Reflection on Social Media Case 12: United Breaks Guitars


When you want your complaint to be heard, sometimes you have to make it into a song. This is what Dave Carroll learned after he was given the run-around when United Airlines broke his guitar and then refused to take responsibility for it.

After close to a year of calls and letters to United Airlines, Carroll was only getting back shoulder shrugs and “no’s.” Carroll initially wanted compensation to get his guitar fixed, or even flight vouchers to make up the loss, but United refused to do any of it. After he had had enough, Carroll paired his ordeal with a catchy tune and it didn’t take long for people to start sharing. According to the Wikipedia  article, within a month there were nearly 5 million views, but it only took one day for United to jump into action: they finally offered to pay Carroll for damages to his guitar. But by this point it was too late. Taylor guitar had already offered to replace Carroll’s broken guitar.

So we have one company who is being reactionary: United, and one company who is being proactive and hearing what customers are saying: Taylor. Taylor got some great advertisement and facetime opportunities while trying to fix the wrongs against one of their customers, even though they didn’t have anything to do with the broken guitar.

So what company came out ahead? According to this article, Taylor did. I would have to agree. They didn’t do anything wrong, but they were willing to replace Carroll’s guitar.

What do we learn from this? Be nice. Take responsibility for your mistakes. And catchy songs are a good way to get your message heard. You should listen here. It really is catchy.

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