Originally Posted by
milepig
Dear Ernest, you and the Hiney family are invited to...
Be sure and bring all the cute little Hineys. We'd love to see them come out.
Originally Posted by
celsius1939
We all know that airlines send out boiler plate. Some do it better than others. One thing we do know -- United is a joke.
Sure, everyone uses templates, but this incident has blown up because it fits so perfectly into the United meta-narrative, e.g. here's a company that regards its pesky customers as anonymous irritants to be fobbed off with insincere gobbledegook. This resonates because it seems to prove what people already suspect about UA.
If Greyhound or Dollar Rent-a-Car had done this it wouldn't be nearly as big a story. (BTW, I had a customer service email response from Dollar this week and it was clearly, thoroughly original, non-templated writing... and directly addressed my concern. To them, at least, I do not appear to be "Mr. Human.")