Reflection on Social Media Case 12: United Breaks Guitars

It's interesting to examine the different ways customers, react to bad publicity for a company. If they are loyal to a certain company, they brush off the bad publicity and insist that the situation was a misunderstanding or a mistake. If a customer has no connection to the company in question, they might be more persuaded by the bad publicity. The way the company handles complaints also has a lot to do with the way the situation is viewed from a customer's perspective. No company is immune to the possibility of complaints from their customers but it is vital to the success of their company to deal with the complaint in the right way.

United Airlines is a company that unfortunately, has experienced more than one hit of bad publicity. Even though United Airlines is one of the top airlines in the world, they are definitely at the top of the “Worst Company Reputation” list as well. They currently only have a 3 star rating on their TripAdvisor page. The reviews range from “First class my a**” to “Always OK” to “United Means Greatness”. Contrary to the belief that United Airlines is bad to all their customers, there are still many people that have pleasant experiences with the airline company. This unfortunately, was not the case for Dave Carroll.

After spending an ungodly amount of time trying to get United Airlines to do something about his complaint that his guitars were not being handled well, he turned to the medium he knew best, music. I think this was an excellent way to get their complaint heard. I doubt Dave Carroll knew the impact that this song would have on the company. United Airlines suffered in loss of 23 million dollars. Not only did it have a great effect on the company but it also affected a large community of people. In fact, in 2010 TIME magazine listed the “United Breaks Guitars” video on their "YouTube's 50 Best Videos" list.

This was a great example of how taking matters into your own hands can actually get results and it’s a terrible example of good company customer service. You think United Airlines would learn to not let these things slip through the cracks but that’s just not the case.