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This is actually “old news” by now (it was hot in spring 2009) — but I missed it the first time around and maybe you did as well.  It shows how the web can amplify the voice of a single complaining customer.  The video has more than 6 million views!  The story is best told by the protagonist, musician Dave Carroll, in his own words, copied from his website and quoted below.  I have placed the first video “United Breaks Guitars” below that.

“In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. 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.”

Tags: Service recovery

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 11:22 am and is filed under Customer service, Product, Promotion, Service, Video, Viral campaign. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.