• July 26, 2009
• Blog

Is United in Dell Hell?

If you haven't seen or heard of the full story of Dave Carol who flew United last year – here's an excerpt from his youtube channel.

Full Story: http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/story…
- In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for
a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by
United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that
the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt 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. So I promised the last person to finally say no to
compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs
about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be
viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of
those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is
underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise. Follow me at http://twitter.com/DaveCarroll . Video Produced by Curve Productions of Halifax, http://www.curveproductionsinc.com

It's a story that you might have experienced – you fly somewhere, you lose your stuff or it gets damaged – and to make matters worse, the employees in charge pass you off and you ultimately get no compensation and experience great frustration. Only in Dave Carrol's case, he created a music video and its been viewed almost 4.2 million views in just under 2 weeks. People are sharing it online via facebook, twitter, email and more. Frankly, there are probably lots of us all over the world than can empathize with the way this has gone down.

Take a look at the statistics from the video as of July 26th, 2009:

• Total Views: 4,147,798
• Comments: 19,131
• Favourites: 20,945
• Ratings: 28,822
• Average rating: 4.94

*This doesn't include partial views, other non-YouTube conversations or comments.

Clearly, United didn't expect this and monitoring the problem via social media couldn't have solved this problem – which points at a larger problem of customer service. Let's face it – United isn't what it was a decade ago and it certainly ain't no Zappos. How will this citizenship journalism affect the complaint process in the future? Should customers be more customer oriented – if for no other reason – fear of this type of backlash? What do you think? Maybe more companies should study Dell's admirable approach after the Jeff Jarvis episode? I think so.

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm