[Skipper]

I wrote the complaint below to the company, and I got a useless answer back. By the way: I'm from Denmark. Kind regards.

I have google’d the words “Hate Spirit Airline”, which gave an impressing list of customer complaints. Always nice to know, that you're not alone.

We were supposed to fly from New York to Miami the 27. December - to spend 3 days in Miami – before we would continue to the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately this was during the winter storm and even more unfortunately: We had bought return tickets for both flights at Spirit Airlines.

We tried to get in contact with Spirit Airlines from our hotel, but neither telephone (busy), web-site or mail requests resulted in any clarification regarding the weather situation, so we bribed a taxi (50$) to overcome the snow covered roads – leading to La Guardia.

During the check in, we found out, that we were supposed to pay a massive amount for our checked baggage. We are from Europe, where you don’t pay for this sort of thing. In that part of the world, we operate with a strange concept called service. Fortunately our bags weren’t big enough to qualify as carry on baggage, as this would have cost us nearly the same - as we paid for the checked luggage.

After a considerable waiting time, our flight was the last to get cancelled. So we had to get back to a long queue at the check-in counter to seek help. A lot of waiting – but no help. My wife at last succeeded in getting the money returned for the trip, but could not get help to anything else. The answer to any question was: “Call our toll-free phone. They can help you.” I tried to get our checked-in baggage back, and I was told, that I could get it from a room below. I spotted our bags through a glass door, but the door was locked. Found a Spirit-person, who said, that the door would be opened in a few moments. This means ¾ of an hour in the land of Spirit.

We got a taxi – after waiting a very, very long time in a very, very could line. In a perfect world, the airlines would have organized some kind of transportation. We were happy to find out, that our old hotel could accommodate us, but the nightmare wasn’t over. We had to rearrange our flights, so we called the much advertised toll-free number. I gave up after having waited for 5 minutes to get through. My wife is more stubborn, so our next call lasted 1 hour and 18 minutes, where approximately half the time was spent on waiting to talk to a person.

The long lasted person was a female, speaking English - almost as bad as I do. I think, I spotted a South American accent, but who knows? She was stressed, and we were in panic, so the conversation was almost useless. We had to repeat our information again and again – even after we had approved her version, when she read them back to us. In fact it went so slowly, that one of two connected flights was sold out – during the conversation. At times we thought, that the Spirit-person was taking the ****. At last we closed the deal, and to the strange persons credit – we ended up with the right tickets. The price though was increased by 360$ without an explanation or regular documentation by e-mail. Talk about exploiting people.

I would very much like to own the recorded call, as this would bring me a good laugh – in about 20 years. By the way: The toll-free phone number did cost us around 165$, as it is not free, when you call it from a Danish mobile. I guess Spirit won’t pay.

No problems on the following flights, apart from when we checked in ourselves and – by mistake – charged us self for two carry-on bags. We discovered the mistake immediately and tried to get a Spirit person to undo the transaction. Not possible. We would have to call to the famous toll-free number. We found a phone in the airport, where I got to talk to a male person, who cut the connection, when things got too complicated. A second try resulted in a new South American female accent. She claimed, that she could not help me. I think, I did some swearing – as I smashed the phone back into its holder. My clever wife found a service!!! counter, where we found the one and only helpful person from Spirit Airlines. In a matter of seconds, she solved the problem – and she was in fact able to smile. We really hope for her, that she will find a better job - at a real airline.