Originally Posted by germansoks
I don't think any other airline has better policies about broken luggage unless as you mentioned they tear it apart. So I am not sure you would really gain anything but switching. On the other hand one would expect UA to treat their top tier customers a bit better seeing that a broken suitcase is pennies compared to money you spend on their full fare tickets. Oh well,.....
Sad to say, I've had similar things happen on AA and US, and they have the exact same policy. Anything that sticks out is fair game.
The AA incident actually made the bag unusable, but because it was not ripped open, they wouldn't do anything.