Cinema Only Free Tickets Discussion thread

C05T1N · 2 July 2013 at 9:35PM

... how is that going to cost them money, exactly?

Locky · 2 July 2013 at 9:37PM

Poochface wrote: »

I repeat, they are under no obligation to provide previewers with another film unless they have an agreement to do so with the media company. Otherwise it will cost the individual cinema money.

Yeah, but if people have wasted time and money getting to the cinema and then been turned away, they won't care if it's the cinema's fault or not - they'll just be annoyed and won't come back!

Poochface · 2 July 2013 at 9:38PM

C05T1N wrote: »

... how is that going to cost them money, exactly?

If they allow 100 people to see a scheduled film, it will cost them 100 x the cost of a ticket. They only do that if the media partner has agreed to foot the bill.

Poochface · 2 July 2013 at 9:40PM

Locky wrote: »

Yeah, but if people have wasted time and money getting to the cinema and then been turned away, they won't care if it's the cinema's fault or not - they'll just be annoyed and won't come back!

To use a horrid cliche, that isn't the cinema's problem. No Manager can afford to spend £800 (estimate) on tickets as a gesture of goodwill especially for a free preview. Head Office would go nuts.

Locky · 2 July 2013 at 9:41PM

Poochface wrote: »

To use a horrid cliche, that isn't the cinema's problem. No Manager can afford to spend £800 (estimate) on tickets as a gesture of goodwill especially for a free preview. Head Office would go nuts.

They can recoup that if they sell a few boxes of popcorn can't they?! It costs about £7 in my local! :rotfl:

C05T1N · 2 July 2013 at 9:42PM

If they allow 100 people to see a scheduled film, it will cost them 100 x the cost of a ticket. They only do that if the media partner has agreed to foot the bill.

Wrong. A film with 5 viewers costs them the same as a film with 100 viewers, and they do NOT print tickets for the people they let in to see something else if the preview isn't available.

Their largest percentage of revenue doesn't come from tickets anyway, it's from popcorn and soft drinks.

Poochface · 2 July 2013 at 9:45PM

Locky wrote: »

They can recoup that if they sell a few boxes of popcorn can't they?! It costs about £7 in my local! :rotfl:

I never buy it lol

But that's the facts of it. It came up in conversation with my local Odeon manager.

It is up to SFF (in this case) to recompense the customers as they obviously messed up.

Jeez. I couldn't get a free pair of children's sized 3D glasses from Cineworld. They wanted to charge me 60p for the privilege of watching Iron Man 3 with glasses that fitted. Manager was a right arsey git.

Poochface · 2 July 2013 at 9:47PM

C05T1N wrote: »

Wrong. A film with 5 viewers costs them the same as a film with 100 viewers, and they do NOT print tickets for the people they let in to see something else if the preview isn't available.

Their largest percentage of revenue doesn't come from tickets anyway, it's from popcorn and soft drinks.

It is you who are wrong. They have to justify why they comp tickets. So unless the cinema is in the wrong or the media partner have agreed to pay, they will not comp for previews.

The snacks have nothing to do with it in this case.

BTW they have to print tickets out if they allow that many people in to a film. Otherwise they would have problems if they had to evacuate the building.

I love how it was only March that you asked "So what does the '6 PM for 6:30 PM' mean?" and now you are an expert on Free Previews.

Luckystar · 3 July 2013 at 6:45AM

I agree that it wasn't really the cinemas fault but it was poorly handled, somewhere there has been a lack of communication. If we had been turned away because it was full then I would have fully accepted that, but this wasn't the case.

mrcow · 3 July 2013 at 8:23AM

We turned up at Lakeside last night to be told that due to a technical error no films were showing at all. No one there seemed to even care. Wasted journey. Very disappointing.