Customers have their own media outlets – sorry United.

@Howard – either companies are getting customer service offline or they’re getting it online. There needs to be a happy medium where both sides of the fence are met.

Thanks for the comments, everybody!

Social media or not,this kind of customer service is ridiculous!

Sure, it’s a pointer to how social networks are playing an increasingly important role with business branding and their reputation. But it’s no excuse for crap customer service when customers are the only thing keeping businesses afloat.

@turbobrown – sure, they listened now because social media propelled Dave’s message, but the interesting part will definitely be on the latter and what they do from now on in regards to their service. But as you mentioned – ‘opportunity’ – they can definitely respond boldly and make public amends as to how they’re going to achieve this — up to them if they’re willing to do so.

I’m with Chuck big time on his second point: it’s interesting (even exciting) that this will get attention because of the platforms that Dave took advantage of, but the bigger story here is the fundamental issue of the quality of service at United. They now have the responsibility and opportunity to show that the treatment of both the baggage and the claim were exceptions. I’ll be interested to see how they capitalize on that opportunity.

On a mildly related note, the music video was brilliant which makes a big difference in drawing attention to the situation. That’s a fact that should not be lost in the shuffle of this story.

Re: “Would all customers who went through a similar ordeal be treated the same, if they couldn’t sing?”

Some people would have given up by now. I’m sure many others have encountered similar red tape and run arounds, with United and other major corporations, and just said “forget it.” Perhaps Dave Carroll is just the persistent (and creative) person to snap United to attention about how things are running on the business operations level.

I’m curious to see what kind of reparations United tries to make with Dave — how they “make it right” — and how open he’ll be to accepting them. Is his goal at this point a new guitar, monetary reimbursement, an apology, or just bad web PR? None of those solve the root operations problem mentioned above, and I hope that United knows they can’t just take care of Dave and tuck it away in the “solved” folder.

United has a much larger task in front of them. Satisfy this customer who has made such an addicting tribute to their incompetence, yes, but also make their actions known to the 100,000+ people who have viewed the video, and establish a new system that doesn’t completely fail customers. Figure out that simply having social media profiles and actually them properly, to the advantage of your customer, are two different things. The list goes on and on. Essentially, find their way out of this hole they dug themselves. Yikes.