[ctpide]

Commonly the 1 unhappy customer might tell his story to ten of their friends or thousands+ of readers online. Fixing customer problems (especially drastic ones) carries large incentives, because those single stories will actually be observed, while the 1000 happy customers won‘t be mentioned.

[ximeng]

The company will only fix problems for customers with sufficient social reach in that case.

[vidarh]

Case in point:

20 years ago DHL told me the credit cards I was waiting for in Santa Cruz, California were suddenly in transit to South Korea.

As a one off it was a funny story. 10 years later they told me the computer that was sitting in a depot in London was on a ship back to the US.

I'll keep telling those stories until everyone involved had long since retired.