Our target-driven corporate culture is failing customers | Simon Jenkins

Bound by rules to keep costs low, big companies can only deliver cheap, impersonal and poor services

It would take a heart of stone not to feel for United Airlines. The company had built a reputation for cost control. Its boss, Oscar Muñoz, . Fed up with bribing overbooked passengers who would not budge, even for $800, and needing seats for its own staff, it employed “an algorithm” to select passengers for compulsory “re-accommodation”. When one o...