Arlo Gilbert’s Blog

Ok, i’ll join the hundreds and thousands of people who have blogged about what a rip off Spirit airlines is.. so here is my story:

In January 2007, I purchased four round trip first class tickets for my family on Spirit airlines to the Grand Cayman’s for a vacation from February 9th thru February 17th. I purchased the scam trip insurance from Travel Guard (accidentally).

Due to weather we were unable to get to the airport for our departure. We tried to call, along with many other unfortunate Spirit customers. After several hours and many attempts to call and receiving the usual “we’re sorry, all customer service reps are busy with other customers”. At this point I decided that getting my family there was more important than getting them there on Spirit so I chartered a private jet.

Great vacation, good times.

The morning of our return home I go online to do online checkin with Spirit, but spirit says our tickets have been cancelled. Drats, ok well they must have cancelled them because we maissed the first leg. Lesson learned. Their web site indicates however that we have a credit with them that we can use (because we paid 6k for tickets that we didnt use). 

Their web site keeps having server errors while i’m trying to redeem these vouchers… no luck. Eventually I try calling Spirit customer service and *suprise* I get an hour of “we’re sorry, all customer service reps are too busy to help you”… so once again I get to choose between taking Spirit airlines to get home or getting home.

I bought tickets on American to get us home and we survived the trip.

I begin my weekly ritual of trying to call Spirit customer service to get a refund or at least get functioning credits with them for a future flight… and for about 3 months we continue to be unable to get in touch with a human being.

At my wits end I decide to call American Express, after all I am one of those lucky people with the card that everybody talks about (weee lucky me)… I figure that I am an important person so they will help me… and they try.

Spirit tells them they will call me… so Amex closes the dispute. Spirit never calls.
I re-initiate the dispute… Spirit says they will take care of the issue…. so Amex closes the dispute.
I re-initiate the dispute… Spirit says they tried calling me and will try again… so Amex closes the dispute.
I re-initiate the dispute… Spirit asks for me to send them a formal letter explaining the issue, I do… Amex closes the dispute.
Spirit claims they never got the letter.
This goes on a few more times. Frustrated but kind Amex reps continually spend hours trying to reach human beings in the customer service department at Spirit… they realize how hard it is.

During this entire time I have continued my weekly ritual of trying to reach a human at Spirit.. never once since the day I placed my order online did I reach a human being from Spirit… until today.

Spirit customer service rep Niurka Paulino (who can be reached at 954-447-7965 x 1711) she goes by the name “Nikki” (and seems ready to “rumble” from her loving demeanor) finds my account, puts me on hold to “talk to her manager” and advises me that these non-refundable tickets cant be refunded and that spirit wont issue me a voucher for use on a future Spirit flight… 

SCRREEEECCCH… wait, did you just tell me that you are going to take my $6000 and you’re not going to even let me reschedule the flights for a different time? Yep, sure did. I guess this is how they stay profitable, taking the money and not providing any services in exchange for the money.

She was however kind enough to remind me that I had been suckered into paying $20 dollars (or something like that) for “Travel Insurance” through Travel Guard and gave me their number. Travel gaurd of course advised me that there was nothing they could do because it was my fault that I had missed the flight. The fact that Spirit couldnt actually be contacted seems to be beyond everybody’s care.

Perhaps Google in all their infinite wisdom will pick up this blog entry and link to it.

But don’t worry my dear readers, I’m not done, now I’m just going to find another way to get my money back from them.. many people have won claims against spirit for this type of practice.

I pretty much plan on doing the following:
1) Filing a complaint with the BBB
2) Filing a complaint with the Connecticut consumer affairs department (they are actually really helpful).
2) Making friends and family aware that they should avoid Spirit Airlines.
3) Blogging about it (here) so that the occassional stranger will know to avoid them.
4) Keeping a really really close eye on the skies with my binoculars in the tri-state area and making sure to report any altitude violations I see to the FAA.
5) I may file a series of small claims against them which will force them to spend some time and money defending this rip-off practice, I’m not sure.
6) I may just waste 50k suing them for fraud. I have lots of good lawyers who are always happy to to get new work.

If anything happens I will update you!

As always,
-Arlo Gilbert