to a second incident when UA lost my luggage and my family and I were forced to go shopping during a vacation to buy clothes, toiletries and a new suitcase.  UA has reimbursed me for my emergency landing fiasco.  I’m STILL waiting for the money from the luggage fiasco (now going on 8 months).  I was assured in March that the money was on its way.

While I’d very much like to recover my money, I’d at least appreciate it if United Airlines pretended to care how inconvenient and expensive the situation is and how unfairly they’ve treated me.  That is to say, I’d like to recover my losses though I’ll never recover the amount of time I’ve had to sit on hold and re-explain the situation only to be told there’s nothing they can do.

Like many people I took pleasure in seeing musician Dave Carroll‘s song United Breaks Guitars posted on YouTube.  After seven days it’s been watched over two-and-a-half million times.  Dave’s posted a follow up video in which he notes that United Airlines has agreed to compensate him for his damaged guitar (see STATEMENT).  That’s not the point of the video, though.  Like me, Dave was trying to give United’s management a head shake because they obviously have no idea how badly they treat their clients.

I’ve seen that United enjoys the video and told Dave they plan to use it internally for customer service training.  The question is, will it be used to create a culture of customer first?