Spirit Airlines Screw-Up, Cont'd. (Alas)
The Consumerist, one of many blogs that have picked up on an embarrassing gaffe by Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza, posted this pic of him with the headline "Spirit Air CEO Learns The Dangers Of Hitting 'Reply All' When Callously Responding To Consumer Complaints."
by Wendy Perrin
Remember Friday's post about Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza? In response to a complaint from an angry passenger, he carelessly sent a "Reply All" email saying, "Let him tell the world how bad we are." That email was posted on the blog of tech blogger Alex Rudloff, who has indeed been telling the world just how bad Spirit Airlines is.
Over the weekend Alex emailed me to say that the complaint I focused on -- the one that garnered the email -- is merely a drop in the bucket and that I and many bloggers are missing the main point:
"Folks are entering our conversation in the middle (the email episode) and missing the context. I have 130-plus (maybe more now) comments of people being stranded all over the hemisphere because Spirit's 800 number does not function. (I'll bet you a dollar it'll hang up on you if you call for support right now. "Too-high volume" on a Saturday at 9:45 a.m. Riiight.) The general consensus, from employees and customers, is that Spirit's customer service issues are a matter of corporate policy from the top on down. I've had tons of private emails, and a few public comments, from Spirit employees describing the downward spiral it's been in internally since Mr. Baldanza took over. When the e-mail came in, originally posted to my blog as a comment, it confirmed . . .
. . .the contempt that many of us were suspecting."
An article in Friday's Orlando Sentinel, "Blog says 'Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines,' provides the best background for understanding the complaint in context, says Alex.
Well, I've read the article but, honestly, I still don't get why any of this comes as a surprise. Spirit Airlines is an ultra-low-cost, very poorly rated airline operating during a summer of historic delays and cancellations in an era when most U.S. airlines couldn't care less what the masses of infrequent fliers think of them. And that uncaring corporate attitude usually starts at the top. So why, I ask you, would any seasoned traveler expect anything from Spirit Airlines but contemptuous customer service?
Keep in mind that my opinion of domestic-airline customer-service departments is highly influenced by the three and a half years I spent investigating thousands of Conde Nast Traveler readers' airline complaints, and contacting airline customer-service departments on behalf of those readers, back when I was the magazine's Ombudsman. (If those weren't the three and a half longest years of my life!)
The Orlando Sentinel article points out that if you punch "Spirit Airlines" into Google, Alex's post "Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines" is the third result that pops up. You go, Alex! Let's hope this means that "citizen journalism" in the blogosphere really can change things for the better.
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This is just endemic of a larger problem. It's not just the airlines, it's everything. Companies don't care about their consumers anymore. They're out to make a buck and that's it. I found that out a few months back when I had a problem with a three month old HP printer that cost me $400 and I asked to exhcange it for a new one. Long story short, after dealing with rude tech support in India, I called all the way up the chain of command to their corporate headquarters, and the woman I spoke to said that they don't replace their in-warranty products with new ones but only used ones. Well, thanks for that vote of confidence in your products. It was the second one I had, the first one didn't work when we got it home. I decided I was through with HP and took the thing back to the store where (OMG) the store actually cared about me as a customer (go Office Depot!) and gave me store credit when they didn't *have* to. As a side note, I wrote a letter of complaint to HP corporate headquarters about poor customer service, and surprise, surprise, I never heard anything more about it.
They want to make record profits by offering cheap crap. As my dad used to say, "You get what you pay for." I think this holds true with everything. The problem is increasingly, you pay more for less. Like a $400 printer that should last at least a few years but breaks after 89 days. Or a $500 plane trip where they don't even give you a snack, which happened to my husband on an AA flight from Orlando to Houston. He was hungry and just wanted some peanuts, and they didn't have any. So I suppose that perhaps the addage should be changed to "You pay a lot and don't get what you should." LOL
Posted by: tracker1312 | August 28, 2007 at 12:22 PM