Comments on: Spirit Air: You Don’t Have to Turn on the Red Light

By: Terrence Wray

Terrence Wray — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:33:57 +0000

I will never ever make reservations on this air line again ever. They have some of the worst customer service in the air line industry to date. Please, everyone, never book a flight with Spirit Air.

By: Joe Cuseo

Joe Cuseo — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:37:48 +0000

I should have read all the blogs before signing up for their “great” savings club. Everytime i try to access their site i get an “error on page” message, puter locks up, and all open windows shut down. Whats up with their site? Don’t know but i know i will not be sending anymore annual dues to a n airline I WILL NOT TRAVEL WITH REGARDLESS OF THEIR ADVERTISED BUT NEVER REALIZED PRICES! Thanks for a place where i could air out my complaint

By: cheryl long

cheryl long — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:59:11 +0000

had to cancel reservations and had to rebook only to find out later it would cost me $80 per person (4 in my party) in their fine print it only states you pay $80 when rebooking. needless to say it cost me $320 to rebook and no matter who I talked to at 1-800 no one seemed to understand their policy in writing only states you must pay $80 when rebooking it says nothing about per ticket or person like other airlines state.

By: April Hope

April Hope — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:33:01 +0000

I agree that with all of the above comments, but I have gotten one penny tickets from Spirit to Mexico, Guatemala and Jamaica so for now I’m going to continue flying with Spirit. For some people the horrible service isn’t worth the stress, but as a backpacking student it works for now.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:41:46 +0000

It keeps getting worse. Now they charge $3.00 for a can of soda, water or coffee.

The latest news I just read is that they charge extra if you choose to select your seats ahead of time. If you do not pay, you will be seated randomly. If you are traveling with someone else you probably won’t get seated together.

I hearby declare we are done flying Spirit Air until they fire their CEO and hire someone who actually cares about customer service.

By: Brian Lamb

Brian Lamb — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:59:41 +0000

They are the absolute worst. I have been on hold for 40 minutes and nobody is picking up. I have been trying to call them for two days with no results. I either get busy signals or I get this garbage Caribbean music on a commercial loop that is making me insane.

I flew them twice before and decided to go back to them because the airport they fly out of in Atlantic City is super convenient. Unfortunately, this time around, I booked 2 flights, got charged for 2 flights, but only got confirmation for one reservation. I just need to find out my other reservation confirmation and I cant get any assistance. I have emailed them, and now am calling….I will never fly them again. I hope that they go bankrupt, or are permanently grounded for some other reason.

The worst.

By: Colt Cooper

Colt Cooper — Wed, 28 May 2008 01:44:00 +0000

The ultra low cost carriers are feeling the pinch nowadays. To keep those costs low, one of the first things that goes out the window is customer service. The comments from the CEO seem to echo what I saw at SkyBus: they are the Wal-Mart of the skies. You want cheap seats? They’ve got ‘em. At least with Spirit they have a call center. Skybus decided that call centers were too expensive (If you screwed up your ticket – oh well, buy another one).

Just don’t expect them to go overboard to retain customers. They know that when times are tough and you need a flight, that you’ll plunk down your cash even though you won’t be smiling about it.

I’ve done customization consulting work for JetBlue, Spirit, and Skybus. They all look at the success that RyanAir is having in europe and want (or wanted in the case of SkyBus) to be the RyanAir of the US.

It could be that they expect a new culture of take it and leave it airline travel. They provide the service, and that’s it – no frills – don’t expect to be treated like a king. I think SkyBus’ name said it all – it’s just a bus in the Sky – buy a bus ticket, or not.

By: Robert Gorell

Robert Gorell — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:05:37 +0000

Spirit air just sent me an interesting email.

By: Don

Don — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:51:58 +0000

Web site not accepting login. Been trying for several hours now 3/4/08 10:30 p.m. EST. No place to contact these folks by e-mail, and phones don’t know anything about 9 dollar fares. Think I got ripped off by Spirit Airlines paying for something you can’t get!

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:06:07 +0000

I purchased 3 tickets on Spirit Air for travel to Cancun. I purchased each of the tickets separately to get the special “internet” rate because it would not give me the rate if I purchased all three tickets at once. I immediately noticed that I had the wrong return date on my daughters ticket, so I called Spirit and had someone on the line within 4 minutes of my confirmation. I was told that there would be a 135.00 fee to change the return date by one day. I explained to the agent that I had hit the wrong date because I had booked the tickets on my laptop. No excuse would do and I had to pay the extra money because it was for my 12 year old daughter and she couldn’t fly back a day earlier by herself.

I have attempted several times to get someone at Spirits Customer Servive which is non-existent. I asked the representative to put a supervisor on the line and he flat out refused and told me there was no need because I would get the same response! At this point I thought it was unbelieveable until I started sending emails to Baldanza (CEO) and Lancelot (VP) with spirit. I can see now, why the company is so bad.

Don’t worry because people will not continue to put up with the bad customer service. It will be so fun to see what percentage of their customers are returning customers. I made a vow that I will NEVER fly Spirit again. If you check the better business bureau, they have hundreds of complaints that they have not resolved or gotten back with the complainant. They score a F according to the better business bureau.

When the CEO made the mistake and hit reply all, Spirits Public Relations Rep stated that they will NOT apologize for what he said. Spirit Air does not feel they have anything to apologize for. Bottom line is this: Spirit will NEVER get another dollar from me after my upcoming trip and that is a PROMISE!!!

By: Cristine

Cristine — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:40:06 +0000

We were sitting on a Spirit plane, in the terminal, for FOUR hours, after the flight had ALREADY been delayed an hour, for them to change a tire. They would not let us off the plane and wouldn’t even give me a bottle of water for free.

By: John Mooney

John Mooney — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:32:19 +0000

No Support for SpiritAir.com website issues. After spending 4 hours on3 different computers, I have been unable to purchase tickets or log in using a ‘free spirit” customer number. 2 pc’s are Vista, one is XP. all are using IE 7. You can enter the flights and times, on the days desired along with the CC numbers. Once your done and hit the confirm booking button a “Server Error in ‘/’ Application” runtime error occurs. I make every security adjustment and even disables aall of the security, to not avail. You would think spirit air would care whan they can’t even sell a ticket. If I had any Stock in this Company I would dump it like yesterdays fish.
Let see now: 1- no website support, 2- none functioning booking manager, 3- customer phone support uninformed and unable to apply web discounts.
3 strikes and you are OUT, as far as I’m concerned.

By: Michael A. Steuer

Michael A. Steuer — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:08:47 +0000

I flew Spirit twice and gave them my frequent flier number. A few weeks ago, I received a statement in the mail with 0 miles flown. I called and after a loooong wait, I was told that the miles have already been posted. When I told the agent that my statement read 0 miles, he hung up on me. Go figure.

By: Alan Schneider

Alan Schneider — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:45:37 +0000

Now what? I ‘ve read this story with empathy to the author and the employees. I just left a similar (non-airline) story where I told the CSR at the counter that they lost me as a customer. She apologized for the umpteenth time and said see you later. I said, “No you won’t – that’s the point. I won’t be back.” She said, well maybe on the street some day. I stopped realizing that she wasn’t getting the idea she had the power of changing this by confronting the manager on the manager’s shortcomings.

So, what is the CEO of this company to do – to rectify the blog comments and stop the bleeding? Resign? Dedicate himself to actually (key word actually) turning around service and employee attititude? How does a company actually overcome this negative – even if they start to try harder?

On the company’s CEO’s side – when you fly so many times, as I am sure the author does, it is natural (statistical) that you’d encounter more problems than the average traveller. I fly frequently and – my luggage does get lost. Even at 90% accuracy, that’s one of 10 flights that something should go wrong. And my 10 flights come in very short periods of time.

It’s natural order.

By: Alan Charlesworth

Alan Charlesworth — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:13:27 +0000

Great story and points well made – it will be a hand–out for my marketing students who last week looked at market orientation, and this week the impact of the Internet on brands. First–hand rants are so much better for getting the message across.

On a side issue, in your reply you use the phrase ‘If you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read what’s on the label.’ I use it all the time, but can’t track its origin. I even registered the domain http://www.getoutsidethebottle.com to raise the issue – if you have any ideas I would love to hear.

By: audio’connell’s voiceover blog on! » [episode 100] voxmarketising - the audio’connell podcast

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:27:00 +0000

[...] Spirit Robert Gorell at Grokdotcom on how bad Spirit Airlines customer service has [...]

By: Robert Gorell

Robert Gorell — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:03:42 +0000

The sad thing is that I don’t think they’d have to change a whole lot. If they had consistently low prices — instead of these costs-next-to-nothing-if-you-fly-when-you-don’t-want-to-and-forgo-customer-service deals — they’d be onto something. Honestly, I think they could even compete with Jet Blue and Southwest in their regional markets if they did that.

For instance, Timothy’s story about the old plane in West Palm Beach probably wouldn’t happen now. Their fleet is entirely new as of this year. Besides, they have a good staff; people just seem demoralized. If they act quickly, they could make a few changes that stick and turn it around. But their management apparently doesn’t think it has a problem — THAT’S the problem!

If you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read what’s on the label. It’s likely they’re just annoyed, and prefer to write this blogstorm off as an overreaction from pesky bloggers with nothing better to do. Well, guess what… I was a Spirit customer WAY before I ever started blogging.

AND I ALMOST FORGOT TO MENTION THE BEST PART!! When I was at LaGuardia, trying to use my original ticket, they told me that their policy on (not) helping me get another flight had gone into effect AFTER I bought the ticket!!! Can you believe that load of crap? So, they can just make up rules, not notify paying customers, and suddenly have drastically different game plan than every other major airline. HA! That’s why “ridiculous” literally means “WORTHY of ridicule.”

Anyway, this is a matter of perceived value; from the customer’s point of view, first, then from management’s. Flying on a new plane with a decent staff is worth more than what they’re charging with the deals. Otherwise, their fares are comparable to other carriers. They should still offer special rates at times (I love seeing those low fares), but that’s all they’ve become to people now. Jet Blue had a major PR disaster last year, and they’re still loved for being Jet Blue. The employees like working there, and it shows. Now the only reason to fly Spirit is to “save a penny,” as their CEO so eloquently put it.

Sorry, but that’s not exactly a tempting value proposition if the other side of that is that I’m going to be treated like cattle. Go ahead and price your fares at $8 +tax, but treat me like I’m worth $8 ONCE and I’ll tell everyone who will listen. When I have someplace to go and you stop me from getting there, you’re not just messing with my money, you’re screwing with my life.

I’ll bet you that if we looked at their P/L sheet, we’d see that Spirit rakes in money from last-minute purchases — a likely sign of repeat ticket buying (assuming they even track such things) — because of their newly stated customer service philosophy, i.e., that”customer service is not an option at these prices.”

So, yeah, Spirit Air is really a thrill-seeking experience these days. It’s like Pricelining a Jet Blue flight in real time when you’re on the way to the airport, only you don’t get to see the results until you show up.

By: Mark Goren

Mark Goren — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:49:36 +0000

Wow, that’s a crazy story, Robert. I’ve never flown Spirit – in fact, they’re very far off my radar up here in Canada – and now, I’ll make sure not to. Unless there are some big changes.

By: Transmission Content + Creative, Mark Goren, New Marketing Coach » Blog Archive » Got Spirit?

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:46:22 +0000

[...] Robert Gorell writes about a crazy experience he had with Spirit Airlines. A must [...]

By: Timothy Seward

Timothy Seward — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:41:28 +0000

I used to be a regular on Spirit; until we were forced to make an emergency landing (in full bend-over-hug-your-legs mode) due to an equipment issue on an older jet…with fire trucks waiting for us on the runway in West Palm Beach (on a flight bound for Ft. Lauderdale)…and to make matters worse very poor communication about the timing of our new bus ride (had to wait for what seemed like forever before the bus showed up) the rest of the way… my son and I vowed NEVER to fly Spirit again.

By: Jeffrey Eisenberg

Jeffrey Eisenberg — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:00:10 +0000

I’ve never flown Spirit but I had no knowledge of them other than being discount. From what I know now I’ll never fly them.

By: Ayat

Ayat — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 04:49:57 +0000

I’ve flied spirit just once in my life, and was considering to try them again for an upcoming trip. I think I’ll pass now…one less customer through viral marketing!

By: Alex Rudloff

Alex Rudloff — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 03:30:02 +0000

I’ve met a lot of great people who work for Spirit. Every single last one of them blames their new management and the policy changes that came with them. The original owners really did value the customers and it’s a shame that this is the direction Spirit has now chosen to take.

Good work speaking out. It’s our role as consumers!