Imagine getting off your United Airlines flight to discover that your guitar is smashed...
Well, this is what happened to Dave Carroll on a flight from Nova Scotia to Nebraska - and now his YouTube video, "United Breaks Guitars" has created quite a bit of buzz on the internet. It's an awesome video!
I still don't understand how big businesses like United Airlines don't understand that nowadays power is in the hands of the people. People have access to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs to express their thoughts about a product or service.
Information on the internet travels at the speed of light. Ever since Dave's video went live, there have been 2,862,270 views (as of the writing of this post) and 14,366 comments.
You can read a detailed account of what happened on Dave Carroll's website...
On the upside, Dave now has many fans who are buying his music!
FYI: United's stock (UAL) has fallen down to $3.27! Hmmmm...I wonder why???
I love how Dave used the power of YouTube in this instance! When will big business realize the little people have power these days?
You know, I wrote about this video, too (along with half of the bloggers in the Western world!), and you know what bothered me most? That United kept their response to David private. They didn't make a video or respond via social media channels. And in the end, instead of participating in the space and taking responsibility in a humble and sincere fashion, they just offered him money (which he refused).
What would have been much better for United's image would have been to explain how they were going to use this incident to improve training for employees and review policy--pretty sure David just wants to make sure no one else has to go through what he did. Why can't United see that?
My thoughts, if you're interested: http://talkitup.typepad.com/weblog/2009/07/customer-service-requests-falling-on-deaf-ears-make-a-youtube-video.html