A few weeks ago, I told you about an app that helps you skip the wait-time when calling customer service. However, just because you get to talk to a person faster doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get what you want. I’ve had amazing customer service, but I’ve also had really horrendous help that leaves me so frustrated. You know what I mean – it can be really hard to keep your cool when the stranger on the other end of the phone is being difficult about their company shipping you the wrong pair of pants.

A few years ago Dave Carroll was flying United Airlines when he noticed that the people loading the plane were throwing his guitar around, resulting in a broken guitar when he landed. He spent months dealing with United’s customer service, only to discover that they weren’t going to do a thing about his smashed guitar. Dave took matters into his own hands, writing the song “United Breaks Guitars” and exposing the airline’s bad behavior in a viral video that resulted in United reaching out to David and offering to replace his unusual guitar. Now, when the rest of us have to get a new guitar, we can’t quite get United Airlines to send one for us. Instead, we can compare a range of small bodied guitars on a site like thesoundjunky until we find the guitar that is right for us.

I know that we don’t all have the luxury (or the musical ability) to handle bad customer service the way Dave did, but here are a few ways anyone can complain smarter and get better customer service: Read more