RustyC
Jan 24, 12, 2:35 pm
Received today in e-mail:
WARNING:
New government regulations require us to HIDE taxes in your fares.
This is not consumer-friendly or in your best interest. It's wrong and you shouldn't stand for it.
Starting January 24, 2012, fares are distorted.
Why?
Thanks to the U.S. Department of Transportation's latest fare rules, Spirit must now HIDE the government's taxes and fees in your fares.
If the government can hide taxes in your airfares, then they can carry out their hidden agenda and quietly increase their taxes. (Yes, such talks are already underway.)
And if they can do it to the airline industry, what's next?
As the transparency leader and most consumer-friendly airline, Spirit DOES NOT support this new USDOT mandate. We believe the better form of transparency is to break out costs so customers know exactly what they're buying.
What can you do to help stop this injustice?
Join us in keeping government taxes and fees low and transparent by contacting your elected officials
I thought about contacting my elected official in support of the new regulations. :p:p:p
Hopefully this'll get Spirit passengers asking questions about the "Passenger Usage Fee" and whether that is a tax, since the $33.98 size of it on most tickets makes it the largest single "tax" item in most cases. It absolutely doesn't belong as listed with taxes and named as it is, and that kind of thing makes Spirit calling itself the "transparency leader" sound a bit like Newt Gingrich calling himself a one-woman man (well, maybe one at a time, most of the time :p)
What they really need is more transparency in airline-imposed fees. Using the "TicketMaster" rationale and business model that you can avoid it by buying a ticket at the airport (which in ATL they're utterly unprepared to handle in any quantity) and therefore it's optional doesn't address the disclosure issue. Clearly they wanted to "hide" this one in with the taxes and hope that people thought it was another tax.
If it gets "outed", then more people will insist it should be in the fare, where it should have been all along. They could also call it the Not Buying Ticket at the Airport "Optional" Fee (a MUCH more accurate name), but of course if they did that then passengers would rebel, and they know that.
As for the issue of taxes being included leading to more taxes, I'm fine with airlines, including Spirit, providing breakdowns of what people paid on travel documents and online. This used to be the case with paper tickets, where airlines years ago followed through on a threat and listed tax items separately. Even if they have to include them in a fare quote they can provide breakdowns on request at any time.
And as for the taxes that actually are taxes, the ticket tax is defensible inasmuch as it supports the infrastructure (though there's a real potential fairness issue there vs. general aviation, and even Warren Buffett sez taxes on the latter are too low). The passenger facility charges and multiplier effects are problematic (even if capped), especially with leisure-traveling families. Segment taxes have the same problem, and were put in place because legacy airlines wanted to take a dig at Southwest. The Sept. 11 security fee can't cover the cost, so the debate is whether it should be increased, the government should absorb the remainder, or they try to reduce expenses which would inevitably cut into labor costs and risk a return to the disgraceful pre-9/11 situation where airport security was a dead-end job at McDonald's wages. It'll probably be a split-the-difference situation where it's hiked a bit but still won't cover costs.
BTW, Spirit prices with everything included today indeed are showing quite a bit higher, but they've still got the "Passenger Usage Fee" in with the taxes, as before. Because of that PUF, the new regulation hits Spirit harder than other airlines, and I'm sure the other airlines have noticed that. Few things engender cynicism like airline behavior in this area, plus the tendency to try to recruit passengers for some very self-interested political fights.
WARNING:
New government regulations require us to HIDE taxes in your fares.
This is not consumer-friendly or in your best interest. It's wrong and you shouldn't stand for it.
Starting January 24, 2012, fares are distorted.
Why?
Thanks to the U.S. Department of Transportation's latest fare rules, Spirit must now HIDE the government's taxes and fees in your fares.
If the government can hide taxes in your airfares, then they can carry out their hidden agenda and quietly increase their taxes. (Yes, such talks are already underway.)
And if they can do it to the airline industry, what's next?
As the transparency leader and most consumer-friendly airline, Spirit DOES NOT support this new USDOT mandate. We believe the better form of transparency is to break out costs so customers know exactly what they're buying.
What can you do to help stop this injustice?
Join us in keeping government taxes and fees low and transparent by contacting your elected officials
I thought about contacting my elected official in support of the new regulations. :p:p:p
Hopefully this'll get Spirit passengers asking questions about the "Passenger Usage Fee" and whether that is a tax, since the $33.98 size of it on most tickets makes it the largest single "tax" item in most cases. It absolutely doesn't belong as listed with taxes and named as it is, and that kind of thing makes Spirit calling itself the "transparency leader" sound a bit like Newt Gingrich calling himself a one-woman man (well, maybe one at a time, most of the time :p)
What they really need is more transparency in airline-imposed fees. Using the "TicketMaster" rationale and business model that you can avoid it by buying a ticket at the airport (which in ATL they're utterly unprepared to handle in any quantity) and therefore it's optional doesn't address the disclosure issue. Clearly they wanted to "hide" this one in with the taxes and hope that people thought it was another tax.
If it gets "outed", then more people will insist it should be in the fare, where it should have been all along. They could also call it the Not Buying Ticket at the Airport "Optional" Fee (a MUCH more accurate name), but of course if they did that then passengers would rebel, and they know that.
As for the issue of taxes being included leading to more taxes, I'm fine with airlines, including Spirit, providing breakdowns of what people paid on travel documents and online. This used to be the case with paper tickets, where airlines years ago followed through on a threat and listed tax items separately. Even if they have to include them in a fare quote they can provide breakdowns on request at any time.
And as for the taxes that actually are taxes, the ticket tax is defensible inasmuch as it supports the infrastructure (though there's a real potential fairness issue there vs. general aviation, and even Warren Buffett sez taxes on the latter are too low). The passenger facility charges and multiplier effects are problematic (even if capped), especially with leisure-traveling families. Segment taxes have the same problem, and were put in place because legacy airlines wanted to take a dig at Southwest. The Sept. 11 security fee can't cover the cost, so the debate is whether it should be increased, the government should absorb the remainder, or they try to reduce expenses which would inevitably cut into labor costs and risk a return to the disgraceful pre-9/11 situation where airport security was a dead-end job at McDonald's wages. It'll probably be a split-the-difference situation where it's hiked a bit but still won't cover costs.
BTW, Spirit prices with everything included today indeed are showing quite a bit higher, but they've still got the "Passenger Usage Fee" in with the taxes, as before. Because of that PUF, the new regulation hits Spirit harder than other airlines, and I'm sure the other airlines have noticed that. Few things engender cynicism like airline behavior in this area, plus the tendency to try to recruit passengers for some very self-interested political fights.