How Not to Keep Your Customers
Ocober 21st, 2007: nothing fromt the Post Awful...
October 15th, 2007: Nothing from the Post Awful, surprise, surprise.
October 12, 2007: Finally got a notice from DHL of a package, and, sure enough, there were the 2 tickets. Mr. Curtis says that he actually mailed them September 18th. Nothing on my end. I went to the Post Awful today for a discussion about missing mail, this not being the only one in the past year, although the missing letters are few and far between. The postal employee at the local Post Office North of 17th St. and Grand Ave. assured me that the manager would be calling me on Monday or Tuesday.
October 1, 2007: Still no tickets...
But here is the letter that the manager sent me, prefaced by my response:
Dear Mr. Curtis;
Thank you for your response. Unless you have some objection, I will include it - minus your contact info - in my blog update.
Meanwhile, just a suggestion for Regal in general: Moving the showtimes up a little, if done appropriately on a case by case basis, might make some sense. My own schedule, for example, makes it very difficult for me to get to the typical 7PM showings, but 8:30 or thereabouts would work fine in many cases.
Alternatively, moving everything the other direction would mean that I might be able to go to a 9PM or 9:30ish show and still get enough sleep, whereas these 10PM+ times are just impossible on workdays, and I notice that very few people typically go to the late shows - probably because they need sleep.
When I look at the Regal schedules for Orange County, I see pretty much the same showtimes for the same shows in every theater, even when the theaters are in close proximity. This means that I have to plan carefully just to make it to a show which if shifted either an hour later or earlier for another nearby theater would make it more feasible to attend. I.e., scattering the times more to give more customers the option to attend.
Again, thanks for your response.
My address is:
*****************************
Mr. Osborn,
I would like to thank you very much for taking the
time to let me know
of the guest service short fall you experienced at
my theatre. I just
wanted to let you know that this is not the type of
service we as a
company pride ourselves on, as evidenced by the
superior service you
received at our sister theatre. I will personally
be working with the
team member you encountered on your last visit to
ensure your experience
is not duplicated.
If you would be so kind as to provide me with your
address I will be
happy to supply you with two passes valid for your
next visit.
Thank you for your time. Please feel free to call
me if you have any
questions.
September 29, 2007: Still no tickets...
September 23, 2007: No tickets yet.
September 20, 2007: I received a very nice email on last Saturday from the manager of the Regal theater where I had such a frustrating experience. I will include a copy here when I actually receive the two tickets that he promised me.
September 12, 2007: Yesterday I decided to try again. I rushed over to the theater from the library and should have had plenty of time to spare, only to discover that they had changed the start time for "The 11th Hour," moving it up by thirty minutes or so. The ticket person was willing to sell me a ticket as we were only ten minutes into the film, but he said that I would have to ask the manager for special permission to sit in the theater and wait to see the beginning at 9:20PM. Note that once again, there were only a handful of patrons in evidence, the parking lot was nearly empty and when a guy did show up as I was standing there, he was hit with the same problem, having relied upon last week's time for the show. Great work, Regal. (I went home and red a book. I'm sure the DVD will be soon available, if not already.)
On my birthday (yesterday, for all you ID thieves), I decided to see a movie. I had a lot of other stuff to do and got bogged down, but figured that given the movie in question - "The 11th Hour" - being another environmental documentary, and running on a weekday, it didn't matter that much to me, and certainly not to the theatre if I was late and stuck around to catch the beginning.
So, I drove ten miles or so to the Westpark 8 Regal cinema and got there about 18 or 20 minutes into the film. There were NO other customers anywhere in sight when I approached the ticket counter. I mentioned to the salesgirl my plans to just sit it out and read a novel between the end of the 7:45 and beginning of 10:15 (subtracting 15 minutes of previews) PM showings. As I have to get up early for work, I had no intention of watching the 10 showing all the way through.
Note that I have done this many times at other Regal theaters without a problem, and I watch a LOT of movies, mostly at Regal theaters, as I have had their card for years. However, she informed me that "we cannot allow you to do that." I asked her for the complaint number for Regal. She refused to give it to me, but asked if I wanted to speak with the manager. Note that during this entire episode, I was the ONLY customer.
I'm just guessing that there may have been NOBODY watching the film, but surely no more than a handful, given that still no other customers had showed up. So, Regal lost my money and I lost the movie experience.
I then checked out the cheapo theater down the street, which was offering movies for $1, but they were all in the middle as well by then, and I had either seen them or didn't really want to all that much.
So, I then treked to the University 6 Regal theater, where I have always had an excellent experience, in so far as the movie personnel are concerned. At that point, I was desperate to see anything, and so I decided to try "Right at Your Door," which only had about 20 minutes left by then.
When I asked the ticket girl about waiting to catch the rest of the movie in the later showing, she told me that it was absolutely no problem, that people did it all the time. I then told her about my experience at the Westpark theater, and that I intended to write a blog about it. Her response was, "Right ON! Go for it!"
On a roll, I asked her to imagine me as Michael Moore, exposing the perfidious apathy of Regal management towards its patrons. She thought that would be great and then offered me a FREE pass to the movie, in compensation for my earlier troubles. A couple had been reading the synopses of the movies next to the ticket counter and listening to my spiel and the guy "high-fived" me.
Inside, the manager at this Regal theater asked if I wanted free Tuesday popcorn. I told her that I didn't feel right about it, as my pass was free, but she kept pressuring me to scan my Regal card, and so I got a movie and popcorn for free.
Of course, I was still down about an hour of precious sleep time, and I wasn't seeing the movie I wanted to and the popcorn was stale and the movie turned out to be unbelievably terrible. (It seemed like a reject from PBS in overall guality.) But at least I wasn't upset any more, as these people had behaved like human beings.