We give John Heald the credit for informing us about Dave Carroll’s video, and that singer’s response to United Airlines lousy customer service in this instance. According to Heald, Mr. Carroll is a Canadian version of Garth Brooks, who “had been flying on United when he saw baggage handlers throwing around his guitar case on the tarmac outside, and when he arrived at his destination; it turned out that the neck of his beloved $3,500 Taylor guitar had been snapped like a turkey’s leg at Christmas. But when he asked for compensation, he was told to bugger off by department after department.” The singer’s response was to write a song, and release it on YouTube, which according to Heald, “within four days of the song going online, the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines’ stock price to suffer a mid-flight stall, and it plunged by 10 percent, costing shareholders $180 million which… the president and men with beards at United now realize would have bought poor Dave about 20,000 replacement guitars.”
We loved the story so much that we decided to propagate it further. Hopefully, it is a deterrent to businesses that refuse to take the highest degree of pride in the service that they offer their customers, or to those that simply like the words “bugger off.”
