Delta tweets insults at Ann Coulter; Still want to fly Delta?

Columnist Ann Coulter is a tall woman, and apparently, she spent some time selecting the right sort of seat for a person who needs more legroom on frequent flights, perhaps to avoid deep-vein thrombosis, or perhaps to fly more comfortably. She spent the time and paid the extra money to get an aisle seat in an emergency row on a Delta flight, which would have done the job. For some reason, as the flight was boarding, the airline decided to move her seat to the window in the same row and seat a group of other passengers, perhaps because they had requested to be seated together. It might have been OK had the flight attendant pleaded for her cooperation; offered her a free something extra, maybe a drink; and apologized for the airline's poor planning or failed capacity to please all its customers. Instead, the attendant decided to go bureaucratic and stony, telling Coulter "I don't know" when asked why the seat Coulter paid extra for was being moved to a less desirable area. It was a perfect opportunity to coax a cooperative attitude, but instead, it lit the fuse on an angry, unsatisfied customer, which seems contrary to Delta's mission. All they had to do was say why, apologize, and ask for cooperation.

Instead of seriously apologizing for its failure to live up to their contract, which left Coulter on a miserable flight – and that is what this was – Delta decided, incredibly, to hurl a storm of sarcastic customer-service-type canned mechanical apologies, mock the $30 she paid, and then add some invective at her on Twitter. A few samples from the unhappy customer and the big airline's corporate office: Just when you think it's safe to fly them again, the worst airline in America is STILL: @Delta — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) July 15, 2017 @AnnCoulter We're sorry you did not receive the preferred seat you paid for and will refund your $30. (cont.) — Delta (@Delta) July 16, 2017 @AnnCoulter Additionally, your insults about our other customers and employees are unacceptable and unnecessary. — Delta (@Delta) July 16, 2017 ...as the Twitter peanut gallery cheered. Never mind that this is a fiery-tongued columnist whose political views the Delta desk jockeys on Twitter do not share. The reality is that they insulted a customer for complaining about their own transgression, ignored her complaints about legroom, mocked her complaint as a $30 matter, and failed to address that she was unable to get an answer from them at boarding. Coulter probably shouldn't have taken it out on the customers unless they were politically connected and pulling rank to get their seats, but as one tweeter noted, it's pretty normal behavior for a frustrated customer to tweet what Coulter did, given that Delta could claim that the incident never happened otherwise. What isn't normal behavior is the totally bizarre stream of insulting tweets hurled at a customer for being unhappy about Delta's inability to fulfill its contracts. Doesn't matter if the person was popular or not, doesn't matter what the politics of the customer was; the reality here is that Delta insulted its customer for no good reason other than to cover its keister on its own failures and reveled in playing to the rabid left-wing peanut gallery over there, many of whom were cheering. Still want to ride that airline? If it can go sideways like this on a public figure who writes number-one bestsellers and has a reasonable capacity of reaching a large audience in complaint, what do you think, in a similar situation, it would do to you?