Hello everyone! I would like to share the story of how #frontierairlines screwed my wife and I over arecent trip to Iowa.
First of all, we bought tickets back in February to fly to Des Moines, Iowa and back to Denver. We were leaving Denver on Tuesday, May26, and returning on Sunday, May 31. So on Monday, May 25, I logged in to the #frontierairlines website to check in for our flight, and found that I could not print our boarding passes. Closer inspection showed that the date on the website reservation was Monday, May 25, and that flight had, in fact, departed about 2 hours prior to the time at which I was attempting to check in! I called #frontierairlines, and while I was trying to sort out the confusion between the reservation's date (via the confirmation email we'd been sent the first week of February) vs. the website's date, I realized that our return flight had also been moved up a day, to Saturday, May 30. The person I was talking to observed in their system that there were, in fact, NO flights between Denver and Des Moines on either day for which Andrea and I had made reservations almost 4 months previous. She told me she would have to investigate and call me back when she figured it out.
In about 10 minutes, I got the callback, and was told, and I quote: "That airport will no longer allow us to fly in or out on certain days. An email was sent out over the weekend (that is, the day or two before I'm talking to her) telling everyone affected about the changes to their itineraries. " The only days #frontierairlines was now flying into Des Moines from Denver were Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. I was told that my only options were a) a full refund, and I would be free to pursue another airline's offerings(oh, and likely we would have been charged their cancellation fee, of course), or b) I could fly on Wednesday (since we'd missed the Monday flight(s) already) and Saturday or Monday to return. I found this unacceptable, and told her that I felt #frontierairlines had a responsibility to either make good on the contract we'd both agreed to four months prior, even if that meant flying us on a similar schedule with a different carrier. Well, #frontierairlines doesn't have agreements with any other carrier, so they couldn't transfer us was the answer. I made clear that I didn't care about their agreements, that they should be able to buy us seats on another carrier on a similar schedule. Which would have meant two United flights, for which the cost was approximately $2000 for two tickets on that schedule, given that it was the day before our desired travel date. She told me I'd have to speak to her "specialty supervisor" about that, and transferred me.
The "specialty supervisor" gave me *exactly* the same options, with zero flexibility. After a few minutes, I then asked for THAT person's supervisor. After being transferred again, I got yet another person who offered 2 options and no flexibility. But the third person informed me that, if I was serious about #frontierairlines paying our way on another airline, I would have to speak to "Customer Relations". I hadn't been speaking to customer relations already? Nope. Turns out "Customer Relations" at #frontierairlines is a department that is open for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, from 8AM to 11AM weekdays only. So I agreed that I would try to speak with "Customer Relations" the following morning, the day I had been planning, FOR FOUR MONTHS, to travel.
Later in the evening, I decided, on good advice from Facebook friends, to research other possible cities to switch the tickets to in order to make the same schedule. I checked Omaha and Kansas City--turns out, #frontierairlines only flies in and out of both those cities on the SAME EXACT SCHEDULE as they do Des Moines, M-W-F-Sat. Then I checked Cedar Rapids. That city, #frontierairlines flies in and out of on a T-Th-Sun schedule. So this means two things: if we're going to stay on #frontierairlines, then we're going to have to change to Cedar Rapids, and THE STORY ABOUT DESMOINES 'NOT ALLOWING' THEM TO COME AND GO CERTAIN DAYS IS ALMOST CERTAINLY A LIE. Nevertheless, we're going to try to work with #frontierairlines because it's still our best shot.
So, Tuesday, May 26 arrives. I handed off to my wife to speak to #frontierairlines and their "Customer Relations" folk, while I got things ready to go. She called in at precisely 8AM. SHE WAS ON HOLD, NEVER SPEAKING TO A SINGLE PERSON, FOR ALMOST TWO HOURS.
Let's put that into perspective: for almost 2/3 of the entire time that "Customer Relations" would be open that day, there was absolutely NO customer service happening for us. On the day we intended to travel.
So, after an hour and 45 minutes, and keeping "Customer Relations" hold on one phone, Andrea used her cell phone to call Reservations back again. She did her best haggling with them to change over to the Cedar Rapids itinerary, which they did, finally, do. BUT. They charged us *exactly* $300, claiming that amount was the difference in fares. And, they intended to charge us the $150 change fee (times two, of course!). Andrea managed to talk them out of that, thankfully, but was so exasperated with the whole situation that she accepted the $300 in 'fare difference.' After she'd settled that, she also hung up on the call to "Customer Relations" which was never answered.
So, in the end, #frontierairlines seems to have gone to an every other day schedule in some of the cities they fly to, and are claiming that the destination airports are revoking permission for them to fly in and out on certain days. I do not believe that this story is true. Even if it were, an email over the holiday weekend as the only notice your entire trip has been rescheduled for you is FAR from acceptable practice. Oh, and said email was nowhere to be found, by the way. And then, #frontierairlines managed to extort a further $300 from us, almost doubling the cost of the tickets. On top of all that, any company that has a "Customer Relations" department that is open to the public fewer hours every week than most companies' customer relations departments would be open any TWO DAYS of the week is clearly not interested in their customers' concerns.
After the trip, I sent a very short (due to the limitations of Frontier's customer 'service' website) complaint, telling them about how I'd posted the story you just read on Facebook and encouraged everyone to share it. After more than a week (almost two, I believe), I finally got a response, wherein I was told that the change in schedule had been made back in February, and my wife had allegedly 'approved' it at that time. Utter falsehood. But, in the interest of 'good will', they refunded the $300 charge for changing our tickets at the last minute.
So they've earned a tiny bit of relief from me screaming about it online--but will never fly with them again.