One thing about me is I am a huge NFL football fan and love nothing better than once the season starts to spend the whole day from 1 to 11 watching football. Indeed as I'm about to bash the airlines industries it's cool that I can praise some business: I spend Sundays during football season at Applebees. They have this great deal where you get $.25 cent wings-you do have to buy in sets of $.10 so your lightest would be 10 wings for $2.50. As for drinks I-I'm not much of a drinker...-I love the deal they have where you can buy a soda for about $2,50 but unlimited refills. They know me at the local Applebees here in Baldwin: the minute I walk in someone will go pour me out a nice tall glass of orange soda full of ice and a straw and I'm in Heaven. For those of you who have more complex pallets than this, there is a deal where you can get 2 mixed drinks for the price of one.
This last week as I was watching-lot of great games and upsets, seems that the Buffalo Bills and Oakland Raiders may be back-I got a little irked by the endless commercial by the SouthWest Airlines that bags fly free! It irked me because it just shows you how much further consumer service and satisfaction is yet again further being defined down. Now an airline can brag and make it a major selling point because they-at least for now-are not slapping a $120 fee to fly 2 bags. Far from making them laudable, it enables them to market something which previously with a given. First of all as noted above just because "bags fly free" doesn't mean that SouthWest is necessarily a bargain. It may actually be already charging passengers the same fee but calling it something else. Really "bag fees" like so many service charges and fees are totally arbitrary anyway as you can ascribe the cost of service or goods to anything you want but what matters is the final total price. How do we know that SouthWest while has continued to allow bags to fly free-this used to be the rule, now it's some sort of special privilege we supposedly owe them a great debt of gratitude for-isn't charging us more for peanuts, head phones or whatever? What is the total price you pay to ride this airline as opposed to the ones who no longer allow bags to fly free? Could be it's the same wine, different bottles.
In addition SouthWest could conceivably at some point in the future decide they can no longer afford to give passengers this "great luxury" and tag on a bag fee themselves. This on top of the extra fees they may have already added that they're not calling a bag fee.
Ultimately this whole thing adds up to a further erosion of the consumer environment and further defining down what good prices and service means. It's almost like like a school yard bully announcing that he wont charge you a toll in passing him in exchange for not punching you in the arm like other school yard bullies do. Does this really make him an admirable guy? It's like a baseball team that sets a record for home runs in a season but only by moving in the fences so that while a home run used to be 400 feet now it's about 85-these 85 yds used to be a possible single. Overall the consumer environment further erodes where we have to now be grateful for one company in one area not gouging customers as most others are now doing.
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