Posted by ScottBlogs | Posted in general | Posted on 10-07-2009
Tags: business, humor, people, youtube
Do you ever fly? Has an airline ever lost your luggage? Have they ever damaged your luggage? Have they ever damaged your luggage before your own eyes and refused to take responsibility for it?
Musician Dave Carroll had this happen when United Airlines baggage handlers destroyed his $3500 guitar as he watched from inside the plane!
Here is an excerpt from his website:
“…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 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…”
His website goes into great detail telling the story and unsuccessful ordeal of what he went through trying to get United Airlines to pay up for their mistake. He vowed to the last employee he spoke with that he would write three songs about what happened.
Below is the first song – its kinda catchy. Thanks to Ross Dunn for sending me the video – I suggest everyone share this story, as these big corporations should not be able to get away with behaviour like this.
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Tell me, do you feel like a complete twit for drawing negative publicity to the WRONG airline? The headline of this article, which stands out in bold as a title in a Google search, and the second paragraph both mention Delta airlines.
You made this mistake even though you copied and pasted text from Dave Carroll’s website specifically stating that United broke his guitar. You also have a YouTube video linked which has a “United Breaks Guitars” label on the top-left corner before it is played.
Even if you change your mistakes the original entries could remain in Google’s cache for months or even years.
You state that “big corporations should not be able to get away with behaviour like this.”
Delta airlines’ legal team would probably have the same opinion of an irresponsible blogger, that is that you should not be able to get away with this.
I certainly hope you begin contacting Google and any other web-caching service to have this material eradicated from their records. You’re not in archive.org yet but according to their site material often takes up to six months to appear there in the first place.
United likely has a disclaimer and contract excusing them from any liability in the case items are lost or damaged. Should they be able to get away with it? I guess that depends- should contract law apply to them?
How about you? Should laws concerning slander and defamation of character apply to you? If one single person decides not to fly Delta airlines because of your post, should you be liable to pay for that?
Dear Mr. Perfect.
I am sorry my error in my blog post offended you so much. I was reading an article on Delta airlines right before I wrote this post. I am sorry that my mistake has offended your perfect non-mistake making self.
I have to wonder if you have ever made a mistake in your life, and if, how people pointed out that mistake to you.
A simply email stating, “hey, you made an error in your post, you might want to correct it” would have been more appropriate.
In response to your question “Hey do you feel like a twit…” The answer is no, it was an innocent mistake which has been corrected – Do you feel like a twit for making an ass out of yourself? Probably not. Please feel free to send me a link to your blog so I can look it over carefully and find all your mistakes.
“Accidental” is one of the common defenses for libel. Being found guilty of accidental libel could make your “innocent mistake” seem, well, not so innocent.
When you follow that mistake with a comment saying that big companies should not be able to get away with their own mistakes you seem hypocritical in my opinion. That hypocrisy is what motivated me to post, not your mistake itself.
And yes, I have made plenty of mistakes in my life. I don’t run a blog precisely because of things like this.
Dear Mr. perfect.
What crawled up your ass and died? Do you own shares in Delta or something? Seems odd to go out and find a blog like mine only to bitch and moan over an error that was corrected. Seems like you need a little help.
I didn’t say that they shouldnt be able to get away with their mistakes, I said that they shouldn’t be able to get away with that behaviour. There is a difference. Besides, if they corrected the issue when they had the chance, then that would be a different story. They figured they could just get away with it and not have to correct the problem. Correct the problem – what an interesting concept – that is exactly what I did the moment I found out about the original error…
In the case of the United Airways issue, they only offered to repay for the damage AFTER the video went mass public. I corrected my issue the moment I was made aware of it – or perhaps you didnt see the correction because you were too busy ranting on about the original error.
Get a life.
I saw the correction and you are right. You correcting your illegal mistake is much more respectable than United legally handling a customer per their policies. Libel and defamation laws should only apply to those who do not correct their mistakes regardless of the consequences to their victims.
I shouldn’t have said United made a mistake- they just have a poor policy in my opinion. Their offering to pay for the guitar damage was not an admission of a mistake or even a special change in policy for one customer- it was PR damage control responding to negative PR from Dave Carroll and Curve Productions.
As for your closing insult, how about you let me know when you come up with something a bit better, k?
Oh Mr Perfect, welcome back!
To my knowledge Delta has never broken anyone’s guitar, however, according to this review, they did lose one. Apparently they haven’t compensated the customer either – but who knows. Sorry to break the news to you that the company you love so much is less than perfect, unlike yourself. You may want to sell those shares you have.
I would hardly call “get a life” an insult – but all the good insults I know are not acceptable for print. I try to keep this blog somewhat clean.
I do want to thank you – replying to your broken-record whining has been fun, but it is starting to get old.
I would turn off the comments for this post, but I would be worried you would come back and whine that I am taking away your freedom of speech rights and I wouldn’t want to say or do anything that you deem less than perfect.
I am curious about one thing – and that’s your fascination with me and my blog. Are you my number 1 fan?
This bud’s for you.
Delta, United, they’re airlines- I don’t have much of an opinion of them. Need I remind you that it’s your activities I’ve been talking about? You could be talking about manure companies for all I care.
You’re confusing fascination with mild disgust. Thirty or forty minutes over several days certainly don’t cut it as “fascination” in my world.
Go ahead and disable the comments. Living in fear and worry aren’t healthy for you.
I don’t normally comment on blogs.. But nice post! I just bookmarked your site
I usually do not comment on blogs either, however, I am a frequent flyer and have had many hardships with two airlines in particular. United being one. Dave, I think you handled it very well and used your great talents in a tactful and professional manner to get their attention. I hope that this will help the airline provide better customer service or be more attentive to their clients concerns. Much appreciated the time you spent addressing this issue which I hope will help other passengers in the future.