Thanks for ruining my Thursday night, Hoyts

Agreed. These kind of places operate the rosters on a whole ton of numbers, from sales, pax counts, growth predictions, etc. Your encounter resulted from either severe staff illness/absentee levels, or the person doing the rostering being asleep at the wheel and not being able to see this coming.

Either people and planning issues shot them in the foot.

Ahhh but you forget the economics of the movie trade. In the opening week the theatre makes 10-20% of the ticket price while the distributor takes the rest. What incentive do they have to ensure your ticket sale when they could be selling 95% profit fizzy sugar water and popcorn?

I tried to be smart and bought my tickets online. Guess what? You have to queue to pick up the tickets because the said machines were not in use.

Tim – it was the butler in the library with the candlestick…

Exactly why I rarely go to the movies these days. Avatar was the first in a long, long time. From being stung a ‘service fee’ if you buy tickets online to the noisy patrons, rustling their crisp packers or talking, it’s just not worth it.

It’s just too much trouble when you have a baby, better of dl the ripped bluray, say Hurt Locker and watching in the comfort of your own home.

The Broadway Hoyts is my local cinema as well, so I can confirm that this wasn’t a rostering snafu or severe staff illness thingy. I know some cinemas default to candy bar ticket selling at certain quieter times, but the Broadway Hoyts has operated without the machines or ticket booths – at any time or day – for about a year now at least. So I started buying tix online, thinking it would at least allow us to jump the queue as it does in those annoying cinema ads when you’re already in your seat.

Yup, they stick that little red carpet thingy out, but more often than not don’t serve it with priority like they’re supposed to (can’t blame them when there are five queues running ten deep and some other customers obviously get agitated when they see the staff trying to serve someone whose just sauntered in).

Of course, the ultimate irony is that cinemas keep crying that things ain’t what they used to be what with home theatre systems and downloading and so on. Yet when they treat customers with such contempt and charge the price of a small mortgage for snacks that are widely available for far less elsewhere, it’s hardly surprising profits are down. Like you say, doesn’t help when they haemorrhage people who actually wanted to buy a ticket.

We now go to the Dendy in Newtown where possible.

There’s no fifth P in my marketing textbooks Tim!

Shame when brands you love fuck up the basics though, eh?

That’s also my local cinema and the ticket booths have been closed for sometime. It’s freaking ridiculous that they force you to buy tickets from the candy bar. On the odd occasions that I now go to that cinema I refuse to purchase anything apart from my tickets

Exactly the same thing happened to me at Hoyts Eastgardens. Very frustrating

@Kimota totally agreed. We all know why they like to sell you tickets from there don’t we.

The smell of popcorn, other smell stimulants, the site of all manner of ungodly sweets. Welcome to the upsell ladies and gents, and with little kids in tow – pester power. They’re doing everything possible to squeeze every last 5c piece out of that wallet and into their tills.

Also my local and it gives me the shits time and time again. The service there is so dreadful that it makes me go the extra mile (literally) to another cinema. I do resent having to travel further to see a movie – and I shouldn’t need to – but somehow I get angry every time I go to Hoyts Broadway for one reason or another.

Pardon my ignorance on this one – the other thing that cracks me up is the lack of any clear pricing at their candy bar. Is there any legal requirement to advertise pricing? Not one item has a visible price – you’re buying in the dark. And when the register rings, you find you’ve been royally mugged by their ongoing strategy of wild overpricing.

@Zac Martin – they are actually teaching 7P’s at University now – Product, Price, Promotion, Place (distribution), People, Process and Physical Evidence.

Do what I do and head to the Randwick Ritz:
https://www.ritzcinema.com.au/

Tickets are a great price and it’s a beautiful cinema.

In the end, it all gets a bit too cosy on the island, he bonks his mate’s bird, some people die and then he goes home via an Internet cafe.

Glad I’m not the only one who had beef with Hoyts yesterday. After lining up for 20 minutes, reading all the lovely promotional signage about gift vouchers being great presents, they refused to sell me a gift voucher as thier systems were being upgraded yesterday. Lucky for me Greater Union had no such problems

Tim, agree with you about the ‘experience’ about People.
I’ve done the same thing – well, I bought tickets online, in the hope that it would save time at pick-up.

At Hoyts Broadway I often find the ticket counters closed and only the candy bar open for tickets.

I couldn’t see any sign about where to pick up the tickets I’d bought online – – had no idea I had to re-enter the info into a computer – – and hence stood in the Candy Bar line for a while before general confusion in the crowd ended up with about 10 of us realising we needed to be elsewhere to get our tickets.

Turned a really pleasant evening into something a bit unnecessarily stressful.

A sign saying ‘print out online ticket purchases here’ or something similar and it would pay dividends.

Oh, and I joined their loyalty program – – they give you a free ticket – but you have to attend on your birthday. Does anyone go to the movies on their birthday?

I love films but hate going to the cinema.

This is partly because of the reasons you have shown in your film Tim. Also the herds of numbskulls with no agenda happily feeding their diabetes with soft drinks and popcorn, making noise and at times being anti social – it turns me off attending a cinema. (Rather like it does visiting a shopping mall and going on a cruise ship.) Servicing human cows…) I could write a very long rant here, but I shant.

I am not a snob, I do not consider myself a class above the ‘rest’ – I truly do not…..(is there a ‘but’ coming?)

With air travel you can pay more and you do not have to sit next to the village idiots. Likewise in the theatre, again you can pay more and be treated to a better seat (you can also get your tickets online for the theatre…)

Hoyts! Wake up!!!! Consider your existing audience and potential audience and how you can give them all a better experiance. Have booths for ticket collection / pickup only. Have booths for the purchase of tickets only and have the candy store, for fricken candy only. (That queue will be full of the numbskulls salavating and awaiting their litre of coke fix.) “belch” – charming…

Please also consider that some people dont want to sit next to the obese person who is chomping throughout the film…

I will not go to a Hoyts cinema for the above reasons…

rant over.

@ Kimota – this wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s our local cinema too and we’ve been seeing a real lack of management there for the past couple of months.

They employ uni students who would rather be at the pub or thinking about their comms degree. The manager needs to give the staff an enema. Surely there’s a crowd of people (of all ages) who’d like to work for a cinema. Or maybe their staff starts out that way and management destroys their souls.

Those fancy ticket machines are often “out of order”. They simply don’t staff the box office anymore, obviously cutting costs by replacing people with machines (out of order). The primary purpose of the candy bar (to cringingly use their Americanised term) is to sell over-priced reheated popcorn and post-mix softdrinks in cups that could house a middle-Australian family. And they’re going to be busiest when a movie is due to start. They haven’t quite worked out that’s also the time when people want to buy tickets.

However, they have worked out that driving ticket sales from the same place as their main source of revenue (popcorn and soft drink) they’ll maximise impulse purchases and cross-sell.

But, it’s a mess. We now avoid it when we can and go to Dendy Newtown.

Considering the massive competition cinemas face from commoditised content available on Apple TV, tivo, and the like, you’d think a business like Hoyts would get their act together.

We pitched for Hoyts a little while ago. It’s an account I really wanted. Would still love to have. I love movies. I love the cinemas. I could even love the Hoyts brand, if only they showed us they loved their business too. We’ve got ideas that could revolutionise their brand and cement loyalty.

But they’ve got to be willing to instigate change on the front line.

True story:
On our last trip to Hoyts Broadway, we thought we should dodge the insanely huge candy bar queue and get our snacks from the bar area. Of course there were no staff in the bar. Other couples also stood around waiting for staff. I eventually picked up Hoyts’ internal phone that was within reach, pressed buttons until someone picked up, and asked if they could kindly send someone down to the bar.

As a customer, it shouldn’t have to get that way.

I think you are missing the broader point, when a marketers kpi’s are tied to the total sales of a product(here movie tix) it’s the stores that bring the efforts of the marketer to a stand still.

… and it’s not just the big cinema chains that get this wrong. I am similarly frustrated at major retailers (yes, you, Myer) who make their tills so damn hard to find amongst the merchandise and then when you finally stumble across a ‘service point’ there’s not a salesperson in sight.
And then the buyers wonder why their sales are plummeting, so they whack up another 20% off sale and away we go again…
I avoid Hoyts at all costs – Palace is brilliant and you can take a glass of wine in with you. No need to fork out extra bucks for meaningless Gold Class!

Tim, u would have been fine, as there’s always freakin 45mins of trailers before the movie starts anyway. I use to rush and worry about being late and missing the beginning of the movie. It’s so bad now, they need to start advertising the sessio time AND the actual start time of the movie. Don’t get me wrong, love the trailers etc, but come on … 45mins … that’s ridiculous.

Simon Rumble – as a film distributor, I can assure you that the cinemas secure far more than 10-20% of the opening weekend box office. And the percentage only increases after that first week. That is after the distributor has invested in the making and marketing of the film. This is not an easy business and a considerable number of films fail to even cover costs, something the distributor wears, not the exhibitor.

Having worked at both commercial and arthouse cinemas while studying, I can honestly say that the growing trend to having one sales point for tickets and candy bar items is very disturbing. I’m yet to see any cinema manage it well during busy periods.

To make matters worse, patrons often don’t decide what food they want to purchase until they get to the front of the queue. At large multiplexes it’s not uncommon for patrons to get to the front of the ticket box queue without having decided which they want to see or the film they wanted to see has sold out so then they have to select something else. This takes time.

I have been interested to note that other comments have included cinema recommendations. It has been my experience that no cinema is perfect and in regards to the chains, each location is different. I have found that I’ll go to a movies one week and all is well, and the next they are dragging lecterns out of the cinema in the middle of the movie. I particularly do not appreciate the over-zealous cinema checks when staff walk in front of the screen, it’s very disruptive.

So I always plan ahead, avoid Saturday nights and even Thursday nights if it’s a major release, bring my own snacks and try to purchase my tickets in advance. I don’t like ads, but I enjoy watching the trailers. And yes, I prefer Palace and Dendy.

This is appalling business / customer pratcice and I would be angry too. However I think it would have been wise to have refrained from making uninformed comments about the economics of running a cinema. What about the cost of installing digital screens, for instance? have you factored that in?

Things started to go wrong when movie cinemas invented popcorn and drink sizes beyond small, medium and large. Then they charged you more if you only wanted one or the other instead of both. Then they started telling you it’s only $1 more to upsize.

I’m already dreading the day when my kids are on school holidays, it’s raining and they want to take them to the movies with their friends to see Toy Story 3.

You may aswell go to an insane asylum and ask the inmates to take your cash and shit in your wallet.

Support your local independent cinemas instead.

I recently went to Hoyts at Melbourne Central. Someone knocked my drink over and there wasn’t enough time to get another one. Once inside there was a little booth selling drinks and popcorn. The refused to sell me a soft drink unless I also bought popcorn. They said this with a completely straight face to me while I was holding a bucket of popcorn. They did sell me a bottle of water though. I bring my own drinks now. I only go two or three times a year now. Got myself a media center and two well stocked video stores nearby.

Hoyts now have a policy that all ticket counters are shut and everyone has to buy their tickets from the crap food counters. Any PR spin to the contrary will be just corporate lies.
The ushers at Warringah Mall told me as much as I stood in one of 3 lines behind 30 obese people buying $15 worth of junk each, while the movie was about to start.
Can’t I just buy a ticket without having to join the food queue?
Not any more.
I see de Niro is in talks to do a new Taxi Driver – perhaps he could do his ‘I;m mad as hell and not gonna take it any more’ act out ‘on the red carpet’ at a Hoyts here when the premiere is on?
Here’s how you can show your protest while still seeing the movies – buy your snacks from the supermarket in the complex near your Hoyts and tell the ushers quite loudly to let management know you will never buy food from Hoyts until they open a separate ticket counter, like they used to.

as someone who worked in cinema for years, i can vouch that cinemas don’t get 20% of tickets and they certainly don’t get fair more. maybe the odd super-cinema can command a higher percentage but the norm is ‘ten cents from the dollar’ and after a fortnight it goes up slightly.

i can’t speak for this cinema – the customer service sounds appalling – but i remember when we consolidated our bar and box office into one counter. it makes perfectly good economic sense: spend on the bar went up considerably. there’s little incentive for cinemas to separate the two if it means decreased sales and extra staff costs.

but then it’s also really bad business to piss off customers this badly. combined box office/bar can be done, they’re just not doing it very well.

Fly on the Wall – you’re confusing your movies… De Niro in Taxi Driver said “You lookin’ at me?” The “I’m mad as hell” speech is from Network, one of the best films about the media ever made! (Just call me a film pedant).

And whatever the ‘economic sense’ of selling tickets from the candy bar, it never, ever, ever makes economic sense to piss off your consumers or actually make it harder for them to buy your products. Never. Ever.

And with so many other external threats on the cinema industry, it is suicide to treat the audience in such a way. Online ticket sales should have solved the problem as many of us prefer to do it this way and bypass the candy bar completely. But by switching off the machines and forcing us to queue up to get the tickets anyway, I don’t even bother to do that anymore. I just go to a cinema that has a manned ticket booth.

Speaking of online – the Hoyts sites is one of the worst commercial websites I’ve ever seen (although they’ve recently corrected the shocking rendering issues they suffered for months that made it nearly unusable). Auto-start videos, really crappy usability, shocking layout. It’s as if it was designed by the office junior with a text book rather than an agency with an understanding of online behaviour, IA etc.

Rant over…

You put up with treatment like that?

Here’s a tip – Home Thearte + U-torrent = No Queues (and you’re never disappointed over wasting good money on bad films).

I can’t get over the fact that they are trying to drive online sales of tickets.
But charge you a service fee.
Which makes it more expensive than buying at the ticket office.
And if you do buy online you still have to collect.
Which takse as long as buying a normal ticket!! Madness.

For this reason I avoid Hoyts, Greateer Union and EVENT.

Palace Cinemas are absolutely wonderful – give the smaller guys a go!

Pretty much like my recent experiences with Hoyts, the whole idea of selling tickets at the candy bar (god how i hate that term BTW) is a joke.

Cueing behind the mental defectives who cannot exist for 2 hours without scoffing a bucket sized pile of plastic popcorn is a waste of my time and incredibly annoying.

Bittorrent!!!

Oh and +1000 to the appalling website, i just want to click my local cinema and find out whats on when, the hoyts site has been the slowest i have visited in the past month and is clumsy and at times incomprehensible.

Thats my rant over. (i await my free tickets from hoyts)

A good point raised by Kimota about ‘auto start video’s’ being a reason why the Hoyts site is an awful website (amongst other things.)

Fairfax!!!!!! – Please take note re AUTO START VIDEO’s. Firstly they really p1ss me, the user’ off. If I want to watch a video I will press play(.) Please stop making them start automatically.

Secondly the advertiser who purchases the teaser space will be getting told by you that their ad has been ‘viewed’ x amount of times, when actually the level of views is far lower, because users switch it off immediately.

From Hoyts to Fairfax – both of you! Please start getting it right.

I go during the day to The Hayden Orpheum in Cremorne.

Beaut art deco cinema seats about 1000.

Seldom more than me an a few grannies.

The chick was really a man. I mean, Man, what a great movie!

AZ, this kind of attitude will kill the industry- and there will be no films for you to download anymore- bad or otherwise.

I would say Palace Cinemas all the way. The ones in Pado are great and show great movies as well.

Well after working at Greater Union George St and Macquarie 2000 & 2001, when they introduced ticket sales at the Candy Bar, management try to reduce staff as much as possible. No more ushers sitting in cinemas to monitor technical problems or disruptive patrons, I even witnessed patrons arguing in the foyer after the film had finished because one couple were talking all the way through the film. Now I hear that the majority of cinemas don’t pay staff the correct rate of pay they have to watch the hours they keep.
The mainstream chains went into McDonald’s style management and continually cheapen the movie experience each year, in 2002 they stopped putting a half a scoop in the choc top cone to increase profits, then management suddenly wonder why more and more patrons are heading for the home cinema experience.
They should try experiencing what a patron goes through instead of making decisions at arms length.

My true story – friends and I went to Hoyt’s Cinema Paris at Fox in Sydney to see the doco “Supersize Me” a few years ago and we were forced to buy our tickets from the candy bar. I decided to buy a “small” popcorn and drink and the obese Ronald McDonald “Supersize Me” promotional T-shirt wearing girl serving said “would you like to upgrade to a Jumbo combo for just another 2 dollars?”

With a raised eye-brow, I politely declined…

LOL, Hoyts Broadway does suck!
I used to go there when I studied at Usyd and the theatre is still the same.
The seats are still the old squashy uncomfy ones… they really need an upgrade.
And probably hire more staff to sell tickets than hiring some security guard roaming around.

Oh, and I guess I should complain more. Maybe I’ll get complimentary tickets also?

Only Hoyts I go to is Chatswood Westfield.

It’s hard swimming against the tide but here it goes:

Hoyts Broadway is my local too. Yes, it’s true, the ticket counter is seldom in use when I go and the tickets are sold over the candybar counter but so what ?

Factually, I’ve never had to wait more than 5-7 mins even during the busiest times I go. Sometimes the staff are trainees, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes the staff are knowledgeable and friendly, sometimes they’re the proverbial uni students dreaming about a better life than tearing tickets but none of them have ever been rude to me.

Going to the cinema is the same as any other retail transaction – there’s good and bad, rough and smooth and generally it’s somewhere in the middle. Frankly, there’s much much worse and if someone could figure out how to deliver the Hoyts Broadway level of service next time I call say, Telstra, I’d be delighted.

Hoyts’ service standards are the lowest in the industry:

• Ticket booths understaffed or closed
• Staff are apathetic at best, rude mostly
• Technology, like ticketing machines, often not working
• Prices no longer displayed for merchandise at candy bar
• Advertised “red carpet” ticket collection often not available due to staff shortages
• Cinemas smell damp and musty, frequently not cleaned properly between sessions. Floors are sticky, seats usually stained.
• Staff walk in and out of every session noisily with torches to check for video cameras. Do they really need to slam the door every time?
• Pre-show local advertising still presented with years-old, faded, finger-printed slide shows. Even the cinema in my parent’s country town cinema have full motion graphics and video projection for the local feed lot and tractor yard!

I avoid Hoyts at all costs – over-inflated prices and disgraceful quality of service.

I’ve had mixed experiences at Hoyts Broadway. Since previews take somewhere between 15 – 20 minutes, I’ll get there with a little time to spare. As someone mentioned above, it’s usually a 5 minute wait in line unless you go on a Saturday night.

I accept that young casual staff may be a little, well, casual. If I feel peckish or thirsty, I’ll stop by the Franklins downstairs if necessary. It’s not my local cinema, but on a rainy Tuesday night, it’s handy for the free parking for the first 3 or 4 hours in the centre on the way home from work or whatever.

I’ll only go to a cinema if it’s necessary to see a movie on a big screen. (eg Avatar)

However, like a lot of the above commentators, I prefer old picture palaces like the Orpheum or the Ritz. Also, I’ve had bad service at the Dendy Quay – usually dismissive service at the box office, but like Hoyts, it comes with the territory. Grow a thick skin.

Why rant when you can exercise the only true power you have as a consumer and just not go? (Unless you run a marketing blog with a loyal audience – then I guess you have more power.) And why are people still amazed when they encounter shit service and profiteering? That’s the way things are and there’s no point rallying against the side-effects of capitalism when we are all living in the very nice house it built. People respond to incentives and if I were a cinema manager or employee I would have a very different set of incentives to the customers, much as the customers might not like it, their happiness is not necessarily the most important thing.

I stop short of advocating illegal activity like Az though.

I was passing through Canberra the other weekend and due to inclement weather was forced to see a film.

I kid you not – subtitles were on the screen for the entire film, and this was a big Hollywood blockbuster.

Hoyts,

Rather than charging you an obscene amount of money for advice I’ll just give it to you.

People have no brand loyalty toward cinemas because you all treat your customers like walking bags of money much more than any other business.

The typical experience of a moviegoer is as follows.

Going to your website where we are force fed advertising material while trying to hunt down session times.

Entering the building and having to line up – for an amount of time that would be flat out unacceptable in any other industry – to pay an obscene amount of money for a ticket.

Being forced now to endure this long line up due to a clear upsell strategy. Getting to the front of this line and realising nothing has a labelled price, and while you know you are going to be bled dry, you’d at least appreciate the knowledge of how much you are being taken for.

Being served this whole time by someone that doesn’t want to be there, can’t be bothered and has such unattainable productivity targets that any chance of them being motivated to promote the success of your brand is long gone.

Heading into the cinema and being further asked to show proof that you have indeed paid an obscene amount of money to see this movie, despite standing in line for hours and putting a second mortgage on your house to pay for snacks.

Sitting down (or finding your seat in what is becoming pre-arranged seating throughout cinemas in this country, despite it not making any sense for customers whatsoever) and then sitting through MORE upsell via candy bar advertisements and the in-cinema hawkers. Because lining up just didn’t give you enough of an opportunity to be swindled.

Sitting through a further 20-40 minutes of advertising and previews before the show you originally paid to see begins.

After the show, leaving and noticing that the entire complex has basically shut down, lights are off, staff nowhere to be seen – and since you have already handed over your money and aren’t in the market for more overpriced junk food, you are dead to the cinema.

Until next time you look for session times, at least.

I hadn’t been to a local cinema for quite a few years before I went to see The Road last week. Ticket sales experience was OK (except for having to ask for ‘One for The Road, please.’) Luckily it was a Tuesday and I was fortunate that the ticket only cost $10. Even buying the rocky road chocolate bomb was quick, but the price was not painless and it tasted terrible.
In the cinema I sat through 20 merciless minutes of advertisements of the sort that haven’t changed since the 1950s. And the trailers didn’t interest me either.
Then the movie. If anyone has seen The Road they will know that many of the early scenes are very dark with muted conversations around fires. But there was so much ambient light in the place from exit signs and lights in the aisles that the blacks on the screen were only greys. At least at home I would have been able to turn lights off and see the movie as it was meant to be seen.
Last year I saw Anti Christ in a London digital cinema and the quality was amazing. I think the chocolate bomb was OK there as well.

Buy yourself a HD projector, Blu-ray player and a good sound system and you can kiss this nonsense goodbye.

Remember when movie theatres employed people who love movies and the whole movie going experience? Where did they go?

And Hoyts want you to believe the drop off in attendances is due to internet piracy……

YES, this seems to be standard operating procedure at Hoyts Broadway, Eastgardens and the list goes on.

Last week and again this week, all the self-serve machines were happily animating through their welcome screens, but were roped off (Much like that killer whale at Sea World in Orlando me thinks) and the ‘ticketing’ counter had 3 people sitting behind it, all of them re-directing people to the ever-growing lines at the (cash cow) candy bar.

It seems far more important to get people through the candy bar than the actual movie turnstiles.

Not impressed.

PS: LOATHE that crap new website Hoyts

This sounds like a very Sydney-centric problem. I never have any problems at various cinemas in Melbourne. Village sells tickets online and you can print them out so there is no need to queue up, just walk straight through.

How hard would it be for Hoyts to do that too?

I used to work for Hoyts in NSW as a manager up until a year ago when I realised just how morally bankrupt the company had become.
There are so many management problems that I couldn’t give a succinct enough summary for this site. Basically, customers are treated with total contempt.
Hoyts pushes their offer into the market rather than listening to what customers want. No one in Hoyts understands the “marketing concept”.
The Hoyts marketing department just makes pretty coloured coupons and flyers and that’s it- there is no performance measurement relating to customer satisfaction or the level of complaints. If someone complains they are sent free tickets to shut them up. The substance of the complaint is ignored- no feedback is actually taken seriously beyond the patronising line in the response letter “thank you for your feedback”.
The focus of the entire company is on this thing they call the SPA- (the avg amount customers spend on the candy bar). Everything they do is about maximising candy bar revenue.
They even have a travelling circus they call the “star team” where staff are put into mini workshops and instructed how to best pressure customers into a sale or to upsize their purchase- even down to the unethical point of pressuring young kids to hand over their $$!! It would be a scandal if the media latched onto it!!!!!!!
The staff are set sales quotas and targets and are disciplined if they fail to meet them. This explains why everyone is always made to file through the candy bar like farm animals- so the staff are given the opportunity to wring out every last cent from customers that they possibly can.
I remember the complaints and abuse I received at my cinema when the box office was closed- did Hoyts listen to these? No. They gave us scripts on what spin to employ to mask the money vacuum intention. Hoyts used to be the cinema of excellence. Now every Hoyts is grossly understaffed to reduce costs, the staff are sick of the stupidity and out of touch attitude of management so of course they look like they don’t want to be there. The staff work their backsides off and are shown the underwhelming loyalty by Hoyts by having their hours cut down to near nothing as they turn 18 and get a 60c per hour pay rise. You are dealing with 15-17y.o kids each time you go to Hoyts.
The front line managers get complaints/abuse every day but don’t even bother to pass it on as no one in Hoyts cares. As for the website, again, this was done on least cost- not customer feedback or the intention of providing an excellent customer interface. It’s all show with Hoyts, so substance. Anything they say to the contrary is total b/s.

I think the issue isn’t just with cinemas now – its service just about everywhere. Myer and David Jones are classic cases in point – their staff too busy discussing weekend plans rather than grabbing the audience whilst they are captive!

The other disturbing trend are retailers not providing carry bags any longer – Office Works the latest to go to a ‘charge 20c for a plastic bag’ model.

I know I’ll have the enviro nazi’s on top of me, but please, saving the odd plastic bag (which I would have recycled as a rubbish collection bag anyway) doesn’t establish green credentials for a chain.

I, being Gen X/Y cusper, is by no means ‘old’ – but think firms should start focusing on increasing revenue through treating their customers like they matter, rather than enhancing profits through cutting corners.

I found myself reading all the rants and nodding…

The last time i went to Hoyts or Event (aka Greater Union) must’ve been around 3 years ago to watch Atonement. Forking out a a good $40 per person for Gold Class tickets which still meant a good 10 minutes of queuing, ‘premium’ seats that squeaked and smelled like popcorn and people constantly walking past, blocking the screen as they served food. I went to find an attendant mid-session to tell them that the kids behind us were bonking loudly but i couldn’t find anyone. Some people older than I walked out. To this day i feel like i am owed something in damages for mental disturbances. Needless to say, i have never returned.

Oh and Corey Allen – consumers refusing to be coerced into buying a poor product is not “killing the film industry” as you dramatically put it. The industry is killing itself through arrogance, contempt and poor understanding of the consumer

Completely agree – i’m another local to Hoyts broadway and every time i go for ‘convenience’ i get angry standing in line.
I don’t want Coke or a choc-top, I dont want to have to stand behind 10 teenage couples who pay separately and take their time choosing what they want to eat and drink. I just want to get a ticket.
Especially if I am using one of their vouchers I cant use the automatic booths.
Why can’t they have one ‘express line’ for tickets only?
Yes the films are usually late so I rarely miss that much but I actually like to see the trailers.
Palace and Dendy have always been favourites and actually once you factor in the queuing time and hassle factor not that much further to go.

I understand fully the disappointment of receiving poor customer service but it seems to be pretty standard these days for some reason, but my complaint is about the incompetent film operator at the Eastland cinema in Vic. I went to see Shutter Island last week, the film started and the screen was black but you hear the actors talking and this went on for a good 10 minutes. People were dashing out to complain to get it fixed. Got fixed. No apology.

This week the same pathetic cinima to see Green Zone. As usual the all the boring crappy ads were perfect. The film comes on a great deal of excitement showing but everyone had faces 10 metres long speaking in arabic with possible subtites you could not see. This also went on for about 10 minutes before more complaints got if fixed. NOT GOOD ENOUGH HOYTS. Please employ some competent operators who are prepared to hang about for 30 secs to see if the film is working properly before walking away. Or Mr Manager give your job to a person who cares about customer service.

Anyone from Hoyts reading this? No?

Or yes, and cringing silently at your screen?

Going to do anything about it?

Last time I went to a Palace cinema I had half a glass of wine spilt over me by someone who had already had enough. When I complained I was told it would dry. When leaving the cinema I complained to the male selling tickets who asked what I expected him to to about it. Palace cinemas stink.

I mean… what DID you expect him to do about it?

I and a friend attended the movie Mary Poppins Returns at Hoyts Bankstown and found the seats to be very uncomfortable. Our feet didn’t touch the floor when the seats were in the normal position and, as we both have bad backs, laying the seats in recline position cause us to move constantly trying to find a comfortable position. I found the length of the seat from front to back was far to long for my body and I’m not a short person. By the time the movie finished my back felt like it was as stiff as a board.

The other criticism we have is the sound level – why do you have to have the sound so loud, I find it quite uncomfortable and my friend actually removed her hearing aids. I do notice that this happens now in all theaters and that’s the reason why I don’t go to the movies very much.