Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

United’s “Customer Service”

So I was thumbing through United Airline's in-flight magazine, when I was struck dumb by an article Who's Afraid of Ethics? In this profile of ethicist Bruce Weinstein, United's Magazine - with a textual straight face - reports that:

“The automated answering service may be an efficient invention for businesses, but customers hate it,” he says. “There’s nothing we’d like to do more than talk with a human being. Think about some of the businesses that have really thrived recently. Whenever you call Land’s End it take two rings at most and a human being answers the phone. The kind of loyalty that engenders is ultimately enriching to the business.”

I don't know whether the editors of United's magazine are smartly subversive, stupidly blind to irony, or just so hypocritical that they don't care, but as anyone who has ever dealt with United's telephone customer service system knows, that system is not merely automated but rather was automated by denizens of the netherworld. Certainly, United should take a page out of its own book magazine.