United Breaks Guitars

The song says it all, when Dave Carroll and his band, Sons of Maxwell, boarded a flight to Nebraska they assumed their luggage would be safe with the trusted United flight staff. This however, was not the case. Only minutes after getting on board Dave looked out the window to discover that the luggage crew was tossing his valuable guitar around and had consequently broken the neck. After witnessing the destruction of his property Dave tried to talk with multiple employees about the incident but they completely ignored him.
Dave decided that if United was not willing to own up to the problem and replace his broken guitar then he would have to take the issue public. He never threatened to sue the company, he simply gave them warning that if they didn’t reimburse him he would release three songs letting the world know his story.
Choosing to ignore Dave Carroll was the worst thing that United could have done. The price of a new guitar was only about $3500 and within 24 hours of posting his first song to YouTube Carroll’s video had over 150,000 hits. It was instantly viral, and with that came the downfall of United’s stocks.
This was a bad P.R. move on United’s part. Costumer service is the first step to good public relations. If you want your company to have a good image in the eyes of the public then you must first be sure that all your costumers are happy. United had to learn the hard way that it only takes one unhappy costumer, who has been mistreated, to spread around bad stories about your company. In Carroll’s case he encouraged his fans, United costumers and any one with access to YouTube to stop flying with United.
Dave handled this situation in a really smart way. He used his freedom of speech to out the company that damaged his guitar and it was also good P.R. for his own band although it may not have been intended to be that way from the start. People who may not have know about his band before the incident were now finding out about the YouTube video and becoming exposed to his music. I’m sure that his fan base grew enormously after the videos release.
The Public Relations team of United, however, had some serious damage control to do after this. They certainly lost both costumers and value for their company. The losses far outweighed the benefits. The stock went down over 189 million in only 4 days. If you compare that outrageous number to the original $3500 that Dave had asked for it seems almost ridiculous.
The video on YouTube now has over 10 million views and continues growing everyday. Personally, learning about this story was a great lesson for me as a pubic relations student. It teaches that, once in the field, you can never take any little issue too lightly. There is almost always some way to correct problems that start small when you are working in public relations if you are good at your job and prepare in advance.