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 them.
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.
There are so many examples of people being badly treated by United that as awful as this story is, it's probably also acting as a nucleation point for the general anger and disappointment they have created.
I understand the need/demand. So if the airlines stop offering it, I'm sure some kind of private travel companionship service would develop. They might be more expensive, but as their primary business, they may be able to provide a higher level of service/assurance.
The entrepreneurial lesson to be learned here is not to sell items you can't provide.
The entrepreneurial lesson to be learned here is not to sell items you can't provide.
[1]: http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2011/11/29/american_...
The problem is the customer service response. Asking a parent looking for her child to fill out a form when your company is supposed to know where she is is not acceptable. Blocking someone trying to get a customer service response on social media is not acceptable.
Yeah but we aren't back in the old days of "coffee tea or me". In the end the bad PR actually means very little. People choose airlines based on price and schedule. In the end does a screw up like this actually change buying behavior? I don't think it does. People fly because they have to. Even the cruise lines typically rebound after a major disaster which effects many more people. People who forget and are on to the next shiny ball from the media.
The case was seized upon by what appears to be a professionally outraged busybody trying to "monetize" shrill complaints against big companies, and they get banned. So what?
I am no fan of UA but this is a storm in a teacup. The mother should just chill out, and "PublikDemand" should learn that a kid not talking to her mother for a couple of hours does not constitute a national emergency.
edit: Just read the "complaint". http://www.publikdemand.com/blog/letter-to-united-ceo-jeff-s...
I feel sorry for the kid, yes - because of her irrationally overprotective mother. And the exaggerations amount to lies in my book - at no point was the child "stranded", nor made to stay with an actual stranger. One wonders, if "strangers" are so inherently evil, what the mother was doing sending her precious little angel onto an entire plane full of strangers. Stranding her on the plane, even!
Yeah, UA could have done better, but it's not like the kid is dead, for fuck's sake. Can we have some perspective please?
How is that a lot of trouble? Isn't that what they were paid to do? Isn't that the minimum obligation? Sure they could have put the kid in a suitcase and kicked it down the Mississippi, but that seems like a high bar for outrage.
If they don't intend on informing the parents they should let the parents know, "Over the next 2-24 hours you may or may not know where your child is and we have no obligation to let you know as long as they eventually get to their destination". But I'm sure that may not fly with a lot of parents.
That is actually pretty close to my expectation? Isn't it close to yours? Let's rewrite to remove the snark:
"We will transport your child safely from A to B, accompanied by our staff at all times. We expect it will be according to the itinerary provided but due to operational reasons, there may be changes, which we will attempt to notify you about"
And who knows, maybe they did try to call the mother? Everything in the airline industry comes down to checklists; I'd be surprised if there isn't one for this situation, and equally surprised if "try to contact the guardians" isn't on there somewhere.
IMHO, United shouldn't be discussing a customers business with PublikDemand anyway. Just like I can't call up American Express and ask them why they haven't raised your credit limit.
PublikDemand aside, United failed big time. First by changing the itinerary (I've never had this happen to me) and second by not contacting the parents. Yes, the girl is fine, but that's really not the point.
This happens pretty often if you are a frequent traveller. Things go wrong! It may be an inconvenience but it is certainly not a "fail".
> and second by not contacting the parents
Right. So that's what this is all about. Someone at United Airlines forgot to make a phone call, or couldn't get through, or maybe the number was illegible, or something. That's all this is about. Absolutely, totally undeserving of this reaction.
Out of curiosity, are you a parent? I'm not, but as an uncle that loves the shit out of his niece and nephew, I'd have a hard time telling their parents to chill out when their kid is not sticking to the plan, and UA's response (3 hours) seems minimize the importance (to the parents). To be fair, I'm not sure my sister or brother-in-law would allow a 10 year old to travel on their own, either.
Sorry, you asked for perspective :)
"The little girl ended up staying ten hours, overnight, at the Denver International Airport before being rerouted through Houston."
Did they in fact put the child in a hotel with a chaperon? That might sway my opinion a bit.
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.
This isn't an issue of malfesance or neglect. It's just what happens when a bureaucracy hits a situation it didn't forsee. You can only "fix" it with common sense, which was in no greater supply 30 years ago than it is now.
The idea of them ignoring/abandoning a kid would've been met with riots back then.
Yeah, they were checking on you every time they brought snacks and toys, and doing their best to keep you entertained so you didn't do bad things. And that is what they should be doing: watching out for you.
https://twitter.com/PublikDemand/status/309093527697104898
If that's the only one, that's very surprising. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would spur an instant block, even from an overprotective overzealous social media rep.
This would solve the problem of aggregating complaints. The first line of defense of a large entity is information asymmetry: they isolate the customer, make them feel like their problem is unique, or that it's no big deal, no-one else cares, etc. In this case, United (correctly) realized that PublikDemand's twitter account was successfully serving as a de facto complaint database, and acted to remove it.
Knowledge of other customer's complaints is a powerful weapon for any customer with a problem. It tells them that they are not alone, that the company has a problem, and opens the possibility of combining forces to take action against the company: the cost-burden of legal action against the company can be shared between plaintiffs, a kind of psuedo class action suit.
As it stands, only the most sensational horror stories are seen, and they are not reported in a way that is easily searchable or usable for the next customer that is abused and whose abuse is buried by information asymmetry.
In this specific case, the Department of Transportation does maintain a database of complaints about air carriers: see http://www.dot.gov/airconsumer/file-consumer-complaint#Airli... . The DoT publishes frequent reports about these data.
Anyone can file a DoT complaint about an air carrier. In my experience, United treats the number of DoT complaints they receive each month as a core key performance indicator and they take a very strong business message from every DoT complaint they receive.
The one time I've filed a DoT complaint about United, I got a personal phone call within days from a UA executive in Houston who understood the scenario exactly and gave me evidence that the situation had been resolved. They were clearly documenting this not only for me but also for the DoT to prove that they had resolved the complaint appropriately.
See, for example, this story: http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2004/12/4442-2/
>You may have also heard that in recent years complaints about TV have gone through the roof, from a mere 350 complaints in 2000 to a whopping 240,000 in 2003, and potentially even more this year ... The problem is that, unfortunately, these massive numbers all boil down to one politically motivated group with an axe to grind.
I'm sure there are ways to make it more difficult to file a complaint, but that just leads to bureaucracy. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the system would have to be executed very well or every airline will have a few million complaints that are impossible to search through.
I don't see why that same problem would apply to air travel but it certainly seems to be the case. I know airlines outside the US provide a much more civil experience but I don't know whether they face the same competitive pressures.
To the extent that companies are able to make a profit, it's because markets aren't perfectly competitive. People identify with brands, large capital investments are often required, regulations have to be overcome, it's illegal to create a product identical to one already being sold, etc.
But still, many markets come close enough to cause trouble. Insurance may be one. Airline travel certainly seems to be another one. There's an old joke that the way to make a small fortune in the airline business is to start out with a large fortune. In aggregate, the industry appears to take a loss, long-term, but they manage to keep going through bankruptcy, new entrants, and the occasional government bailout.
A lot of non-US airlines are national airlines which are somewhat governmental in nature. They tend to have regulatory advantages and may be outright subsidized by their government. Their motives may be less about making money and more about providing services, showing a good image of their country abroad, and whatever internal bureaucratic motivations they end up with.
Thanks, Berkeley Breathed (http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add_strip.php?iid=84029)
What if my child’s travel is affected by delays, cancellations or other problems?
It can be very stressful when flights do not operate as planned, especially for unaccompanied children. In the case of weather or other delays and cancellations, United will contact you or the person designated to meet your child at his or her final destination. You can also track the status of the flight on united.com. Advise your child to remain with a United representative at all times. Consider giving your child a calling card or teaching him or her how to make collect calls so he or she can reach you.
That said, flying from Great Falls to Nashville (which is already hairy due to the small regional airports on either end of the journey) on a day where there's a major winter storm forecast to slam the midwest. This including a foot of snow on Chicago, which ruins United's system for the day (is this not a well known fact)? If you don't want to entertain the possibility that your child might be stranded without you? Fly yourself to Great Falls, meet your child, and fly back together. Alternatively, driving to Atlanta or Memphis will up your odds considerably of a successful venture.
Instead of sending her on the next flight to Nashville, they have routed her across the country on three connections and is staying overnight in Houston with a complete stranger!
This doesn't excuse United's behavior, but Ms. Neff-Aguilar could have prepared better.
If, going into the trip, the possibility of her daughter being somewhere overnight was unconscionable, Ms. Neff-Aguilar could have originally planned to meet her daughter in Montana and travel home together. Or compensate a family member / friend in Montana to accompany her to Nashville.
Where is the line between civil and criminal when it comes to caring for children?
It's the difference between treating customers like cattle and like human beings. It's the difference between a company that assumes it is entitled to the business of its customers and one that believes it has to earn it. Sadly there are far too many of the first category.
This is a bit like a hosting company offering a 24/7 support hotline for a monthly fee but never staffing it, and only refunding it when people complain after failing to get through to the support hotline.
American, Southwest and Delta all seem to do a much better job of organizing things, from what I can see. The only thing United really has going for them is Economy Plus seating, and American is adding a similar feature. Honestly, I try to avoid United these days.
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.
It seems to be booming.
Bravo, social media team, Bravo.