What they have is the embarrisment of having their ‘I don’t care” attitude shown on a public forum. If they had done things right the first time, they could have avoided the publicity but, like most multi-billion dollar companies, they don’t care about providing what they promise until they get exposed.

Most big companies including United want us to think that they appreciate it when we point out the error of their ways or a mistake they made. Saying that they are going to use it as a training point is just another way to make you think they actually care.

Mr Elliott does it all the time but without the flair. United needs to sit back, shut up, and fix their problems . Then they can say ‘we have had enough’ As long as Mr Carroll has been factual about the names and events, I think he needs to continue what he is doing. He should also name every employee he talked to. Maybe it will be a lesson to the individual employee that they can not hide behind the phone and if they individual employee did his/her job correctly, then they have nothing to worry about.

That last part, about them delivering instruments to Grammy winners, almost smacks of a slight to Mr. Carroll not having won a Grammy! Don’t you think it seems a bit pretentious?

It all depends on which aircraft you’re flying in as to whether or not a guitar will fit. Oh, and my travel guitar fits in ALL airplanes, so it never gets checked.

No, I don’t think Dave Carroll has finished making his point yet. He’s got another whole video to go!

And speaking of anecdotes, I’ve got a big sheaf of United drink coupons. They were handed to me by a friend in May 2007 as she was being bumped from her business class seat into coach because United had overbooked. She’d booked business because she wanted to get off a 13 hour flight to Seoul well-rested and ready for a hectic week of business meetings. I guess the flight attendants figured she’d happier about the situation if she were smashed. But Ms. Urbanski, I gotta tell you, giving booze tickets to a Mormon lady won’t improve her mood. Maybe you should add that factoid to United’s training, or write a memo or something.

I look forward to the day United voluntarily provides exemplary service without having to be publicly humiliated first, and really does treat its “customers in a courteous and respectful manner”.

But until then… have you ever heard of Beckett and Ionesco and the Theater of the Absurd? Ever read a Far Side or Bizarro comic, or maybe Kafka’s “The Trial”? They’re all about how incredibly weird and illogical and oppressive the world is… just like your company expecting Dave Carroll to have shown his damaged guitar upon arrival in Omaha to United staff when they, in fact, weren’t actually there because they’d all gone home.

Dealing with United, and really, with most large companies these days, is frequently a horrendous, dehumanizing, soul-crushing experience, and the only way to survive it with your sanity intact, and without committing violence that you might regret later, is with humor.

So Ms. Urbanski, until that glorious day when United planes descend from the skies and bring us all birthday ponies, or at least an acceptable level of customer service, you really need to expect that whenever your company’s employees act like a gaggle of crazy clowns, once in a while some other clown is going to show up and hit them in the face with cream pies. And the audience will just laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

Oh, and by the way, Ms. Urbanski. My wife and I just got back from an Alaska cruise on Regent. If you’re not familiar with it, as cruise lines go, Regent ain’t cheap. When I went to book flights, United was the only airline that flew between SFO and the two ends of the cruise, in Anchorage and Vancouver. But I just kept hearing “Some big help you are…” and wondering what would happen if our checked baggage wound up in Moose Jaw. So we didn’t get to use those drink tickets; we went up on Alaska and back on Air Canada.

I did, however, buy Dave Carroll’s album on iTunes. You should get it!

I have also written about this on my blog – focusing on how social media is a great way to get your complaints heard, when the traditional avenues don’t work. (Though being a musician obviously helps!).

He also already named Ms Irlweg in the first song and was up front about the fact that the second song would focus on his dealings with her. This should not come as a surprise. He has said in his video response that Ms Irlweg was a courteous and professional employee and this song states that too – his point is that despite the fact that she was nice, she was forced to implement what he regards as a flawed policy.

I don’t know what United means when they say they’ve worked with him directly to fix it – I understood that they had belatedly offered him compensation, which he had declined. Had he taken the money, it would be a little unfair for him to continue with song 2, but as far as I’m aware that’s not what he’s done.

@Richard Guitars are too big for carry-on – they need to be checked in. He needed the guitar for the concert. And as @Denise above points out, airlines now charge extra for checked-in baggage so they should probably step up their handling procedures, and be a little more helpful when something goes wrong. It’s great that United has responded and incorporated this into their training (and it’s also a good PR damage limitation move for them) but they should’ve got it right in the first place. Carroll is perfectly entitled to continue making his point and if it gives him publicity as a musician then he’s earned it.

Oh, and the music? It’s not a polka.

Normally, I’m right there agreeing that people kvetch too much about little things, but you’re off the mark on this one.

Whether you pay 1st Class prices or sit in the cheap seats, you agree to the same contract of carriage with the airline. They have the responsibility to get you and your baggage safely to the correct location on time, every time. Now that the airlines are charging extra for every bag, I think they are *more* responsible, not less responsible, to get my bags to my destination on time and in one undamaged piece.

In a management seminar I went to a long time ago, it was pointed out that the US Post Office handles millions of pieces of mail every day. For argument’s sake, let’s call it a measly 10 million pieces of mail a day, nationwide. If they were to sit back and accept a 99.99% successful delivery rate, then that would mean 100,000 pieces of mail would be delivered to the wrong destination every day. Fortunately for everyone, the Post Office doesn’t consider that to be an acceptable result and constantly works to improve their process.

The Airlines could learn a lot from the Post Office.