This video, called United Breaks Guitars, is a quick lesson in how NOT to treat your customers. I’ll let Dave Maxwell of the group Sons of Maxwell tell his story.

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged.

They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.

If you think you can provide the same old customer service as you did even 5 years ago in the age of YouTube and Twitter, you are just asking for trouble.  The below video was posted to YouTube on July 6.  Today, July 8, it’s been view 131,526 times.    Google the term “United Breaks Guitars” and there are 4,460 results.

How would you like that to your business that someone is making a video about? So many small business owners don’t think about the consequences of their actions. After all, it’s just one customer right? How much business United is going to lose because of this video, not to mention the general bad feeling that people are going to have toward them.

Think about this next time you deal with a customer, and next time you fly, remember that United breaks guitars.