This week, Spirit Airlines made a spirited but stupid mistake in denying a dying Vietnam veteran a cash refund and today, the CEO of Spirit back down and gave the man a refund and donating $5000 to the Wounded Warrior organization.
From Fox News:
Dying Vietnam veteran Jerry Meekins is getting his money back from Spirit Airlines' tightfisted boss after all.
After a week of criticism from veterans around the nation, Spirit
CEO Ben Baldanza issued a statement Friday afternoon saying he would
personally refund Meekins' $197 airfare, and that the discount carrier
would make a $5,000 donation to the Wounded Warrior Project.
"He called me personally, and I'm going to take him at his word,"
Meekins told FoxNews.com. "He was apologetic and said he'd made a
mistake."
The move was a sharp reversal for Baldanza, who as recently as
Thursday had stubbornly refused to refund the cancer-stricken Marine's
money, even though Meekins' doctor told him he could not fly.
"Sometimes we make mistakes," Baldanza said. "In my statements
regarding Mr. Meekins’ request for a refund, I failed to explain why
our policy on refunds makes Spirit Airlines the only affordable choice
for so many travelers, and I did not demonstrate the respect or the
compassion that I should have, given his medical condition and his
service to our country.
“Therefore I have decided to personally refund Mr. Meekins’ airfare,
and Spirit Airlines will make a $5,000 contribution, in his name, to
the charity of his choice, Wounded Warriors."
I certainly see Spirit Airlines point of view. They offer the cheapest prices for airline tickets for one reason- they are tough and they charge only what the customer wants. (ok, 2 reasons)
Mr. Meekins took a calculated risk, he bought the tickets thinking he could fly and refused to buy the travel insurance.
This is like, in some rural areas of the country where a volunteer fire department would charge a fee to a homeowner for fire service. If the the home owner paid the fee and if there was a fire at their home, the fire department would come and put out the fire, no questions asked. But if the homeowner refused to pay the fee, most times, under $100 a year, if there was a fire at the home, the fire department would come out, make sure no one was in the house and then they would back off and let the house burn down. It's tough, harsh but preventable if only the homeowner paid the fire department fees.
Same case with Mr. Meekins. He refused to pay the insurance for the flight, about 10% cost of the tickets. Her gambled and lost and Spirit was right to refuse to give a refund to Mr. Meekins. And if Spirit caved in on this one case, then people will be demanding that their ticket be refunded for "hardship" reasons. Same thing would happen in the fire department situation.
So, now that Spirit caved, they still will have the bad publicity and they will now be deluged with requests for hardship refunds.
Of course, Spirit was getting a ton of bad press but also some free advertising from all the news article so they had to do something and they decided to refund Mr. Meekins money and made a donation all in hope the publicity will go away, which it will.
So, in the end, Mr. Meekins get his money, Spirit gets rid of the bad publicity and life goes on, one day at a time..
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