What Was United Airlines Thinking
The story of Canadian Dave Carroll and United airlines is quite amazing. Dave is a country singer and he and his band were on a trip with United from Halifax to Nebraska that had a layover in Chicago. During this layover the baggage handlers at Chicago’s O’Hare managed to destroy his guitar.
Now you would have thought that United would pay for his guitar to be replaced. They didn’t come to the party claiming the Dave Carroll didn’t make a claim with 24 hours. Dave was given the complete run around with United refusing to take any responsibility for the damage.
So what did Dave do, he wrote a song about his experience and that song hit You Tube on Monday last week and has already had over 2.3 million views. Check it out … oh and it is called … United Breaks Guitars.
So what do we learn from this?
Well firstly, United must have some very questionable baggage handling techniques. If you are to going to fly United, I would try to take carry-on luggage or better still, fly another airline.
Secondly, United’s customer service approach seems to be designed to say “no” – no matter how legitimate your complaint is.
Thirdly, the $3k to replace the guitar is cheap compared to the brand damage that this whole episode is causing United. And there is nothing they can do about it now. The cat is out of the bag and will run its own course. In today’s social media world, you never know how poor customer service is going to come back and bite you.
Finally, Dave Carroll and his band have made this an opportunity to further their careers. 2.3 million people is a great audience. Hopefully they will release an album soon to take advantage of their new found fame.
Oh … and if you thought United had got off relatively light? Dave and his band have 2 more songs in the works.
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Well first of all you can never speak to an american. They have all thier call centers based in India. My Son A US Marine returning from serving OUR COUNTRY has been refused a refund on tickets. And he also purchased insurance for those tickets and they are saying the circumstances don’t fall into the categories they have listed. Really a ship being quarantined by the US Governement is not sufficient. HOW IRONIC..And they expect us AMERICANS to bail them out, in which they don’t even employ AMERICANS according the REFUND call center.