Man did I get the run-around from Cinemark/Century Theaters last night! I always have been a big supporter of these guys ever since they built the Century / CineArts in Evanston several years ago, but things seem to have gone south since then. Here’s the letter I just sent to their customer support people:
I’m writing to tell you about a difficult experience I had with Cinemark/Fandango last night. I was planning to see Juno at the CineArts Santana Row theater in San Jose, CA. Since it was a limited release, I got the tickets ahead of time on Fandango. There was an error when printing the tickets that caused the bar code not to print, so we had to go to the box office to have “real” tickets printed when we got to the theater. There was a huge line, so this added about 10 minutes to our wait. Even so, we got into the theater about 10 minutes before the movie was scheduled to start, but there were no seats available. And I’m not just talking about “Oh, we have to sit right next to somebody” or “Oh, we can’t even sit together” but absolutely zero seats. In fact, many people were sitting on the floor and stairs. Since this was the last show of the night and we couldn’t just swap our tickets for a later one, we decided to get a refund and go to another theater. At the Customer service desk we learned that we couldn’t get a refund because we had purchased the tickets on Fandango, but instead would have to get a “raincheck” which they assured us we could use at any Cinemark theater for the next 6 months. I would rather have had a real refund, but we took the rainchecks and decided to drive 20 minutes to another Cinemark theater (Great Mall in San Jose) to catch a different movie. When we arrived there I attempted to exchange the rainchecks for tickets but I was informed that they were *only* good for Santana Row! So I ended up buying more tickets to see the show here. And now I have to go *back* to Santana Row and deal with the potential of another oversold show to make use of my rainchecks. I understand that limited releases can be unpredictable, but I really think that my whole experience could have been made much more bearable by:
1) Fixing Fandango so that the bar code printing works (the Customer Service agent at Santana Row said that “bar codes have been broken for awhile”)
2) Revising the Fandango refund policy to allow for “real” refunds, instead of just rainchecks
3) Communicating to all theaters the policy for using rainchecks from another location
4) Considering the use of “assigned seating” at least in the case of showings that are likely to sell out. I understand this is a major initiative, but I’ve been to theaters that do this and it’s been a great experience.
Anyway, these are just my thoughts after last night’s experience. I hope you find them helpful. And if you can see fit to send me a few free passes that *aren’t* tied to a specific theater location then I would very much appreciate it. Thank you!
In other Cinemark news. Why *do* they choose to start every movie with a trip to the concession stand with a couple of furries?
UPDATE: So after taking the time to send my comments to Cinemark, they *did* finally get back to me with an email that addresses each of my comments. Unfortunately (for me) the response to each issue appears to be “Oh… Sorry about the fact that our customer service policies are crappy, but we certainly do hope that doesn’t discourage you from giving us more money in the future!” Unfortunately (for them) it does. Reprinted here for reference is the text of the email they sent me:
Hello. I am sorry for the experience you had. We were unaware that the bar codes that are supposed to print on your confirmation page were not working the way they should so I will contact Fandango and inform them of the situation. As far as the refund policy, our policy is that the only way to issue a refund is one of two things, the first we have to be contacted prior to the film in order to issue a refund. If we are not contacted before the show we do not issue refunds. There are no exceptions. The second reason is something like your case. If there are no seats available and you have purchased your tickets online, it has to come to our corporate office for us to take care of. The employee should always refer you to corporate, which in this case they should have so I will contact or Operations department about that. At the same time, if they do offer rainchecks they are only good at the theatre that issues them. This was made aware to all theatres, so I will have our Operations department inform the theatres again. Unfortunately we can assign seats as you suggested. When buying movie tickets it is and has always been a first come first serve basis. I understand that it the bar code had printed correct this wouldn’t have happened and you would have been able to get seats. Again, I am sorry for your experience and we will work to get all this fixed for your next visit. Please let me know if you have any questions. Have a wonderful day!
