Do customers have responsibilities?
Yesterday on the plane, a couple spent the entire flight badmouthing the JetBlue staff. I mean significant profanity and personal attacks. They should have had the cops waiting at the runway, imho.
What fascinated me was that this couple didn’t seem to mind that their beef was trivial (they didn’t get to sit together in row 10, as they hoped. They could either sit together in row 20 or sit separately) but that they were willing and able to go nuclear with total aplomb.
It struck me that this would have been inconceivable for sober people just ten years ago.
Would it be okay for JetBlue to blacklist this couple? To say, "you guys totally crossed the line, you can’t fly with us any more?"
As consumers gain more power and anonymity starts to disappear, I think this might happen a lot. And not just on airplanes. What happens to the person who builds the "I hate McDonald’s blog" and spends his life ranking on them? Does she end up banned from the fast food she loves to hate?