Spirit Airlines Eliminates Live Social Media, Proud of Cost Savings

Not from the Onion.

Spirit Airlines has moved away from humans performing customer service on Twitter (they weren’t really very responsive to begin with) to an auto-responder instaad.

[A] big social media team costs money, so we put our feed on Autopilot to save you cents on every ticket.

Other travel providers are concerned with defending their brand online, or want to create customer evangelists.

Customer service, to Spirit, is a cost center. They believe having customers who think you’re bad is a good thing. So why employ a twitter team?

Of course they don’t want to invest in a frequent flyer program that can do more than get you magazine subscriptions free anyway.


About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Well, not the year for an AA greyhound merger apparently. See the FT thread on AA/US not allowing Jfk-Lga transfers on domestic itins.

  2. To say they don’t have a frequent flyer program or much of one is wholly inaccurate. In reality, they have one of the most exploitable ones. I’m only glad that people have not figured this out – otherwise it would ruin it for those of us who know the value of flying for 2500 miles one way. Flew my family to Orlando for Spring Break for 20,000 miles and 100 bucks. God bless’em.

  3. I agree with Matt. If you get the credit card and take advantage of a few promos like the latest complaint one you can easily earn trips all over, even South America. I know it’s Spirit but it still seems like some good values. The only thing I really hate is that the miles expire too quickly. 90 days, really?? How about a year at least.

  4. Spirit charges for carry-ons, and adds extra for any seat that isn’t a middle seat. They bring the concept of nickel-and-diming to a whole new level. 3-month point expiration is ridiculous. That alone prevents me from ever using them again.

Comments are closed.