Yes, you do have to pay attention and plan well in advance. I recently booked my wife and I for three round trips to Florida in the next six months. In each case we were charged $ 5.00 per person for the round trip ticket. It costs us only $ 2,500.00 in purchases for each ticket. Show me another airline that will come even close to doing that.

Does Spirit Airlines have problems? Sure, but lets also give them credit for some great deals and not compare them with airlines charging over twice the price.

Jeff

Then they started charging for luggage; it still wasn’t too bad. Then shortly after, they started charging for overhead carry-on and added other fees. At this point, I wondered if traveling with Spirit was still worth it. But yes, I continued. Also, sale fares were increased from $9 to $19 from & to NY/FLL. This increased the round trip sale price for 2 to about $240 total. Also, bare in mind, these prices are for selected days only.

The Barclay credit card was better than the BOA card because redeeming miles was not as expensive. But pity on those who needed to deal with customer service! I have nothing against Indians, but they have extremely horrible customer service skills. They are robotic and VERY non caring individuals. I dealt very little with them before the Barclay credit card. Then a little more when they cancelled with Barclay and introduced the BOA card. I didn’t trust them, so I opted not to sign up for the new card. I did continue traveling with them, and did manage to use my miles. Using my miles, I paid $180 for my wife, child and I round to and from NY/Puerto Rico. I was content.

At present, I am still a member in the $9 club (which cost $59.95 a year). But recently, they have up’ed their sale fare price NY/FLL to a minimum of $28 each way. This would bring the total sale price for a round trip for 2 to approx $280. Though this may still sound like a good deal ($140 per person round trip) to and from NY and FLL, it’s not! After you take into account all the aggravation you’re likely to go through (and yes you will) and the constant pressure to sign up for their BOA card (which is absolutely worthless), you’ll wish you never flew with them.

Avoid the card at any cost. Redeeming miles on the BOA card is absolutely ridiculous and, when you do the math, it almost is a scam. You know what I find absolutely hilarious with these idiots at the call center in India? If you have a problem and need to call them, the chances are that you’ll get no resolution and as a result, you’ll be obviously upset. Then after asking you if they are able to help you with anything else, they’ll ask you if you would like to sign up for their credit card …(blah, blah, blah). How dumb are these people? Think about it: “we are sorry we lost your luggage, would you like to sign up for our credit card?” Or “we are sorry you were charged a $175 cancellation fee, would you like to sign up for our credit card?” or “we are sorry we lost your dog…” You get the point. LMAO!

Before flying with Spirit, do your research. Read the reviews. Avoid them and their BOA card. AVOID!

1. The round trip only for non-peak season (before Feb 15th and after April 27th). If I fly during peak season, it’s only for 1 way, non round trip.
2. Can only be redeemable by me (can’t even apply to a child)
3. There are “redemption fees” for using the miles if used for flights before 180 days from now
4. During peak season – even for the 1 leg they the do cover, it’s only for hours of 5:30 am or 11:50 pm flights (from Chicago to Florida). I fly with 3 years old which means I can’t fly during these hours. They DO NOT cover the “normal” hours during day.

When I joined, I was told (and it is in the documentation that I have) that I would receive 5% rebate on airline tickets I bought with Spirit on the card. I never received that and Spirit says it is a Barclays issue but Barclays says it is a Spirit issue. Go figure.

Then I had a bunch of travel problems on Spirit, not the least of which was when I donated about 100,000 miles for a charity to take a videographer to Lima from Los Angeles. Spirit denied boarding to her in Ft Lauderdale, halfway through her trip to Peru, as there was a baggage embargo to Lima. Yes, this was on the Spirit website, but not in the ‘baggage policies’ section… it was in it’s own section at the bottom of the page titled ‘Lima baggage embargo’ and was not referred to any place else. If they were intentionally trying to trap people, they could not have done a better job. My donation of miles escalated into what I felt was an obligation to buy her ticket to Lima… $1,500 cash. Spirit would not even consider giving me back the miles for the flights that were not taken.

Then about 6 months ago, I get notices that my Spirit mastercard is becoming a Juniper card. What I didn’t realize is that now that I am no longer a Spirit Mastercard holder, that the balance of the miles I had earned (about 70,000 miles still unredeemed) would expire with 3 months of inactivity on my Spirit flyer account.

And so went the balance of the miles I earned with Spirit. I spent almost $200,000 on their flippin’ card and never so much as got a flight back (well, except for LAX to FLL, which was one-forth of the trip), at which time a charitable videographer and all her luggage were left standing at the curb in a strange town, alone.

You can’t swing a dead cat on the internet without hitting a complaint about the customer service of Spirit. I have to admit that their cheap prices did sometimes catch my eye, but I have finally controlled those urges and I don’t even look at them any more. There are a lot better ways to get to Cancun.. ways that won’t leave me needing a few shots of tequila when I get there just to settle down my frustration at some new issue I would have with them.

They are not flexible whatsoever and if you have been on one of their flights you know you are making sacrifices before you ever step on the plane.

Anyway, goodbye Spirit!!! and good riddance.