So?

On my first day in grad school here in Michigan, one of the senior members of the doctoral student corps pointed out to me that all slippery-slope arguments are inherently flawed on several dimensions, one of the most important being the assumption that there are an infinite number of similar cases – or, in the case of a business, a sufficient number of similar cases to make any difference. Making an exception to your refund policy for no particular reason will weaken your ability to enforce that policy in the future; making an exception to the policy because something uniquely hideous has happened to a customer through no fault of his or her own is usually good public relations – especially if it is something so horrible that there is no conceivable chance that someone would cause such a thing to happen just to take advantage of your company. An airline customer who wants a refund on a normally unrefundable ticket because he is dying of esophageal cancer and is too weak to fly might be one example of such a happening…

You can pick up the original story off the Fox News site if you want to, but the scenario is basically the same one we have discussed before: a customer is asking Spirit Airlines to refund the price of his economy ticket because his condition has deteriorated to the point where he can’t get his doctor’s clearance to fly anymore, and the airline is saying that they can’t give him a refund because then they would have to allow anybody to have a refund. The company’s policy does state that if he dies prior to or during the flight, a refund is permitted – the money to be paid to his heirs, one assumes – but this really isn’t germane to the situation. The real issue here is that the airline is saying that the cost of granting an exception to their refund policy will cost them far more than the negative publicity they are receiving as the result of this story – and I’m calling shenanigans on that whole idea…

Every institution I have ever encountered that has seen fit to create its own set of rules and regulations (above and beyond those established by the city, county, state and nation in which it operates) has attempted to perpetuate the idea that these regulations were handed down by some higher authority and cannot be violated without dire consequences. In this specific case, Spirit is claiming that any deviation from its refund policy will result in the company being deluged with other customers who will demand refunds on the grounds that since they permitted one refund, they must permit all of them. However, both the general and the specific arguments are absurd…

Any private company can alter its regulations any time it wants, assuming that none of the changes violate the law. Thus, the company could easily change its written policy from “no refunds, ever” to “no refunds to anyone who has more than three weeks to live” – or whatever interval they feel is appropriate – and include exacting specifications on what evidence you will need to invoke their new “goner” clause (or whatever they decide to call it). The number of people who will attempt to get a fraudulent refund this way is going to be minimal, especially since the documentation such a stunt would require would probably cost more than a new economy/excursion-class airline ticket in the first place, and could easily involve perjury and forgery charges if detected. But that’s still not what makes this whole policy absurd…

Spirit claims that employing people to say “no” to customers demanding refunds would cut far enough into their margin to endanger the company’s profitability. The problem with that statement is that people are already making such demands, and the company is already saying “no” to them every day. Paying those people to say “Not unless you can provide all of the documents shown on our website – and are willing to go to prison if those documents are forged” may be slightly more expensive than paying them just to say “no,” but it’s hard to see how it would make a significant difference to the bottom line. Or, to put it bluntly, if the airline says that improving its public image in this fashion might cost them a tiny pittance, my answer is going to be, “So?”