Two weeks ago I wrote about how there's really no such thing as a little guy anymore (unless someone chooses to be) and used the "United Breaks Guitars" event as a case in point. A MicroExplosion reader contacted the customer service department at United Airlines after that post to see they had done about the guitar in question. In less than three hours he got the response below:
Thank you for contacting United Airlines Customer Relations. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your inquiry.
At United, we continually work to ensure the proper handling of your items when you fly with us, and we transport thousands of checked bags each day without incident.
We have had discussions with our customer to make what happened right, and at his request, we donated the money that would have gone toward a new guitar to the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz that provides music education for kids with potential. The video provides us with a unique learning opportunity that we plan to use for training purposes to ensure all customers receive better service from us.
Your business is important to us, and I hope you will give us an opportunity to serve you in the future.
As bad as this has been for United, it looks like they're taking it in stride and trying to learn what they can about the social media space and understand why it means business must be done differently now than it used to. It was encouraging to see that they responded to the reader and got a response back to him in a matter of a few hours. Perhaps, in the long run, breaking the guitar will turn out to be one of the best things that's happened to United in a long time.