Zach Bosch

Wow, what a PR nightmare. The worst part for me is that it wasn’t out of United’s control; they had multiple opportunities to make it right with Dave Carroll, but opted to string him along for nine months instead. I will never cease to be amazed at companies who behave like this in our day and age. Some may say that United was merely following policy and that by replacing Carroll’s guitar, they would be opening themselves up to similar disputes. I say that if they were “just following policy”, and this is where it got them, then their policy is severely lacking.

Reading Carroll’s account of what happened would likely make most consumers’ blood boil. Let’s look at the facts: This whole ordeal lasted nine months only for Carroll to find out that all of his efforts were in vain. What is interesting to me about this situation is the fact that Carroll this whole time believed that he was working toward a positive end (for him), while United was fully aware of how this would all pan out. Carroll, on his blog, poses an interesting hypothesis, that large corporations, like United, use the tactic of sending disgruntled customers jumping through an endless number of hoops until they finally become so dejected that they give up at last, while the corporation never really has to deal with the issue. This, to me, is the root of the PR problem.

Public Relations is essential in today’s socioeconomic climate. Without strong PR, you are really at the mercy of your public, but if you employ good PR, you can sometimes make molehills out of mountains. United had an opportunity with Dave Carroll to save face and keep the negative press at bay, but chose instead to “stick to their guns”. The point that I keep coming back to in my mind is that United was in complete control of this fiasco. Who would have thought that Carroll’s song would go viral, right? Who wouldn’t just take the chance with Carroll and hope that no one ever listened to “United Breaks Guitars”? A more important question to ask might be: “Isn’t it worth a mere $3,000 to keep this whole situation quiet?” Whether Carroll had signed a waiver or not, whether he had purchase insurance or not, United could have easily eaten the cost of the guitar and come out of this situation looking like a bunch of angels.

You sometimes hear the old business adage “you gotta spend money to make money”, and I think that this is a good example of where that counsel rings true. I think that my advice as a PR practitioner to a client would always be “weigh the cost of your actions against the potential negative press that could ensue as a result of those actions.” Maybe some corporations become so large that they forget how to deal with the public.