The United Breaks Guitars Song 2: Ms. Irlweg, We Don’t Need To Fight
Internet sensation Dave Carroll isn’t one to back down from promises.
United Airlines baggage handlers damaged his $3,500 Taylor guitar while unloading luggage on a connection in Chicago.
But it might just cost United Airlines far more than that.
Seeking reimbursement to cover the cost to repair the instrument, Carroll spent nearly a year dealing with United’s customer service department.
When his request for compensation was denied once and for all, Carroll, a Halifax-based musician with the band Sons of Maxwell, vowed to release three videos about the experience.
Check out the first video in United Breaks Guitars, Passengers Gets Revenge on YouTube.
For more on keeping your luggage safe, check out our Luggage & Packing section.
Since then, United has offered Carroll $1,200 in cash and another $1,200 in flight vouchers, but Carroll refused the offer.
“I said I had stopped looking for compensation in November, and I was following through on what I said I would do,” he told Peter in a recent interview.
“He has made his point, we have since worked with him directly to fix [the situation], and in addition to unfairly singling out one of our people, the second video is suggesting we do something that we’ve already done—and that is to provide our agents with a better way to escalate and respond to special situations,” says United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski.
Urbanski also argues that 99.95 percent of United’s customers’ bags are delivered on time and without incident. “Of course any bag lost or damaged is one too many,” she says, “and what regretfully happened was an anomaly, not the norm, and was clearly an unintentional accident for which we are very sorry.”
Check out an interview with Dave Carroll in United Breaks Guitars, Dave Carroll Keeps Playing.
In the service industry, it’s usually not the delivery of the service that makes the difference, but how companies recover when things go wrong.
The United guitar situation is a classic case of bad customer service recovery, and the hits—at least in terms of online music videos—apparently just keep coming.
Check out the video, in which Carroll traces his conversations with a United executive named Ms. Irlweg, including the refrain “we don’t need to fight”:
By Sarika Chawla for PeterGreenberg.com.
For more on Dave Carroll, visit DaveCarrollMusic.com.
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