A few years back I was not very happy with the nine LaCie hard drives that I had purchased. Something like seven of them failed within months, two of those twice. I called and said, “I have a big on-line presence and I can hurt you. I want a full refund.” “Sorry, no. The best we can so is repair them.” <\/p>\n
So I ran an item or two in a Bulletin and asked folks who had had problems with LaCie drives to e-mail me. Many did. I shared all of the negative comments via the Bulletin and forwarded the Bulletins to my contact at LaCie. In short order I had my refund…. <\/p>\n
So when I received the pass-along e-mail from friend Joan Masson, I just had to share it with you here. Note: Joanie sends me about a dozen each week. Most get deleting instantly especially the political ones. But this one will strike a chord with most of us. <\/p>\n
A musician named Dave Carroll had difficulty with United Airlines. United apparently damaged his treasured Taylor guitar ($3500) during a flight. Dave spent over 9 months trying to get United to pay for damages caused by baggage handlers to his custom Taylor guitar. During his final exchange with the United Customer Relations Manager, he stated that he was left with no choice other than to create a music video for YouTube exposing their lack of cooperation. <\/p>\n
The manager responded: “Good luck with that one, pal.”<\/p>\n
So he posted a retaliatory video on YouTube. The video has since received over 10 million hits. United Airlines contacted the musician and attempted
\nsettlement in exchange for pulling the video. Naturally his response was: “Good luck with that one, pal.”<\/p>\n
Here’s a link to the video http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo<\/a><\/p>\n The original video went totally viral with 11,764,355 views as of 6:10pm eastern time on Sunday, 4-8-12. <\/p>\n The song is cleverly written and the video is pretty darned cool. As for the song and the music, I love it. Dave Carroll comes of as a very nice young man. With brother Don, he is a member of a two man musical group, Sons of Maxwell which who performs both traditional Celtic folk music and original compositions with a pop-folk sound. While doing some on-line research I learned that the song we first posted on You Tube in July 2009; where was I? You can find lots more info and some great links on Wikipedia here<\/a>. <\/p>\n There were two follow-up videos that you can find on the original You Tube link above. Most times that I visit You Tube I spend at least a half hour following and listening to the links. <\/p>\n The neatest thing of all is that Dave Carroll’s career got a huge boost from the media storm that followed the release of the video. This from his bio:<\/p>\n Dave Carroll is an award winning singer-songwriter, professional speaker and social media innovator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada. He began his music career with his brother Don in the band Sons of Maxwell and has been enjoying success as a solo artist for the last two years. For two decades, Dave has charmed fans with his approach to music. His ability to extract the essence of a message and craft it into song is a rare gift that is attracting fans of all ages while his sense of humour and disarmingly warm stage presence makes each live experience a memorable one for audiences around the world.<\/p>\n Known as a master storyteller, Dave\u2019s incredible talent was introduced to millions when his 2009 YouTube music video \u2018United Breaks Guitars\u2019 became a worldwide sensation. The song chronicled his experience in the customer service process with United Airlines. His creative use of social media to share that message has reached over 150 million people. United Breaks Guitars was named one of the five most important videos in Google\u2019s History.<\/p>\n The United Breaks Guitars trilogy has awakened companies everywhere to the importance of focusing on the customer and on delivering exceptional customer experience. Dave Carroll is a musician with a message, demonstrating the power one voice can have in today\u2019s socially driven world. Dave has become internationally famous as one of the world\u2019s top media relations innovators & customer experience authorities. He is also widely sought after as a content creator & songwriter.<\/p>\n