Guitar Hero

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Greenberg & Bederman

 

There has been a rather interesting development in the world of corporate and customer relations. About a year ago, a folk and country musician named Dave Carroll was flying to Nebraska on United Airlines. While waiting on the tarmac for his connecting flight at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, Mr. Carroll overheard a passenger behind him say “My God, they are throwing guitars out there!”

Quite rightly alarmed, Mr. Carroll then informed three airline attendants of his concerns, and was, in his words, “greeted with indifference.” When he landed in Nebraska, he found out that it was in fact his guitar that had been thrown around by the baggage handlers, and he found that it was broken as a result.

The guitar was a Taylor acoustic, which is one of the higher end brand of guitars that are currently made in the United States. The cost of an electric/acoustic model, which was what Mr. Carroll had in his possession, ranges between $1200 and $5000. They are not what you would call cheap guitars.

 

Mr. Carroll spent the better part of a year trying to get United Airlines to accept liability for their employees breaking his guitar, and officially got nowhere.  Quite reasonably, all Mr. Carroll wanted to be reimbursed for the $1200 that it took to for him to repair the guitar. United was not the least bit interested in doing so.

You would think that a multi-billion dollar international airline would be able to come up with that sort of money rather quickly, yet United kept their wallet very tightly shut.  So he did really the only thing that he could have done. He wrote a song about his experience with United, made a video, and put it on YouTube.

Much to the delight of Mr. Carroll and much to the chagrin of United Airlines, this video went viral.  At the time of this writing, “United Breaks Guitars” has had just fewer than 5,000,000 views on YouTube. Mr. Carroll was a featured guest on CBS, CNN, and Fox News. This video has ended up inspiring imitators, in which other people made videos in which they describe having their things broken without compensation, or having their luggage lost without compensation, or spending three hours on the tarmac, or any of the many myriad of things that can go wrong when you fly on any airline at any airport.

The notoriety did not do United any good.  According to an article in The Times of London, the bad PR made United’s stock plunge by ten percent, which means that the stockholders lost $180 million dollars. They finally offered to compensate Mr. Carroll for his guitar repairs, but Mr. Carroll told them to donate it to charity instead.  And the song is still a viral hit.

As injury attorneys in the D.C. area, we can certainly relate to feelings of frustration over uncaring corporate workers.  We represent people who have been injured due to no fault of their own, and the people that we represent as clients are often treated exactly the same way that Mr. Carroll was.  Only with our clients, the stakes are a little higher than a broken guitar. With our clients, we have people who are being fobbed off from one insurance adjuster to another, all of whom our doing their best to make sure that they can get away with paying out as little as possible.

With insurance companies, putting a video out on YouTube would not be nearly enough to get them to treat their policyholders with any fairness whatsoever.  Michael Moore put out a documentary about our health care system that earned $35 million dollars in 2007, and the health care system didn’t alter their behavior one iota as a result. They are about as used to bad P.R. as they can possibly be. Why on earth would they need P.R. when they have lobbyists, legislators and in house counsel?

This is why it is profoundly important for any injury victim to be represented by experienced injury attorneys. Insurance is a massively profitable business, and the insurance business didn’t become that way by paying out money. If you have been injured and go up against an insurance company on your own, it is almost certain that you won’t be compensated fairly. It is our job to help you get the money that you deserve. It is our job to protect your legal rights and fight the insurance company for the most compensation due to you for your personal injury.

 If you or a loved one has suffered an injury from a car accident, medical malpractice, or if you have been denied your social security disability benefits in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, D.C, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.
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