That's it, slap down the customer who hands you an honest response about the implications and perceptions surrounding a company's failure to maintain basic services. Label the customer a wacko, so you don't have to deal with fixing the problem or the negative perception of a problem. I pointed out the negative perceptions associate with how Southwest handled the problem, the types of things that affect the bottom line. The responses are prime examples of what is wrong with the airline industry. Airline customers are just so much chattel to be herded and fleeced. If I heard you give these responses to a customer at the service counter, I would fire you on the spot.
By the way, getting just one customer to upgrade to "early-bird" check-in provides about a 1200% revenue increase against the paper that it costs to ticket all the passengers on a 737. And not a single Southwest employee helped me as I stood in line for 20 minutes to use the single self-serve kiosk at the airport.
