Spirit Airlines has a peculiar new promotion going on in an effort to win over current customers and attract new ones. Its “Hate Thousand Miles Giveaway” promises 8,000 free flier miles to Website visitors who sign up for a free Spirit account and send a hate message of no more than 140 characters about Spirit or any another airline.
The site features what looks like an SNL worthy jingle featuring the most extreme “hate” the airline has received about its services. One would almost think the promotion is a joke until you scroll down to a section that asks for the typical information to create user accounts on consumer sites. The airline plans to award up to 1 billion miles (which means up to 125,000 people will actually get free miles. Spirit can also “cancel or modify the promotion at any time,” according to the Website. Another eyebrow-raising part of the fine print is that submitting your “hate feedback is not a means to submit correspondence to the company’s customer support team.” For assistance, consumers are advised to visit CustomerSupport.Spirit.com.)
According to reports, the low-cost airline is known for having highest rate of customer complaints in the industry due to its policies of charging fees for almost every service or amenity available on an airline, including carry-on bags, pre-assigned seating, food and beverage and using a credit card to buy a ticket. According to Forbes, the airline is “among the tightest seat pitches on the planet, giving passengers only 28″ of space into which they can fit (United, by comparison, ranges from 30-36″ in economy).”
Complaints have been known to be disregarded by management, with CEO Ben Baldaza being quoted, “Let [the customer] tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.â€
The average one-way flight is a minimum of 10,000 miles, so customers who take advantage of the promotion will have to use existing miles or pay the difference for a round-trip ticket.
This new promotion to help clean up the airline’s image comes as ramp workers celebrate a victory in winning their battle to join a union, an effort highly contested by the company, according to reports.