Doesn't this sound like many large internet companies? Paypal? Ebay? Google? Facebook? Yahoo? All of them seem to ignore their customers. At least that's my experience. They only seem to solve issues when either you have connections to someone on the inside or manage to get your story carried/notice on some major news website (HN included).
No, the two experiences are nothing alike. Those companies make it impossible to contact a human being in the first place.
This article very specifically touches upon how the United employees were asked directly by a scared child for help, and yet did nothing. There are a lot of other associated failures, but this is the central idea: that the individuals working for the company felt not even a little responsibility to help their customers.
Google, the company, ignores you as a matter of policy. That might be a dubious practice, but it is categorically different.
I'm being as polite as I can say this, but how is it that when you read this article you think it is yet another, "company ignore customer story?" I think most people read this and are appalled by the fact that United is so far over on the wrong side of the line that they can't even be bothered to worry about a human being anymore. They are so far gone that no one in the system cared that a kid is alone by him/herself. Imagine the shitstorm that would have happened had something happened to the kid.
But to answer your question, no. Paypal, eBay, Google, Facebook, Yahoo. None of these companies are in the business of transporting humans (at least not yet, and I guess yes only if you count those self-driving cars Google has).
They aren't in the business of transporting human beings, but they are in the business of transporting and storing things that are really, really important to human beings. Their financial information. Their family photos, records of who they talked to and what they said, etc. Real human beings got hurt when Yahoo handed over information about who they were talking to to the Chinese government. If you spend 99 cents on an MP3 from Amazon and something goes wrong you'll almost certainly get a really good customer service experience. There's no reason that a company you're trusting with all of your communications can't have the same level of service.
