Spirits Airlines Worst Airline Ever Miramar Florida

I am writing to voice my concerns about the horrific customer service I received following missing  a flight  between San Juan (Puerto rico)  and Fort Lauderdale (Florida) yesterday July 16, 2013. I would sincerely appreciate you taking couple minutes to read my concerns, which I believe are shared by many of your customers.

 What I would like to specifically bring to your attention is the lack of empathy and customer service mindset amongst the "manager" level employees I dealt with at Spirit. Given, agents/customer service representatives have limited decision making authority, I requested to speak with "managers" after each interaction I had with Spirit representatives, and each time I spoke with a manager, I was utterly disappointed; and thus my suggestion that providing better customer service training at Spirit is warranted. I would like to provide you with a brief context of my recent experience with Spirit. Upon arrival to San Juan /Puerto rico on Sunday evening, July 16, 2013 to catch a flight to Fort Lauderdale, FL  I was informed by the check-in kiosk that the "flight has been closed already (we arrived at the counter around 320 or 3:30 pm, the departure time was 4:08pm, we only had carry-on bags. During the approximately 15 minutes I stood at the counter, trying to explain to the agent that we had a last minute emergency and couldn’t make it earlier to the airport. Some of the roads were closed due to some repairs and we were on traffic for over one hour. The agent who was just listening to our concerns and was not being empathetic at all, just said that the flight was closed and there was nothing he could do about this. Never showed a helpful attitude and basically laugh at us when we tried to explained what happened. We asked him if we could be send on the next flight and he just said that the next flight was on the schedule for next day. Also, that if we wanted to travel we had to purchase new tickets. We again tried to convince him to try to do something about this and he completely refused just turning around and talking on his cellphone. Unfortunately I was not able to obtain his name. He did not have a name tag. It was the most frustrating and horrible costumer service experience. Being in another state trying to come back home to take care of some personal situations.

After 20 minutes bagging this person for help, we turned around and started to ask at every airline for the next available flight to Fort Lauderdale. We asked an airport security member and he informed us that our plane was still at the airport (around 4:30pm) meaning that we could board this plane, however due to the lack of customer service skills and professionalism this person refused to do so.

Finally we were able to purchase a flight back home to Fort Lauderdale, we explained the situation to a Jet Blue agent and she was pleasant, and understood our situation and was able to put us on the next flight. We had to spend almost $1000 to purchase these three tickets to return home.

We were never offered a solution; on the other hand the few agents at the Spirits airline counter were just hanging out and seem to care less about the problem that we were confronting. Don’t understand why we had to go to another airline to find a solution to our problem.

At least a solution, we were not asking to travel for free, but to at least being concern and willing to assist us with this problem.

Tried calling costumer service, the agent who answered the phone, stated that she was only a reservation agent however she confirmed ta the flight took off from Puerto Rico around 5 pm, that afternoon. Also advised that this type of situation has to be solved at the counter.

At this point, frustration was the only answer that I had to all my questions, I decided to call back and speak with a supervisor. After 20 minutes on hold, I was able to speak with Jorge, who claimed to be the supervisor. During our conversation more frustration was added to my mind, this person did not have costumer service skills at all, did not help me or at least did not make the attempt to do so, also decided to end our conversation hanging up the phone on me.

Lastly, as a relatively new public airline, it may have positioned itself as a "no frills" airline, competing on price. However, if it neglects customer service, it will not be able survive just by competing on price in the long run. The industry as a whole has gone the way of becoming a provider of a commodity, and airliners will not be able to compete on price alone. Spirit's prices will have to move up and / or other airlines will be able to further lower their prices given improved scale given industry consolidation.

Unfortunately, because of the lack of sympathy with customers, they have turned away a customer and Spirit will be generating significantly less revenue from me in the future. I would never fly Spirit for business or personal travels. However, this incident brings to light that Spirit needs to better hire and train "managers" to deal with customers more effectively. While it's important to focus on the operations and process to make sure things operate smoothly and seamlessly, it's just as important to provide managers with better training on addressing contingency and customer service issues.

Flight details:

Flight Number 710

From San Juan Puerto Rico

To Fort Lauderdale, FL

Date: 7/16/2013

I appreciate you taking the time to listen to my concerns and hope you will take actions to address them.
Thank you.