As you may recall, earlier in the summer, I was excited about buying this little “all-you-can-fly” buffet from Independence Air called the GLiDE Pass, cleverly CAPsed to appear more like a 13-year-old's eBay auction for a code to access their secret LiveJournal. Well, the pass was a joke. A disaster of availability. At one point I re-read the terms and conditions to make sure they were selling air travel and not just air. I could just see people lounging happily in the plane, still parked at the gate, snacking on peanuts remarking, “Oh MY! Look at the wealth of HOT AIR coming from those jet engines! We really got what we paid for, this is beautiful, and so WARM!”
To pat themselves on the back (or just for a good laugh and an evil eyeroll, I'm not sure which), Independence Air decided to send out an email survey to all of their LOYAL AND HAPPY customers who had purchased the delightful bargain slice of affordable American freedom known as the GLiDE Pass. A link pointed me in the direction of a one-page survey consisting of 5 short questions like “How happy were you with the GLiDE Pass?” followed by two radio buttons 1) Happy, 2) Wish I could say I wasn't happy, but I was!
Then, in what I assume was an effort to keep college customers from becoming CS majors merely to learn how to destroy flyi.com, they offered a box for comments at the bottom. In fact, so many people had already blown off steam in this box, I took off my clothes for a minute and baked in the e-sauna.
After becoming thoroughly relaxed, I decided to tone down my comments to increase the chances of having it actually be taken seriously by their customer service people:
The availability of the GLiDE Pass fares was beyond unsatisfactory; it was downright false advertising from the beginning. I would search for a flight from Atlanta to ANYWHERE on a 2-3 week set of Tues/Wed/Sat and sometimes there wasn't a single $0 fare available.
I used the free pass ONE TIME as a result.
Not only will I not recommend GLiDE to a friend, but I (along with my friend who bought the pass) have vowed never to fly Independence again.
Good luck fighting your way back from bankruptcy. It's called karma, bitches.
Then I forwarded my comments to my friend Tushar, who also bought the pass with me. I knew he would make up for whatever obscenities and nasty insults I left out.
Of course, I was right:
If you manage to have another bullshit “student promotion” before inefficiences plague the balance sheet into bankruptcy, be sure to make the tag line “Students travel free for the ENTIRE summer if they spend the $225 on a bike or a down payment for a shitty car!! “
I hope every future business venture of your board of directors fails horribly as this one did. May your wives cheat on you as your children take up drugs and alcohol. May your housepets drop into a deep depression and eventually commit suicide in front of you. May the poor black people you once employed by the masses pee on your dead bodies as they sell your kids drugs and alcohol.
There, I have said my piece. And btw, the whole “handing the customers hot hand towels” thing was great!
I hope every future business venture of your board of directors fails horribly as this one did. May your wives cheat on you as your children take up drugs and alcohol. May your housepets drop into a deep depression and eventually commit suicide in front of you. May the poor black people you once employed by the masses pee on your dead bodies as they sell your kids drugs and alcohol.I can see the next headline now: “Hot Towels and Massages Spell Happy Ending for New Airline.” Now that's an airline I can get behind.