United breaks guitars update

An update via “I ♥ guitar”. United has offered to compensate Dave Carroll for damaging his guitar.

That’s good. They should. Yet that is the least of what they should do. People should be fired. Policies should be changed. The company should—as loudly as they can—detail these changes and say, “We were wrong and stupid. We don’t want anyone to have an experience like this with us again.” And not in the typical PR speak. In simple, plain language.

Because the problem isn’t that Dave’s guitar got damaged. The problem is that it shouldn’t be company policy to treat customers the way Dave was treated, and the people who put those policies into place are a liability.

You want people to trust you with their lives and their property? Then you should make it clear that they won’t have to publicly ridicule you via YouTube for you to take those responsibilities seriously.