FLYING THE UNFRIENDLY SKIES WITHOUT A PARACHUTE ?

 "It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages." —  Henry Ford

  We have all watched the videos of the United Airlines debacle, and wondered how many times we might have found ourselves in similar situations.  Everyone has experienced what a recent author described as the “ritualized abuse of customers’ in the name of profits.  Calling AT&T and talking to a Philippine who cannot speak understandable English, in spite of his good intentions; waiting for seven hours in a regional airport due to American Airlines“maintenance issues” and then arriving at your chosen destination and waiting for an hour on the tarmac, yet the airline doesn’t think they should courteously foot the bill for a $5.00 glass of cheap wine; or trying to deal with Paypal, Ebay, Uber, or Credit Card issues while waiting for hours or having no place online to register one’s complaint. They all have one thing in common – monopolies which are too big to fail and forgot who was providing the profits – their customers.  Their employees are not in the “service” business for their customers, they work for the shareholders and “the company.”  As the industrialist, Henry Ford, wisely noted, “It is not the employer who pays the wages.  Employers only handle the money.  It is the customer who pays the wages.”  If the customer was important to today’s corporations, customer service would be a prioritized entity.

Needless to say, “customer service” is only a problem in wealthy, capitalist countries.  There are much more serious issues such as the largest famine since World War II in the world, displaced populations immigrating across continents, genocide in Syria, and abject poverty across the globe, as well as unthinkable human rights violations staring us in the face every day. I almost feel embarrassed by devoting a blog to this subject.  However, in our country, the treatment of customers as cattle with no rights portends of citizens with no voices in public policy.  Not only do consumers sign away all of their rights when agreeing to financially interact with major corporations, but between voter district gerrymandering, social media propaganda, and the results of Citizens United, American voters have lost all of their rights. There is a direct correlation between the consumer and the citizen being completely marginalized in U.S. society.

What’s my whine? In a country which supposedly values life and liberty first and foremost, it is difficult to comprehend that any person could be so violently removed from an airplane after purchasing a ticket to depart at a specific time to a specific destination, arriving at the airport in time, boarding and sitting in one’s pre-assigned seat, and voluntarily refusing to accept reimbursement in exchange for taking an alternative flight. If I pre-pay to lease a seat on an airplane, shouldn’t there be some reciprocal obligations? This was not an emergency.  Over-booking and not anticipating crews’ needs is not the responsibility of the paying customer.  It is not whether or not United had the “right” to do what they did, it is whether or not it was “right” to violently eject a passenger in light of respecting a paying customer.  But the issue is so much bigger – consumers have no rights with major corporations and corporations assume no accountability to their customers.  The volumes of consumers are so large that individual customer complaints or violations are incidental to their operations.  Write a letter, email, or try to get a customer representative on the phone to complain ???  No one cares!!  And no one cares what anyone witnesses or what they think?  Only when the shareholders’ price dipped did the Chairman reverse course on his response about the United incident.

As to a solution?  Unfortunately, boycotting is not a possibility, because there are not enough alternative airline options on many specific routes. If you need to get to your mother’s funeral, United might be your only option.   The airlines have gotcha!  All of the major corporations have ‘gotcha’ with their hundreds of in-house lawyers writing the fine print behind the transactions you daily enter into, providing them the profits they rely upon.   Only Nordstrom, Lands End, and L.L.Bean have recognized that good customer service makes for more profit.  While we are in a time of mass de-regulation, the government’s lawyers need to be advocating for more protective regulations for consumers, beyond customers having to file a law suit for recourse.  While society is concerned with their rights to bear arms, their LBGT rights, their free speech rights, they seem to have forgotten about consumer and voting rights.  We are a country of consumers who vote for measures to protect our financial transactions and individual rights.   Our individual spending is the basis for the success of corporate America. Donate to consumer and voter watch groups who actively lobby for consumer and voting rights.  Support family owned companies as a counterpoint to monopolies.  And, don’t accept helplessness as the new norm for consumers and voters.  Demand more, you deserve it!