United smashed my bass

United smashed my bass

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norman lebrecht

June 12, 2019

Louis Levitt of Rutgers University is the latest victim of airline negligence.

He writes: Thanks United for breaking my bass from 1887.

Happily, Louis was heading for a doublebass convention in Bloomington, Indiana. There were guys in his hotel who could fix things.

Here’s one more from Mike Gaisbacher,of Nashville: Air Canada caused significant water damage to my bass and I feel it needs to be known that they are unwilling to accept responsibility for mishandling a bass. They denied my claim, which I am currently fighting. It was in a David Gage removable neck case that I have flown with dozens of times with no issue, even in rain before. The whole inside of both the neck and body cases were soaked, it took three days for the foam in the case to dry out.

Comments

  • Jaime Herrera says:

    It is NOT the airline that’s a fault – it is one of their employees who did this. There are (unfortunately) thousands upon thousands of people out there who simply don’t care. They know they are unaccountable.

    • carlos2bass says:

      It IS the airline company responsibility to train and give guidelines to their employees to take care of their customers personal belongings in a proper manner and specially oversized and delicate instruments.

    • Jack says:

      Uh, if the person who did this WORKS for the airline, yes the airline is at fault. They should pay and this worker — whose negligence got them into this pickle — should be sanctioned. That’s how accountability works, Jaime.

  • Ben G. says:

    United should change their name to “Divided”.

    They never do anything to unite anyone, and in this case, don’t give a damn about re-uniting the parts of a bass they broke.

  • Tim says:

    Yeah,
    A airline bagage who works 10 hour days, makes minimum wage, and who probably is high all the time to cope is not gonna give a shit.
    When I check my bass into the airport, I always give the baggage handler a 20$ tip and pray… Maybe they’ll care a little bit more then?

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