I’ve held off a couple of weeks now from picking up Alex’s story because many others were already lending their amazed voices to the cacophony. But seeing Etan Horowitz’ assessment of Alex’s blog post and its effect on the Spirit Airlines customer service debate made me eager to join the fray.
Many of you know Alex through seeing his name appear in my blog posts and through comments he’s left on the site. He is a hard working, web visionary who’s hell bent on seeing Orlando become the cultural and new media hub of the Southeast. He is often blogging about Orlando’centric topics and is a founding member of LikeMind Orlando and Florida Creatives. Additionally, Alex also expresses his entrepreneurial tenancies as the CEO of his start-up company Emurse, an online resume and job-hunting site.
I post today to simply bring attention to the power that one man’s voice can bring to bare on a subject in our digital age. With the accessibility the internet provides to the market place of ideas, no matter one’s station in life, if their idea has true merit it may ultimately make headlines despite the humbleness of it’s origins.
Alex’s article is case in point. He didn’t set out with a vehement desire to crush Spirit Airline’s bottom line but simply to inform his friends and family of his experience and ward them from entanglement with the less than desirable customer service practices of this low fare air carrier. Ultimately, however, his story resonated with other snubbed passengers of Spirit Airlines and this word of mouth affirmation has brought his blog post to the forefront of the discussion over Spirit Airline’s deleterious customer service.
Image provided by Julie Fletcher, Orlando Sentinel / August 23, 2007