Las Vegas, January 5, 2015, I beat the system, or so I thought.
Attending my first ever CES in Las Vegas, my goal is to better understand IoT and how it will affect the lighting business. Although EdisonReport had our best year ever in 2015, your humble editor planned to attend this show as cheaply as possible using discount airlines and Peer-to-Peer travel.
Southwest normally has the best fares out of Nashville, but it was $367 one-way to Las Vegas, and I accept the fact that flight costs were high because of CES. However, I found a direct flight to Denver on SWA for $99 and then a $39 flight from Denver to Las Vegas on Spirit Airlines. Because I choose to travel with a suitcase the actual cost on Spirit was $69. Nevermind. This was a steal, as my total one-way fare was $168—saving almost $200.
My SWA 5:40 am departing flight was on time and I arrived at the Denver Admirals Club at 8am for my three-hour layover. There was a “Travel Advisory ” email from Spirit stating that my 11 am was cancelled. No explanation. I clicked the link to book the next flight and it took me to a Spirit credit card offer. Unhappy, I called their customer service number, which took about eight minutes just to get past the automated attendant. When a person calmly says “help, help” about twenty times into a phone while in the Admirals Club, one receives strange looks. After speaking to a woman with an extremely thick foreign accent, I learned that the next flight was at 6 pm. Now irate, I gave up.
Southwest had seven remaining flights to Vegas and all seven were sold out. Fortunately, I was able to book a flight on Frontier for $179. When I went to cancel the Spirit flight, it was unclear if I would receive a credit for future travel or a credit to the credit card. Turns out it was a credit that must be used within 60 days.
Think if we ran our industry this way. I know you are having a grand opening at the end of January but your luminaires won’t be ready until February, so you’ll have to buy them somewhere else and probably pay extra to have them air freighted in. Oh, by the way, we won’t refund your money either and we will ship you these fixtures to you after your grand opening even though we know you won’t need them. Thank you for buying Spirit Lighting fixtures.
