United Breaks Guitars...and Themselves

The country band Son’s of Maxwell wrote a song in 2009 based on the personal experience of their guitarist Dave Carroll. The song was not inspired by something sad, romantic, or exciting but of an accident based on the unfortunate episode of having your luggage destroyed by an organization with a lot of money. That organization was United Airlines. The airline workers destroyed his guitar when they were loading it into the luggage carrier on a plane ride from Halifax to Nebraska. According to their web site davecarrollmusic.com, the bass player saw the damage happening, told Carroll and he asked the flight attendants to look at the matter. They blew him off. While this is not particularly new for frequent flyers who have reported losing luggage and belongings by taking a flight, Carroll did not take the loss lightly. He wrote a song about the irresponsibility and callousness of United Airlines and their handling of luggage and posted it on Youtube. It became popular and United Airlines encountered a public relations nightmare.

According to David Carroll’s blog, he had tried for months to get some form of compensation for the loss of his $3,500 guitar. He wrote, “They didn't deny the experience occurred, but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss.”

The Vancouver Sun reported that Sons of Maxwell demanded United Airlines give an apology and compensation for the damage done to the guitar but they refused. The Sun also reported that Carroll did give United Airlines a fair warning that they would write a song about the destruction of their guitar and the treatment they were given after the incident but United did not respond. Carroll explained the situation on the show The View saying, “I told the last customer service rep that I would do this and that…I urged her to reconsider because if…they came to give compensation after the first video was out then I wasn’t going to take it.”

The result was a popular song titled “United Breaks Guitars” that detailed the whole experience David Carroll had when his guitar was damaged.

Sure enough, the song was a hit, receiving over 7 million views on Youtube and Sons of Maxwell became an overnight sensation. They appeared on talk shows and in the news all over the world.

According to the CBC News, major companies, like RightNow Technologies, asked Carroll to deliver speeches. The incident also inspired a second song that appeared on August, 17 with a third one was promised according to Carroll.

But their success was the result of United Airline’s failure. The popularity of the video made United Airlines an embarrassment and their stock fell 10 percent with a net loss of $180 million, according to softpedia.com. News media all over the world said a guitar player defeated a multi-million dollar goliath with a web video. In The First Post, they reported that eventually United folded and offered Carroll an apology and repairs for the guitar as well as $1,200 in free flight vouchers. Carroll did not accept the money and asked the airline to donate it to charity instead. For his interview on The View, United Airlines sent him a letter saying, “We had conversations with one another to make what happened right, and at his request, made a donation to a charity that provides music education to underprivileged children.”

United also said that they had improved and were ranked first among their peers as having the least amount of customer complaints in November as reported by the Department of Transportation. Yet, Carroll merely shrugged their apology staying true to his word saying, “Their still gonna get the third video.”