Spirit and a warning about guaranteed seating

[vallerii]

I know...I know...."spirit" really should be all I need to say, but typically we've actually flown with no problems with Spirit, and at less cost.

That being said, if you have paid for their "guaranteed" assigned seating (as opposed to their "you get what you get" priced seats), every time you get an e-mail with one of their myriad of flight changes KEEP checking you STILL have your seats. We actually had seat upgrades that were $35 a person, and they just up and LOST them. Luckily we noticed on an e-mail before a flight our seats were no longer there or it would have been one heck of a problem the day of the flight. (I'm flying with a toddler. For the sanity of everyone on the flight that kid needs to be seated next to me in the seat I picked and paid for, not in the back of the plane/not with BOTH her parents and/or partially next to a stranger she's gonna bug. Honestly, we paid extra to make the flight more enjoyable for everyone involved INCLUDING the airline staff themselves)

Where I have to really shake my head though is that when we called the girl could offer no explanation how though we actually paid the upgrade for guaranteed seats, how we no longer had them and her solution was to offer to book us out on a flight the NEXT DAY and she said how we wouldn't have to pay again for seat upgrades on that flight. No kidding, since I already DID. lol Seriously, how stupid can one get that this is a reasonable idea?? She didn't look for comparable seats (or better even...but like they'd actually do that. ha) It took a half hour or more of us telling her that us flying out the NEXT day was not a solution to THEIR mistake.

I can only scratch my head that the girl thought a flight out the NEXT day sounded reasonable as a fix and laugh, and just be glad we made the 30-45 minute phone call BEFORE arriving at the airport to straighten it all out eventually.

 

[rwdavis2]

You get,or not, what you pay for.

 

[seashoreCM]

Did you get the seating arrangement you wanted on your original flight date and approximate time?

 

[vallerii]

We did. Finally. So glad we called instead of just going to the airport. I imagine someone else now thinks they have paid for seats and no longer do.

 

[Baklava]

Is it possible they switched aircraft model for the flight? That could potentially screw up their seating chart.

 

[vallerii]

Pretty sure something like that happened. Irregardless if they have a policy where you can pay an upgrade for guaranteed seats ( which we did) then those seats shouldn't just disappear. We didn't even get notification that they lost the seats. We were just lucky enough to notice our seats were no longer showing on the reservation. Plus they have enough open seating they should have had no problem finding us something nearby (they tried to tell us they no longer had ANY seats anywhere on the airplane they could guarantee even though we had paid for pre-assigned seats). I still find it funny they were lost, then completely booked, then the same seats miraculously found when we said we had printouts and paid receipts for the original booking. I don't know if it's an automated system or manually entered but that's quite a snafu on their part. Anyhow, just mentioning so it doesn't happen at the airport for people when time is of the essence and it becomes an even bigger problem.