Problem is that the baggage handlers are usually contracted out and not handled in-house. Don’t know about this specific situation…

But considering United’s headquarters is in Chicago, I imagine a contract may be cut short.

Which reminds me: I should probably cash out my Miles and avoid United. Heard good things about Virgin

I don’t work for a huge airline, but I have worked for a very large corporation in my past.

What happens in consumer focused large corporations is that customer service becomes less flexible when unique circumstances arise and the people responsible for serving the customer are given a set of rules that eliminate

Most large consumer oriented companies suffer from the removal of common sense as a result of “policies”. (Look at Government as the biggest consumer oriented company and you’ll understand)
A personal example: I purchased a $200 drill from a home improvement {depot} store that six weeks afterward was being sold for $150. Their unconditional return policy was 90 days, but their price match policy was 30 days. In the end, I returned a very beat up drill, received a $200 refund and purchased a new one for $150 because the General Manager’s performance was judged partly on how many price matches were done outside of the price match policy window.

The company still lost $50 due to a price match. They also received a drill set that they couldn’t sell as “new” (or even reasonably as “used” since I remodeled a bathroom over that six weeks). I would have accepted the $50, but since I kept the packaging and they were quite unreasonable, I got a new drill instead.

Today I work for a publicly traded company of about 5000 employees (formerly 15,000). We’re told to “hug the customer”.

Something like this baggage incident would have never happened, because the people at my place of employment know when the policies are to be scrapped. Someone within the reporting chain … well before 9 months … would have caught it and if action wasn’t taken they wouldn’t have hesitated to e-mail or call the CEO or COO.

The employees of United were likely unable to because of policies and directives, and managers who were judged (and cared more about) numbers on a piece of paper than “owning a problem”. Frankly, the airlines are among the **worst** at this.

By being so rigid, the BEST CASE SCENARIO for United is that they spend MORE money in nine months tying up their CSRs and associated supervisors and managers than the cost of the guitar.

For the worst case scenario, look at the viewed count on YouTube.