[Steviemac]

I fly Spirit between Fort Myers Florida and Detroit Michigan a few times a year. Over the years, I have been pretty satisfied with them. If you are flexible with your schedule, I’ve found that you can generally get some pretty cheap fares. However…

I started getting emails from them some time ago announcing their “9 Dollar Club.” A couple of times a week, I would get an announcement advertising these low fare specials. At first, there were many flights listed in these announcements that showed departures out of my home town of Ft. Myers going to numerous locations that Spirit flew, with Detroit shown frequently as a destination. While the actual 9 dollar fares were mostly for shorter range flights, I was still seeing many offers to fly to Detroit for fares as low as $17-27 dollars each way with a round trip purchase; as long as I was a member of the 9 Dollar Club.

Like I said, I usually fly to Detroit and back a few times per year for mini-vacations at times of my convenience. I figured by joining the club, the enrollment fee would surely be off-set by the low fare prices I would be able to qualify for by becoming a member. So I signed up.

Then, all of a sudden, the strangest thing happened.

Almost as soon as I became a member, I was still getting frequent emails advertising the 9 Dollar Club offers, but something had drastically changed.

Now, more times than not, Fort Myers is rarely listed in the emails I receive as a departure city qualifying for ANY low fares. And the few times Fort Myers is listed, Detroit isn’t on the list as a destination airport. I do see Fort Myers to Chicago, Fort Myers to Atlantic City, etc, etc, from time to time, but all of a sudden there seems to be NOTHING listed from Fort Myers to Detroit. And this change occurred almost as soon as I became a member.

It’s almost like Spirit knew from my past flight history that the only flights I flew were between Fort Myers and Detroit, and once they had my membership fee, they then took away the opportunity for me to take advantage of the low price offers by drastically limiting the flights departing out of Fort Myers.

Maybe I’m being overly suspicious, but something seems very fishy here.

Either way, I don’t think I can justify re-enrolling in the Club once my “membership” expires.