How To Avoid Long Hold Times With Spirit Airlines
Why Spirit Airlines? Because Spirit is the devil I know for sure. Of all of the low cost carriers I have flown with them the most and they offer me the best options out of my home airport, Detroit. So when Frontier’s prices shot up while booking some flights via the Capital One Travel portal I wasn’t too sad to see Spirit be the new best option for our flight needs. I locked down the flights and went on with my day. That is until I got one of those nasty flight change emails. I opened it up thinking it would be a minor tweak but was surprised to see the outgoing flight change by 15 hours and the incoming flight by 4 hours. The new times simply wouldn’t work so I needed to get with Spirit Airlines. The problem was their massive hold times. That is until I realized this old trick came in handy and it is how to avoid long hold times with Spirit Airlines.
Yes, I Needed To Contact Spirit Airlines & Not Capital One Travel
Experienced travelers will read the above information and ask themselves, why is he calling Spirit Airlines? He should call Capital One Travel since he did a third party booking through them. Doesn’t he realize the airline is just going to kick him back to them and say they can’t do anything?
That is what I initially thought as well. I figured that was a part of the reason I couldn’t simply ask for a full refund on the Spirit’s website. I did call Capital One Travel and they said I needed to deal with the airline directly. For some reason Spirit and Frontier (and maybe other low cost carriers) handle their own bookings, even when done via the Capital One portal.
I had a pit in my stomach at this point because I had already tried to reach out to Spirit Airlines and was hit with an hour plus hold on the phone and via chat. My attempts to let chat run in the background while getting some work done hadn’t panned out. I was about to suck it up once again when I noticed another option that has worked well with other airlines in the past.
Text Spirit Airlines To Avoid Long Call Hold Times
When I went to the Spirit Airlines contact us page I noticed a SMS Text/WhatsApp option crammed in the middle there. This is what has gotten me around long wait times with other airlines, like Virgin Atlantic. The other nice perk of this route is that you get alerted via text when an agent is on the line. This is way easier to stay on top of, work with than an online chat function. As soon as you leave your computer you could be out of luck, but your phone is (usually) always with you.
I texted 855-728-3555 with “Hello” and it started up the bot prompts. I went through the same questions they had asked on the online chat function, which took a few minutes. This was mostly about my travel and why I was contacting them. I was then informed an agent would be with me in less than 1 minute. Say what?! It was closer to 5 minutes but a ton faster than the long hold times I was being quoted by phone and online chat.
I went back and forth with the agent for around 10 minutes and they agreed to give me a full refund. The really cool thing is the flights that worked a bit better on Frontier, time wise at least, had dropped quite a bit in price. This whole ordeal will save me over $250, especially when I go to the airport to buy the tickets and save $160!
How To Avoid Long Hold Times With Spirit Airlines: Final Thoughts
Hopefully this tip on avoiding long hold times when dealing with Spirit Airlines helps some of you out. It is probably the best option for all airlines that offer it. Be sure to search their site for any SMS text or WhatsApp options. The wait times are usually much better, or at least you don’t need to sit by a computer or on a phone waiting for someone to get in touch. I know it made my life a ton easier!
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It doesn’t give me a wait time it just says higher than normal volume. You are placed in a queue blah blah and takes just as long as phone/internet chat
I can attest to the truth of this. I have a Spirit reservation but for some strange reason it didn’t show up when I log in to Spirit.com. I went to Contact Us and did the online chat, it said I’d have a 40 min wait. After waiting about 10 mins, I remembered reading Mark’s article. Sure enough, I went to text, answered the EXACT same bot questions, was quoted a 1 min wait, and about 2 mins later I was chatting!
Awesome! Glad to hear it helped.
I have found that I save an infinite amount of time by never booking a flight with Spirit. Or Frontier for that matter. My sanity has got to be worth something.
Haha very true. Although I would fly both of them before United 🙂
I live in Denver and fly to Hawaii twice a year. United is our hometown carrier and a non stop flight away from Hawaii. Love them. .
I hate that Virgin has gotten rid of WhatsApp in favor of their janky web chat.
I haven’t had to deal with them lately so wasn’t aware of that. Yeah internal chats are usually not as good or convenient so that sucks.