Just sent the following complaint to Empire Cinemas after my disappointment in Wycombe when I went to see Avatar 3D. Utter madness, and all caused by cost-cutting and bad management.
I attended Empire High Wycombe today to find the place in complete chaos. Queues snaked slowly around the foyer, confused customers tried to find someone to answer their questions, staff were scarce. There appeared to be no effective management at all; no one taking responsibility.
The box office was shut this very busy Saturday night, presumably to keep costs down. There was a lot of unhappy conversation between customers. I suspect you will lose a great many.
These seemed to be the issues:
- too few staff, none of them in control
- no clear information about where booked tickets could be picked up - many did not realise that all desks could print tickets, not just the machines.
- only three machines, one of which developed a card-reader fault and would not print any more tickets.
- only one person checking tickets for the Avatar showing, and taking a long time about it.
- no announcement from staff to explain that the feature would be delayed to give everyone a chance to get in, so there was some concern that people would miss the beginning, and those that were already inside and seated were subjected to the advertising twice.
My irritation would have been salved somewhat if I had not paid an additional card handling fee for booking in advance in the first place. Where is the logic in that? You must also be paying for box office card purchases. Why pass this on separately to the customer?
I'm influential amongst my friends. Unless you can make amends in a satisfactory way, I won't attend an Empire again, and I'll discourage people I know from taking the risk. The excellent feature experience was marred by chaos, disorganisation and bad pre-planning by Empire. There is no excuse for being a victim of your own popularity when you have all the visitor data that you do. Today's jaunt was a disappointment.
Thanks for your time.
J.
I wonder what they say? If I get a response, I'll post it here.
Monday, January 18. 2010 at 08:56 (Reply)
How bizarre. Can't think of a single sensible reason to have the box office closed on a Saturday night (and I have to say, even on nights when I haven't been going to the cinema, I've never seen it closed on a Saturday). Presumably there is some ilk of extenuating circumstance at work, but even so, not a particularly good effort.
Out of interest, was it a particularly late showing? If so, then I suppose that might present us with some sort of a reason for the lack of staff, but still...
Next time I'm in there (whenever that might be) I shall note with interest the staffing levels etc. I don't remember ever noticing a lack of staff before, but then I suppose it's very much down to the luck of the draw and individual experience; as are most things.