A Baldanza Bad Publicity Bonanza—That’s the Spirit!
Today’s rhetorical question: How do you get to be a highly paid, high-power CEO and not know how to use email?
Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza is mulling that one over as negative spin caused by his customer-dissing missive works its way around the Web. A pair of passengers were irked that a three-hour delay caused them to miss a concert in Atlanta.
They were hoping Spirit would pick up the tab for the tickets and hotel room, renumeration that would have set the company back a bit less than four hundred bucks—probably lower than greens fees for one of the boss’ golf outings.
The couple took their complaint one step further by emailing Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza directly. But here’s the thing…they also copied several other Spirit employees on the complaint.
That’s when the email-challenged CEO hit “reply to all†in his response.
And his reply?
“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.â€
Ben, here’s my new Spirit slogan suggestion:
Spirit—We Cost Less and Couldn’t Care Less
If you have Spirit slogan ideas, let’s hear them here.
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Eric said,
on August 24th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
We got Spirit
Yes we do
If you don’t like it?
Well …
Airline Reviewer said,
on August 26th, 2007 at 1:09 am
Nothing worse than a CEO that is both cheap and can’t understand how email works. He could have reimbursed them their money, not have gotten the bad publicity, and probably could have played it up for some good publicity
Alan said,
on August 26th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Spirit
We don’t stand a ghost of a chance of succeeding.
Jay Ferrari said,
on August 27th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Ben’s email inability is verging on legend:
http://chrishusein.com/index.php/2007/08/21/the-ben-baldanza-bonanza/
Alan said,
on September 4th, 2007 at 10:57 am
See the world with Spirit. And tell the world how bad we are.
Lenika Shah said,
on September 4th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
When you fly with Spirit, you get shaken. Not stirred.