Bad Spirit? Airline reschedules Thanksgiving flight, offers useless vouchers

Your kidding, right.

Isn’t it a reasonable assumption to make that when you purchase a ticket to fly you to Point A at a certain time that the airline should fly you to Point A at a certain time.

The problem isn’t solved by reading the legal microprint in each and every airline’s cointract of carriage each and everytime you buy a ticket.

The problem is solved by the airlines performing as they were paid to do.

Airlines have learned that they are free to screw over the consumer since most of us do not have the time or money to fight them. The solution lies in legislation that actually regulates the airlines to a standard set of responsibilites.

Unitl that time, we’ll get airlines stranding people for 8 hours on the runways, cancelling flights with no recourse, and “weather delays” when the problem is mechanical or merely lack of a full flight.

All your talk

Chris,

Thanks for posting this. A friend of mine has been asking me and my wife to take a trip with him on Spirit. He loves to get bargain airfares. I have told him that purchasing a ticket on Spirit could result in much grief and inconvenience that could wipe out the benefit of the very inexpensive air fare. This column has helped me make my point.

I have nothing against low-cost airlines. A recent trip on Allegiant Air was a positive experience. The problem with Spirit starts its bad attitude toward customers and continues with their having made it almost impossible to reach a human when there is a problem.

I disagree that airlines can write their terms any way they want. There comes a point at which their side of the “bargain” amounts to a promise to do nothing, and such a contract (without “consideration,” as lawyers say) is not binding.

Beyond that, the whole sales scheme could be deemed fraudulent unless the airline makes clear when it takes your money that it may or may not actually provide transportation in exchange.

A person lured into a nonbinding or fraudulent contract should “rescind” (cancel) and demand her money back (probably futile, in itself), and then go to small claims court to enforce the demand (more likely to produce a result).

For the consumer fraud aspect, the state’s attorney general office might be induced to make a helpful “inquiry.”

Just a thought, but at what point does the airlines “rescheduling” become fraudulent? Debbie purchased a flight to Atlanta at Thanksgiving and Spirit kept “rescheduling” until she could not take the flight. Since it’s obvious the Transportation Department’s not going to do anything about the airlines, maybe another agency, like the FTC which is tasked with protecting America’s consumers, could / would / should get involved.

Ok, wait… Spirit Airlines contract of carriage claims that they are not responsible for changing their own flight schedule? I understand weather and mechanical breakdowns and needing to change schedules in order to get Plane A to location B at a particular time and that shifts as service shifts seasonally, so the schedules need to change accordingly but come on, Spirit – you ARE responsible for changing your own flight schedule.

I really wish the DOT would investigate this airline.

I had a similar situation with Spirit and their game of “musical schedules,” – I booked a trip to Cartagena on Spirit in June. One week later, I received a notification that the schedule for our trip had changed – when I called and spoke to an agent, he told me that our original travel dates were no longer available as Spirit was no longer flying to Cartagena on those dates, and offered to rebook us on different dates, or cancel the reservation. At that time, I specifically told the agent that I had been about to book a nonrefundable hotel reservation for the original dates and so was concerned about the potential of additional future schedule changes. I then asked the agent whether there was any chance that the schedule would be changing again in the next two months, or any reason I should hold off on booking the hotel. He said no, assured me that the change was due to the fact that Spirit redid its schedules at certain times of year, and that it would not be changing again before we traveled in September. Based on his representations, I had him rebook us, and later made the hotel reservation.

Of course, one month later, another schedule change – now Spirit was flying to Cartagena only twice a week, making it impossible for us to take our four night trip. While Spirit did refund my ticket at that point, because of the $1200 nonrefundable hotel reservation, I had to scramble to find alternative flights on another carrier, for an additional cost of $356.40 which Spirit, of course, has refused to compensate me for, even though I was complaining about the misrepresentation by the agent, and not the fact that the flight schedule had changed (they intentionally misunderstood this point in virtually every communication). After endless hours of emails, phone calls, etc., with the assistance of Mr. Elliott I finally received a call from customer service agent Mia Pinango, who promised to pull the tapes from my conversation with the agent, and promised me that “once we can verify that you were given false information by the agent, compensation will be determined” (direct quote from her email to me). Unfortunately, she thereafter refused to respond to any of my subsequent messages, other than telling me that I now needed to instead speak with Tabitha McWilliams at Spirit because I had filed a DOT complaint. So, I started the whole process again by forwarding Ms. McWilliams my correspondence with Ms. Pinango, explaining that my complaint was about the agent’s misrepresentation, not the schedule change, etc. Ms. McWilliams pulled the tapes from my call with the agent, and acknowledged in an email that “we fell short in not relaying the correct information to you over the phone.” But, again, refused to provide the compensation promised by Ms. Pinango (I presumably am meant to be comforted by the fact that “this incident will be used for training purposes.”) She also refused to provide me with a copy or transcript of the tape, which I requested.

Frankly, the $350 is not going to break me, but the fraudulent practices and horrible customer service provided by Spirit make me want to do whatever I possibly can to help put them out of business and put some of the rude people I had the displeasure of dealing with out of a job. I am currently investigating potential small claims court remedies, and may call someone I know at DOT as well to see if I can be put in touch with the appropriate person over there.

To answer Nicole’s quesiton, it is not the rescheduling in itself that would be fraudulent, but advertising that they are selling transportation when, in fact, they are retaining the right (in the small print) to deny that transportation without offering either a reasonable substitute or else a cash refund.

This way of doing business lulls consumers into thinking they are buying a right to transportation when, in reality, all they are buying a sort of lottery ticket, one which usually pays off but, if it doesn’t, the buyer is simply out of luck.

One point of clarification. When they say that they are not responsible, what that means is that if you are relying on a specific schedule and you make plans based on that reliance, and the schedule changes, Spirit is not responsible for your plans.

For example, hlg22. You’ll have a really difficult time in small claims court. The fact that Spirit changed its flight does not make the liable for the inability to use the non-refundable hotel reservations that you booked.

That is a general principle of law called consequential damages. of course Spirit is responsible to refund your money.

Funny. I book my Christmas ticket in February as soon as the flights are available. Last year I had 18 scheudle changes. About 60 days before the flight, I review the schedule online and found a misconnect. I would arrive after the connecting flight left. I called United and within about 3 minutes, the records were cleaned up and I had new flights. I also had a change once that did not meet my schedule and United simply refunded my money.

Carver,
I would completely agree with you if what I was complaining about was just the schedule change – had I simply booked the flight, made the hotel reservation, and then had the schedule change, I agree that under Spirit (or any other airline’s) policies and existing law, I would have no recourse. My complaint is that I kept the reservation after the first schedule change based upon the EXPLICIT REPRESENTATIONS of a Spirit employee that the schedule was not going to change again before my trip, and reasonably relied upon those representations. That’s actionable fraudulent inducement, at least under my state’s consumer protection statute. However, with airlines you run into some preemption issues with the federal Airline Deregulation Act which I’m still looking at, and which is why I haven’t yet decided whether small claims or working my contacts at the DOT and trying to pursue something there is the way to go.

It is completely separate from the issue of whether their should be limits placed upon an airline’s ability to change it’s schedule, or whether excessive, frequent schedule changes constitute a deceptive trade practice – though Spirit seems to do so with far, far more regularity (and making more drastic changes, i.e., changing flights by days instead of minutes or hours) than any other airline I’ve experienced.

What AMAZES me is how Mr. Elliott and others in the travel industry don’t stand on top of the nearest building and shout – “NEVER FLY SPIRIT AIRLINES!” – Most of Spirit’s customers (victims) are not sophisticated travellers. They expect every company they do business with to be honest and fair with them. Not Spirit- Never – Ever

@Bob

Courts rule both ways on contracts. But various lawyers have told me that contract law is very flexible, which essentially allows (almost) any kind of term.

Unfortunately one will have to sue in court to test Spirit Airlines’ contract…if anyone’s up to it.

Yes, the moral of the story is simple: DO NOT FLY SPIRIT.
I recently spent over an hour trying to explain to them why when I book a refundable fair on their website (via utilizing refundable option on the drop down menu on the booking page) I expect it to be a refundable fair. Pretty standard procedure for any ‘real’ airline, but Spirit sinks into some black hole of logic trying to explain why it doesn’t take place. I eventually get transferred to a supervisor Donald M. who pedantically begins to give me an example concerning a $5 pen vs. a $3 pen with conditions. I have no issue with non-native English speakers however when a series of them speak down to me as if I cannot understand the fundamentals of internet usage nor reading comprehension I tend to get a little perturbed. So moral of the story, I will cancel the flight, file an appeal with my credit card company and never fly nor recommend Spirit to anyone under any circumstances.

I keep a personal “don’t fly” list of airlines that I don’t want to do business with. SPIRIT is at the very top of that list. I believe that there is a special place in hell reserved for their management team.