Have you seen or heard about this? (If you have, why didn’t you tell me about it? It’s HILARIOUS and includes a serious business issue)… okay, so I’m late to the party…
This has been around for a while, but I just stumbled across it tonight …
In 2008, musician Dave Carroll was on a United Airlines flight from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to a gig in Nebraska, with a connection in Chicago.
As they waited on the tarmac in Chicago, a woman seated behind him suddenly exclaimed, “Oh my God! They’re throwing guitars out there!”
Dave and his band members looked out their windows and, indeed, United Airlines baggage handlers were tossing their guitars around.
Ultimately, Dave discovered that his $3,500 Taylor guitar had been broken during the extracurricular activities by the baggage handlers.
Various representatives from United Airlines refused to help Dave, immediately after he saw his guitar being thrown around and during the subsequent nine months he attempted to seek compensation.
In Dave’s own words, “They didn’t deny the experience occurred, but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.”
If you haven’t seen it already (yeah, I’m late to the party), you can see United Breaks Guitar video 1:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5YGc4zOqozo
United Breaks Guitars video 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-UoERHaSQg
United Breaks Guitars video 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P45E0uGVyeg
And here’s a video on lessons from “United Breaks Guitars” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hd8XI42i2M
I’ve gained a greater appreciation for the positive and negative impact each of us has the potential to make. And I’ve gained greater respect for the power of social media to spread a message of positive change.
I hope you enjoy these as much as I did!
George, I read this story some time ago in the Wall Street Journal so it has probably been seen and heard by hundreds of thousands and I’m sure United Airlines has felt some negative BUT United Airlines is still in business, still treating people badly, and in actually finally making money. They are large enough and powerful enough to absorb that bad publicity and shrug their shoulders while Dave Carroll, sadly, lost his valuable guitar. Hopefully the amount of publicity he was able to create for himself was large enough to compensate him for his loss.
Larry Galler
Larry, it turns out that United Airlines has actually paid Dave Carroll to use his United Breaks Guitars material in their customer service training!
George