By Randy Saunders
In the spring of 2008, Canadian musician Dave Carroll and his band were changing planes in Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport. During the stop-over, the band watched in horror as baggage handlers threw their guitars around. Later when Carroll arrived in Omaha, he would discover that his $3,500 Taylor guitar had been damaged.
For nearly a year, Carroll has tried to get United to pay for the damage. But he got nowhere.
So he promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation that he would write and produce three songs about his experience with United Airlines and share his videos with everyone worldwide. They should have taken him seriously. On Monday he delivered on that promise by posting the video, “United Breaks Guitars” on YouTube.
Instant YouTube Hit and United Airlines PR Nightmare
This catchy revenge video has become an instant viral hit. After only a few days, it’s already attracted more than 600,000 views on YouTube. Carroll's story has been picked up by CNN, ABC, the Chicago Tribune, and many other major media outlets. And when you Google "United Airlines," it ranks third.
With all this attention, it appears that Carroll is now getting through.
"This struck a chord with us," said Robin Urbanski, spokeswoman for United. "We are in conversation with one another to make what happened right."
At least in this case, the airline is finally listening to the customer. Of course if they did the right thing in the first place, they wouldn't have to suffer this public embarrassment.
United doesn't need the video to "train its employees" to presumably stop throwing baggage. United needs to look at this entire situation and realize THEY THEMSELVES could have avoided all of the negative publicity coming down on them if they had handled Dave Carroll's initial complaint properly. Instead they did what every big, massive company has always done -- they blew him off, because, after all, what can one lone individual do?
Well, guess what, United? You learned something very important today. This is a big public stage we all play on now. You no longer own the online space -- consumers do. When you treat consumers unfairly or if we feel like you are callously brushing us off -- we WILL speak out, we WILL take our mistreatment public and YOU will be publicly brought to task for your lack of concern or indifference.
This is only one example of how the tide has turned. Learn from this -- consumers now control your brand more than you do. Do you understand that? Do you GET that? Our collective online voice is stronger than your voice. There's no going back. You can spend $2 million dollars to run a Superbowl ad -- and it's STILL no match for a lone individual like Dave Carroll armed with a simple song that he uploads to YouTube. United had their chance to make amends when Carroll patiently pleaded his case over several months. They could have spent a couple thousand to fix his guitar. Now they'll likely spend millions in PR, damage control, spin doctoring, and eventually internal employee training.
Hey, United -- learn anything from this?
Posted by: go dave carroll | July 09, 2009 at 11:13 PM