THIS IS A LONG ONE!!! Took me 3 hrs to write so enjoy!!! (Sidenote Suggestion: I think it's best to read this post 1st to get the gist of what I'm talking about with the next post)
Hiyoooooo!!!! I know, I know! (singing Rihanna: Wherrrrrre haaavvvee yoouuu beeeen, allll myyyyy lieeeeeiiifffee?)
I've been around and recently I've been to Cancun/Playa De Carmen, Mexico. It was a truly amazing trip and there is another blog post here ---> Cancun 2012 <---- that will explain the good. This post is to bitch about the bad and the ugly, and trust me it doesn't get badder or uglier than Spirit Airlines! Don't believe me? Just keep reading. I have a great imagination but honestly you CAN NOT make shit like this up!!!!!!!!
Here we go! So my friends and I booked a 6 Day/5 Night stay in Cancun via bookit.com, (these people will also be getting a side Bitch It Out Blast! I'm out for blood today, hmph). We booked our trip since January 2012. So on Sunday, we went to Laguardia airport expecting to spend a portion of the day travelling to Cancun and we were suppose to get there around 4pm Mexico time. The gods had something else in mind for use that day.
ARRIVING - NYC to MEXICO
So my flight with Spirit was at 10:30am and I arrived at the airport around 8am for checkin (I really hate the two hour rule. I think it's just a ploy to get people to buy stuff in the airport! Duty Free products anyone?) So once I got there, the line for Spirit was wrapped for days and reached the nearby counter of the airline next to use. I was already upset learning that there is a limit of 40lbs on the bags and that there is a $43 baggage fee for ANY bag and a $40 baggage fee for a carry on? (Cheap ass airline. Who charges for a carry on?) But after my near heart attack and a few weeks of coping, I made not peace but .........with the ridiculous baggage fees. I even went as far as to have the exact weight and price for the bag. Anywhooo, so we stand and wait about an HOUR on the line and some airline employees tell us to move to another line. We move to another line and I'm figuring that they opened another counter to make the line move faster. BUT NOOOOOOO.....This was just the beginning of a horrible nightmare! As we're standing and waiting with NO ONE giving us any information as to what is going on, about 20-25 mins go by and we find out that our flight was CANCELLED!!!
Cancelled? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN OUR FLIGHT WAS CANCELLED? I have been checking the weather on my iPhone for the past 2 WEEKS and it will be 88 degrees and sunny in Cancun ALL WEEK. WTH? Why is it cancelled? So as my friends and I stand there, people are starting to get very aggrevated at the lack of detail. Finally, some dude from Spirit announces that our flight to Fort Lauderdale, (which was suppose to connect us to the flight to Cancun) was cancelled because..................................drumroll please..............................................................
THE FLIGHT CREW DID NOT SHOW UP!!!
.................................................BATHROOM BREAK......................................................
That's right. The flight crew DID NOT show up. (Silence)......What does that even mean? You mean that the ticket I purchased SIX months ago isn't valid because the people who work for YOU did'nt feel like getting there asses to work that day? You do not even know how PISSED off I was. There are no words in the dictionary to describe this. And if you think it's that bad, it only gets worse. We get to the checkin counter and we ask the guy "So wassup? What are we suppose to do now?" Here we are thinking they will have another flight later that day or that they would put us on a different airline to Fort Lauderdale so we can catch our connecting flight. We still had time, since our connecting flight was at 2pm.
You know what the Spirit guy told us? "The next available flight we can put you on is on July 4th." Mind you it was July 1st and we booked the hotel until July 6th. We said "Hell NO! You're gonna have to do better than that. We need to leave America TODAY!" So after who knows how long, the guy tells us to try and see if American Airlines has a flight leaving NY for Cancun the same day. What we planned on doing was getting reimbursted by Spirit and booking with American Airlines for a non-stop to Cancun. So we ran alllllll the way down to the American Airlines counter to ask about any last min flights. They told us of 2 that day in JFK airport that they could get us on. So it was just a matter of getting Spirit to get us our money back! (The lady at American was sooo helpful, she told us about how Spirit was a horrible airline, that charges for EVERYTHING and use old plane parts in their aircrafts. She told us how they refuse to "play nice" with other airlines - which was why it was so hard for use to get another flight - and she even said she would choose fly every other airline in the world before she'd fly Spirit! You go girl).
.....................................................INTERMISSION.............................................................
After about an hour and a half of trying to get to another flight, Spirit's reimbursement would have taken about a week to get back into the bank account. So after exchanging some words, we had to get the manager to get us on another flight. However, they would not purchase from the airlines who were basically standing right next to them. Instead they purchased the ticket from orbitz.com. Something I could have done myself. The flight that they put us one was not either of th e TWO available flights to from American Airlines, but it was some flight on Delta to Atlanta leaving at 7pm and we would have a connecting flight leaving at 8am from ATL to Cancun and she said that was the best they can do. By that time I realized "we're not getting to Cancun today." (We were suppose to be in Cancun already however. We found out later that our names were even on the flight list and that bookit.com put the wrong flight on our itinerary and that we were suppose to be on the Spirit flight that took off at 6am that day, NOT the flight that was cancelled. - roll my eyes, GET IT TOGETHER PEOPLE!). But I sure as shit knew that I was NOT going back home and I was NOT staying in New York that day. So we tried to get Spirit to to pay for the hotel in ATL as well as transportation to and from the hotel. The was hard as hell to budge but they agreed to pay for them. HOWEVER, in the last minute, the manager told us that Spirit has told them that they are not allowed to do anything else for customers, so we would have to pay for the hotel ourselves. (Seriously?What do you mean you can't do anything else for customers, it's YOUR fault, and this is a CUSTOMER SERVICE BUSINESS DAMMIT!!!). Instead they decided to give us a $21 luinch voucher and sent us away.
I was happy that Delta offered 1 free bag so I was able to save my $43 and was way under the 50 lbs limit. However, the Delta flight was insane itself. Our flight was at 7pm, yet we didn't take off until 9:30pm because of "winds in Atlanta" or something like that. So once we FINALLY took off, everything was finally moving and I was happy to get off the ground and out of NYC. However, halfway through we experience turbulance sooo turbulancy (gonna have to double check if that's a word, I'm pretty sure it's not), but the turbulance was so wicked, I thought I was gonna die. I love flying but for the 1st time I really thought I wasn't gonna make it to Cancun. It was that bad, my friend is a nervous flyer so she was in bad shape and another lady threw up twice and passed out in the middle of the isle. But all in all we got to ATL (very nice airport) and finally made it Cancun, even though we lost a day from our vacation.
DEPARTING - MEXICO TO NYC
All trip long, we tried to avoid talking about Spirit Airlines because we remembered that we were going to have to fly back with them and let's face it, if you want to ruin a good time, think of those raggedy bums. ANYWAYS, so we arrived at the airport and the line for spirit was long (as usual) and we were getting ready for checkin. Once we to the checkin counter I weighed my bag and it was about 46 lbs because of the souvenirs and the liquor I bought in Mexico. So they charged me $43 for just having a bag and an additional $25 for agrand total of $68 to flight one God forsaken bag. I had half a mond to just toss the bag but I had too many new shirts and dressed (and liquor) that I just didn't have the heart to get rid of. So when I take my money out to pay, the Mexican Spirit man tells me that they don't accept American money and that I can only pay in pesos or credit. I don't usually travel internationally with any credit or bank cards so I would have had to pay over $1,000 in pesos. When I looked into my wallet, I had $134 in pesos. So as pissed as I was, I asked the guy if there was a place to convert the pesos and he said it was past security but if I do that I would have to pay $80 instead of $63. Why I'd be paying $17 more? Because they currency rate in the airport is less somehow IDK. So I was able to get my friend to pay with her card and I payed her back on the spot.
So we finally got past security and we went to Duty Free and bought some more liquor :-). So everything was smooth sailing from then and I thought the worse was over. HAHAHAHAHA BOY WAS I WRONG. Our flight from Cancun to Fort Lauderdale was at 12pm, and our flight from Fort Lauderdale to NYC was at 4pm. Seems like plenty of time right? Wrong!!! You want to know why? Two words. CUSTOMS and TSA. Spirit didn't realize that connecting flights works best so close together WHEN YOUR'E CONNECTING FROM THE SAME COUNTRY!!! We landed in Fort Lauderdale around 2:30pm and boarding for our next flight was 3:15. That only left us with about 45 mins to get off the plane (with people who love to carry loads of lugage, and go through customs (even though my customs guy was a hottie who gave me a refreshing brief conversation - Gotta find the light in the tunnel somehow right?). To add insult to injury, once we left customs we all had to go TO baggage claim, get our bags, put our Duty Free purchases inside and RECHECKIN our luggage then we had to pass through TSA and finally run to the gate that was boarding the plane.
............................................CIGARRETTE BREAK.......................................................
Back so soon? Don't worry, the stories almost done. I'm getting horrible flashbacks just writing this stupid thing. SCREW SPIRIT
That's right. Beside ill scheduling of the layover time between the plane and it's connecting flight, Spirit would not reload our bags onto the connecting flight. We had to check in AGAIN. When we tried to check in, there was no one at the checkin counter becuase they were upstairs but they didn't have a sign stating this. And the stupid man from Jetblue caught an attitude with us for not knowing that (I had to ask him if he was retarded, I mean how were WE suppose to know this?) So we had to run upstairs, checkin the bags, run through TSA, who like to take their sweet time, and then run to our gate to catch our flight with about 5 mins to spare before they took off.
Spirit airlines is the jackass off all jackass companies. They'll charged for drinks on the plane, for bags, for being alive, for breathing etc. It's companies like these that make flying a nightmare. I would wish Spirit on my worse enemies and in fact if they told me they were flying Spirit I would book them a first class ticket on any other airline before I let them leave the earth on Spirit.
I am looking to take some kind of legal action against these clowns because, many people that I know of when they hear Spirit, they automatically associate them with a bad experience.
A word of advice to Spirit Airlines: You are customer service, that is what you do. Stating that you can do nothing more for customers is how you lose business not gain any. There's a difference between being cheap and being frugal. AND YOU ARE CHEAPER THAN CHEAP. You are selfish and connoving and constantly trying to get over on people gets you nowhere. So pack your bags (paying $43 per bag of course) and beat it. I can guarentee your services will no longer be needed by me ever again. I rather fly in an Airline with Helen Keller as my pilot a million times over before I ever set foot in your airline again.
I got a REAL plane to catch. Now Roger That
F*%K Around and Never Get Rogered Back - Lil Wayne
-S
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