[Fulton]

In December of 2009 my girlfriend and I decided to send her to Florida to visit her mother for her birthday in February 2010. We decided that we would join Spirit's 9 dollar club and try to save some money. We called Spirit and signed up at the same time we booked the flight from Boston to Miami. A few minutes later we got an email from Spirit with the details of the flight.
Admittedly it is our fault for not looking at the email considering we had booked it over the phone and they had read the information of the flight off to us so we felt everything should be ok.
A week before the flight my girlfriend opened the email to make sure she had the link to remote check in. When she opened the email the first thing she saw was that the flight was not booked from Boston to Miami but reversed. Apparently the person that had put the information in scheduled us to leave Miami and fly to Boston and then back to Miami.
Figuring this was a simple issue we checked the flights going to Miami and saw that there were still plenty of seats available. We called customer service and immediate spoke with someone in India who said his name was John. He said that he could do nothing for us and that if we wanted to change the tickets we would have to pay $115. I was bothered by this and asked to speak to a manager. "John" proceeded to tell us that his manager would not be able to do anything either and that he would tell us the exact same thing. I spoke with John for a moment longer trying to tell him that this issue was something that the customer service had caused in the first place and that they should correct it.
John then transferred me to his manager who called himself "Jack". Jack said that it was not a problem that he could fix but he could get the transfer price down to $100. I told him that I shouldn't have to pay anything considering the problem was cause by a Spirit Rep in the first place. "Jack" said there was nothing further he could do then. He also said that he had no information of me ever speaking to a customer service rep and that the website had no problems that day so there was nothing he could do.
I called back about 20 minutes later hoping to get this resolved. Again I was immediately connected with India and I had the person answer transfer me to another supervisor this time I spoke with "Eric John"... (I honestly feel offended when these companies first have the balls to transfer me to India to save money, but on top of it tell their customer service department to give an English/American name to the caller... it is offensive).
. I spoke with Eric for a few minutes again going over the issue. This time Eric told me that the price was $115 and he could not do any better. I mentioned that the previous manager Jack had said that he would be able to do it for $100 and that I am willing to pay something because of the change, but I still believe that the issue wasn’t caused by us. Eric said that it was company policy to charge $115 to make changes to the ticket and that he could not do anything more. When I asked if he could get me in touch with Jack again he told me “There are more than 6 floor managers working here, and I do not know who you are referring to” and that there was nothing more that he could do for me.
So I ended up paying for the correction just so she could go visit her mother.

I would like to say that the story ends here but it does not...

I sent an email to Heather Harvey the Manager of Customer Relations at Spirit
It was forwarded on to someone else who sent me an email of apology and said that they would like to gather all of the information from both myself and to pull the tapes from the conversations that I had. I gave my consent to do so. They said it would take up to 72 hours (3 days) to gather all the info, review it and then contact me back.
I gave them a week and I did not hear back. So I responded to the email again and asked if there was an update, they said they were sorry but it was taking longer to find all of the information. So I gave them 2 more weeks, still no response, I wrote again and again I got a response of "our research is taking longer than we would like, we will contact you shortly". This was the last response I got for 3 months.
Finally I sent one last email asking for them to reply.

They sent a reply with only 1 line in the email "Customer fault booked in reverse" nothing else.

After this I have vowed that I will NEVER fly with Spirit Airlines again. I will gladly pay more money to any other airline than to ever let them have one more penny from me. This company does not care about their customers. They will never admit their fault when they cause a problem and they will do everything they can to avoid talking with their customers in person. What they did to my family is technically robbery. They messed up my flight schedule and then they demanded that I pay them more to fix their problem, this is straight out theft.

[jimworcs]

I think you could have a reasonable chance of winning in small claims court. Whether it is worth the hassle is another matter. However, a company which makes an error.. and clearly this is an error. If you live in Boston, the booked trip is clearly illogical. I don't accept that any company should have the right to charge a customer if they make an error. At the mimimum I would write to the DOT and ask them if a company is under any obligation to correct any errors they make.

[Jetliner]

I would instead contact your local TV news. In court it may be a hard case. Yes it's logical that you are in Boston, and your trip should have started there, but all they have to do is state that as far as they know you told them Miami to Boston by mistake, and thus that's what was booked. The other problem is they can show that the email was sent right off, and you did not call back until much later.

This should also be a lesson to everyone that when you book a flight, IMMEDIATELY review your itinerary. That's the only certain mistake you made here, simply because the sooner an error can be caught the better the chances of getting it corrected.

[adamr]

Wow, small claims court? On what basis? You mean you didn't check the email confirmation?

I'm sure you understand that this is your fault, not the airline's fault. When you buy a ticket, but it online and verify all the details. When you hit "buy" it's yours!