United Airlines Breaks Guitar

Back in 2008, Dave Carroll, was a passenger on a United Airlines flight.  Carroll, a musician, witnessed baggage handlers throwing his $3,500 guitar.  When he got his guitar backs and inspected it, his fears were met with a broken guitar.  Carroll filed a complaint a week later on his trip back.  After a year of trying to get compensation for the broken guitar to no avail, Carroll posted a video on YouTube calling out the company and company personnel by name.  The video tracked over two thousand views overnight and threatened to be the first of three videos. The next day it was picked up by Consumerist.com and the LA Times Daily Travel & Deal blog.  By the following Tuesday the video generated over 24,000 views. His first video garnered nearly 8 million views and media coverage that made his career explodes.  The second video did a million views.  The third video should do at least half a million as well. 

Views of YouTube channel generated tons of negative comments from users with no response from United. Thousands of tweets were made about Dave Carroll with no response from United for a while.

United Airlines finally responded by speaking with reporters and posting on their Twitter account that they donated $3000 to Dave Carroll’s selected charity.

Wow there were so many missed opportunities here weren’t there.  The first thing that United Airlines should have done to alleviate this situation was to post an apology on YouTube the medium which Dave Carroll used to post his video.  This would have made customers believe that they were listening and a personal message would have prevented too much backlash.  The second thing that United Airlines should have done here is they should have paid more attention to their Twitter account.  With thousands of tweets being made about Dave Carroll, United could have used them as an opportunity to explain any extenuating circumstances.  Alas, United did none of this, instead they allowed Dave Carroll’s videos to go viral and did not respond.  When United finally responded they could have responded with an apology, but they did not, just a post about a donation to charity.  Some could have just considered this as hush money, because United never cared enough to defend themselves in the situation.