Case Study #1-united breaks guitars

After watching Dave Carroll’s video “United Breaks Guitars” on YouTube, I find the whole situation pretty funny. It blows my mind that an airline as big as United would do such a stupid thing, as to first throw people’s valuable stuff around, and second to basically deny that they did anything wrong.


I think what Dave Carroll did was absolutely right. He knew that something wrong had been done and that it needed to be taken care of. He soon realized that after talking to United and going nowhere with them on trying to have them just pay for his broken guitar, that he had to take matters in to his own hands. I feel that by him making a song and music video about what happened showed that just because you’re a big company doesn’t mean you can take advantage of anybody and not takes the blame for something they’ve done wrong. It showed that no matter how big you think you are, if you don’t take care of the problem, and make things right again it will turn in to something much bigger and do more damage than if you just admit to what you’ve done wrong. I thought by him doing the song and video and putting it on to YouTube was a very good way of getting his story out there and fast. It put a humorous spin on what happened and things like that catch people’s attention and that’s exactly what he wanted to happen. He wanted people to know what United did and put them in a bad light and it worked.

I also thought that it was a very good move for him to issue a statement about what happened and to thank everyone for their support. It helped more people sympathize with him on the issue and made him look better.

As for United I think what they did was very wrong. I’m appalled to know that they would even do something like that and to then not even compensate him for his guitar that he, along with others, saw them break. It was very stupid of them to deny what happened and to put off, what they should have done right away and just paid him for his broken guitar. It got them in to a lot more trouble and cost them a lot more by denying it than it would have been to have paid him. Now because of this whole mess they got themselves in to, they’ve spent a lot more money and now have a bad reputation. I know that after seeing and hearing about this story I certainly wouldn’t want to fly with United.

Like Dave said it was a little too late for them to finally be trying to pay him off. The damage had already been done. If they had just come out and openly talked about what happened, or explained why this even occurred, apologized, and bought a new guitar for Dave they wouldn’t be in this big of a mess and people would have forgotten about it by now. Since he has written not only one, but three songs now it’s going to be hard for people to forget about what happened and for United to earn their customers trust back as a good, honest airline to fly on.