United Breaks Guitars

In 2008, Canadian musician Dave Carroll was flying with his band, Sons of Maxwell. During a stop in Chicago, a passenger looked out of the window and saw baggage handlers throwing guitars. Carroll soon discovered that one of his Taylor guitars had been badly damaged.

He spent months trying to get help from United Airlines. He says he was passed between employees and eventually told that the deadline for a claim had expired. The repair cost was about $1,200. The bigger problem was that he felt nobody was listening.

So Carroll used the tool he knew best: a song. In 2009 he released “United Breaks Guitars” on YouTube. It was funny, specific, and easy to understand. Instead of a long complaint letter, he turned the experience into a three-minute story people wanted to share.

The video spread quickly and drew international attention. United later contacted Carroll and offered compensation, which he said he declined. By then, the lesson had become larger than one guitar: when a company ignores a customer, the customer may find their own audience.

Carroll did not need a big campaign or a legal team to make his point. He made one memorable song, and gave people a simple reason to pass it on. The broken guitar was the beginning; the real story was how quickly a customer’s voice could become impossible for a company to ignore.