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Thursday, January 6, 2011

I feel so f**king un-LUVED


Probably this is not relevant to the rest of you out there who haven't for the past 7+ years called yourself "Southwest's Bitch" as proudly as you can. But basically my day today has been ruined by this stupid article that better be an early April Fool's joke!


The short gist of it, for years I have been crazy loyal to Southwest Airlines and if you are half my friend you've probably called me an SWA agent because I've forced suggested to you that you opt to fly Southwest. Part of the reason is their Frequent flier program, where you just got points based on amount of flights flown and not based on miles. So it was easy to track and a student, short hop business traveler or regular 'common' person could still feel 'LUVd' and be encouraged to fly more. Now SWA announced that they spent $100million dollars in the last 5 years to come up with a new program that is shit! WTF? a 100million in 5 years to come up with something that a 5-year old will tell you is a bad idea.

So because I'm so attached emotionally and such to my relationship with Southwest...what started from an angry comment of sorts on their facebook page developed to this letter. I'm so mad!
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Dear Southwest,

I have flown Southwest since I was able to make decisions about what airline I pick and since I became more financially independent from my parents. Since then I have flown southwest as much as I can based on SWA's destination availability.

It is clear that I am not your biggest income generator, and therefore not a target customer to be catered to: I typically buy the cheapest flight option, most of my 'frequent ' trips are 1-hr flights between Oakland and Burbank, and these trips don't occur as frequent as you would like. But still I consider myself a very loyal customer to SWA; even if SWA costs more than another airline I will buy the ticket on Southwest. Not only do I fly SWA as much as I can, I strongly encourage (and sometime threaten) friends and family to do the same. Sometimes I even make decisions about where to or not go based on if Southwest flies there. “I'm sorry I can't come to your wedding, southwest does not fly there.”

My friends and family even call me a Southwest Agent. And they're serious when they say it.

Why was I such an advocate for SWA? Because I felt SWA was different and their business model showed that they 'cared' about 'people' even though they are not the most priviledged or the richest.

Over the years the RR program has been slowly climbed to cater less and less to the 'people', and now it has finally arrived to the top of the mountain.

SWA decides to say 'fuck-off' to their loyal customers and instead cater to the priviledged. I would like to say that this is a case of “biting the hands that feeds you.” But probably we less priviledged and commom people are not the hand that fed southwest, but we were the ones that did as much as we could to support a seemingly alternative and positive business model.

Yes I use the f-word in my letter to SWA because that's how I feel. Like they are really saying that to me.

These days SWA flight attendants & customer service are rude, less helpful and engaging; SWA is creating a more 'class-based' flight reservation option, and now they have a frequent flier program that is just as sucky (for lack of a better word) as any other airline.

I'm sure you don't care that you lost my loyalty. Because now you will 'exchange' me for a rich business man. I understand: It's just business!

Way to go Southwest!

Un-LUV,
Your neigbhor-hood bleeding heart radical!
 N

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Southwest somehow spilled bleach INSIDE my brother's and dad's luggage one time. So my whole family was at customer service like the mafia. The woman at customer service was very rude, so my mom yelled at her and banged her strong ass fist on the counter. The lady ran to the back to get somebody, my brother told my mom to calm down. I was little, so that's all I remember. So our family has always hated Southwest lol.

Danceslave said...

lol in the past I would have tried to convince you to change your mind but now it's null.

Funny thing I had a similar thing with JetBlue where my laptop got stolen and I swore off them...but now I may reconsider!