According to the LA Times, Spirit Airlines, the aggressively customer-unfriendly purveyor of cheap airfare and expensive extras, has gotten rid of its toll-free customer service numbers. Customers will now have to pay long-distance rates to Salt Lake City.
I’m not a fan of Spirit’s pricing tactics. The company goes so far as to quote airfare and fuel separately, as though fuel was an optional extra and you could shop around for a better price. And according to Spirit’s data, the company collects an average of $54 per flight in “optional” extras (like $35-$50 for a carry-on bag). Add $108 to a round-trip ticket, and Spirit doesn’t seem like such a bargain anymore.
That said, there is some real logic to this. We no longer live in an era of $0.25/minute long distance, and many consumers get unlimited long distance bundled with their mobile phone or landline service. So why should big companies continue to pick up the tab?
On the other hand, Spirit probably pays next to nothing for long distance anyway, so why not? That’s what makes me suspect this move by Spirit is more marketing artifice than actual cost savings. Like the “warehouse” grocery store which packs pallets to the ceiling to make you think you’re getting a great deal, Spirit seems to go out of its way to create the illusion that its prices are lower than they actually are. Part of that illusion involves stripping out every possible customer convenience. There will always be some customers willing to do almost anything in the name of a deal, even if that deal turns out not to be such a big deal after all.
