I've never met human employees with less latitude to actually help me

"oh yeah that's wrong, sorry it looks like our website is broken but there's nothing I can do"

Those people are contract workers. Spirit had the same issue: Excellent plane operations (No crashes in their history, history of excellence in maintenance, pretty well paid and well benefited employees(supposedly),modern planes). With their low cost model, the money had to come from somewhere: contracted front staff that don't care/can't do anything and fees for everything including the water.

The stories about their lack of customer service empowerment following the man who was ingested by an engine while running across the runway validate this. It was truly maddening to read about how the company handled getting people’s luggage back to them.