Customers as Hostages

Jason Lackey

Some industries seem to feel that they have the right to abuse their customers. In the US, airlines are one. While most have grown used to surly trolls bitterly tossing tiny bags of peanuts, once in a while even US domestic airlines rise above the threshold and venture into new and uncharted territory. In a previous post, we talked about United and their collective hatred of guitars: http://thecsr.blogspot.com/2009/07/customer-service-epic-fail-united.html, but Continental recently outdid them with a mini hostage crisis where pax (passengers) were kept on the plane overnight until 6:30 in the morning despite no food, little drink, crying babies and an increasingly rank smell. Bloomberg has more on this: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aGBrdHwGc3x4

You can keep pax or subs hostage for a short time, but later they tend to remember that they did not enjoy it very much. Hopefully this lesson will not be lost.