How To Lose Customers And Alienate People

An Orlando couple who experienced travel delays on Spirit Airlines wrote the CEO Ben Baldanza demanding compensation for the entire trip. They received this response from the company’s C.E.O accidentally:

From: Ben Baldanza [mailto:xxxxxxxxx@SpiritAir.com]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 1:02 PM
To: (removed by alex), Christy; Martin (removed by alex); Tony (removed by alex); John (removed by alex); Pasquale (removed by alex)
Subject: Re: Complaint

Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.

The delay that caused the couple to miss a special concert was only three hours and at the time, they were offered $200 in travel vouchers, so really…. yeah. Screw these people. HOWEVER, airlines are in so much crap right now with consumers that Benny Boy (who were sure as hell knows that his company has a blog devoted to trashing it) should

1. Be a bit more careful when he hits the send button

2. He should also truly, honestly care about his customers. The loathing tone in the email is just heart breaking.

3. Know and respect the immense power consumers have over his business in the digital age

Look at the recent debacle about Wal-Mart on Facebook or AT&T’s pulling their slogan due to consumer’s finding out it was false advertising to the brand “haters” of The Gap. Come on dude… The customer will get you. One way or another – they’re going to win.