Spirit Airlines CEO: Let them tell the world how bad we are."

If you're a CEO in a competitive industry, and you decide to take a "to Hell with the customer attitude," don't do it via email.

But if you do, don't hit "Reply All" and mistakenly send your email to the customer.

This has been a Public Service Announcement from Marketing Matters.

An Orlando couple who experienced travel delays that caused them to miss a concert sent an email to Spirit demanding compensation for the entire trip, including hotel and concert tickets. They reportedly received this response from the company's C.E.O., one that clearly wasn't meant to go beyond corporate headquarters:

From: Ben Baldanza [mailto:xxxxxxxxx@SpiritAir.com]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 1:02 PM
To: (removed by alex), Christy; Martin (removed by alex); Tony (removed by alex); John (removed by alex); Pasquale (removed by alex)
Subject: Re: Complaint

Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I'm concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He's never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.

An email like that has legs.

A lot of legs.

And so it found itself on Travelocity.com, on Placesandtrips.com, on travel.netscape.com, airliners.net, concierge.com, aviation.com, the Orlando Sentinel, and many others, as well as a featured news story on AOL, where I found it.

"Let them tell the world how bad we are," indeed.

Can do, mi amigo. Can do.

--Jason Van Steenwyk