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Comment by mvpu | Hacker News Reader

In the social era airlines (or any company for that matter) shouldn't be worried about breaching or keeping their contracts on paper... they should be worried about 1-click brand damage from a frustrated customer screaming on Twitter or Facebook. Social media is unforgiving, customer experience is everything.

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You say social media is unforgiving, but is it really? In the short term, sure, but you think this will have a lasting impact on United? Social media is fickle, if nothing else. It will move on to something else soon enough, and completely forget about this incident.

They've said they aren't going to call police just to remove passengers anymore. I bet they stick with that for quite some time.

Yeah. Maybe people will forget about the incident soon if nothing happens, but they're now primed to think United is even scummier if it ever does something similar in the foreseeable future.

Social media is more than fickle.. it amplifies the breadth (spreads to lots of people fast) and depth (make it look worse) of incidents. Millions of people have now seen that brutal United video, and remembered that it's all United's fault. Tomorrow when there's another United incident, albeit minor, regular and social media will amplify it - one more hit for the consumer. Each incident in isolation will be forgotten, but the bad taste remains. Look at what's happening with Uber, Bill Oreilly, etc.

[1] Pepsi: That was the biggest PR blunder of the week, year maybe.

United: Hold my beer.

Sean Spicer: LEEEEEEEEEERROOOOOOOY JEEEENNNNNNKINS!

Fickle indeed. Hopefully United learns from this incident, tho I think it's unlikely

There's also an episode of It's Always sunny in Philadelphia (S12E04) where they talk about the 24 hour news cycle - which pretty much sums up social media unforgiving nature

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/lance_bradley/status/851864862426...

Here's one example: me. I fly pretty much weekly for work, paid by the company I work for. The online reservation system my company uses allows me to select from various airlines and times. Guess which airline I am not picking? I was flying United, so they lost weekly airfare from at least me.

Remember when United almost killed people's dogs? Remember when they broke a guitar and the guy wrote two popular songs about it? Neither do I, this too will pass.

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