Saturday, October 16, 2004
UGC Cinema
Here's my comments to UGC after trying to book tickets, I think it shoudl be sel;f explanatory...
have been trying to book tickets and have experienced two problems. I cannot find any information about 'family tickets' so don't know what is required to qualify eg ratio of adults to children, how old the children need to be, whether indeed it is children or can be adult family, if children are going do they get childrens tickets and the rest of the family get family tickets. I am an intelligent person and this is not intuitive for me and has prevented me from booking tickets as I may get the wrong ones and either not be able to get in or pay too much. There is no contact number available for the local cinema to confirm, or indeed any number that can contact a human being outside normal working hours, just the telephone equivalent of the online bookings ervice (assuming that the voice recognition system understands you - about 50% of the time in my case) which ultimately gets to the same ticket choice dilemna. Neither can I find any information about family tickets on your website.
The other gripe is that before noticing the family tickets option I had entered to buy for 2 kids and 2 adults. Whe I got to checkout the adult quantity had changed to 7!!!! This isn't even a typo, there's no way I could hit the 7 instead of the 2, this is a bit scary especially for people, who having negotiated the booking system - and paid extra for it - assume that it has retained the correct information they put in.
In summary, please put ticket info on the website, especially when at the weekend it is impossible to get a real person on the phone (perhaps for the whole group it would be possible for someone to be available?)
And it got worse before it got better (come to think of it, it didn't get better). After trying the website then the phone, I decided to investigate the luddite route, got in the car and drove to the damn place. Now I probably would have been able to get a response but would have had to have queued up for probably 20 minutes to get to a real person.
As I'd had to leave the car outside in a paying car park, but deciding not to pay for what should only have taken 2 minutes,I thought it best not to join the queue. I did however find the anser to the family ticket question which was that it covers four people, one of which has to be a child. Fair enough. But before I carry on, this cinema used to reimburse your parking fees that you had to spend to watch a film, and apparently now they don't. Just as well in one way because that would have created even more problems, how do you claim your parking fees back if you book on the internet or phone (get in the 20 minute queue is the obvious answer I suppose).
Anyway, with this new information I drive back to the computer and go through the whole booking process only to get left at the end with a "we are now connecting to your cinema, we appreciate your patience" type message, which would have been fine if it hadn't come back with a "the connection has timed out" message - their fucking connection not mine I hasten to add!! This was follows by a message along the lines of "try again in a few minutes". That's OK for you to say, that means I have to enter all the same information all over again. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
Anyway, once I calmed down I went through the whole laborious process again, this time to be met with a " we were unable to process your transaction message". You must be fucking joking surely!
Well, I'd promised the kids so it was back to the phone. Fortunately, the film I wanted was the one they were "currently taking reservations for" so goodness knows what would have happened if I'd wanted a different film.
So, in the end I finally got it done, but it probably took over an hour of my time and a trip to the cinema itself to get it sorted. Is it me or did things used to be easier before we got the technology (the technology has probably booked me the crappiest seats in the house too)?
Thank God for home cinema!!!!
have been trying to book tickets and have experienced two problems. I cannot find any information about 'family tickets' so don't know what is required to qualify eg ratio of adults to children, how old the children need to be, whether indeed it is children or can be adult family, if children are going do they get childrens tickets and the rest of the family get family tickets. I am an intelligent person and this is not intuitive for me and has prevented me from booking tickets as I may get the wrong ones and either not be able to get in or pay too much. There is no contact number available for the local cinema to confirm, or indeed any number that can contact a human being outside normal working hours, just the telephone equivalent of the online bookings ervice (assuming that the voice recognition system understands you - about 50% of the time in my case) which ultimately gets to the same ticket choice dilemna. Neither can I find any information about family tickets on your website.
The other gripe is that before noticing the family tickets option I had entered to buy for 2 kids and 2 adults. Whe I got to checkout the adult quantity had changed to 7!!!! This isn't even a typo, there's no way I could hit the 7 instead of the 2, this is a bit scary especially for people, who having negotiated the booking system - and paid extra for it - assume that it has retained the correct information they put in.
In summary, please put ticket info on the website, especially when at the weekend it is impossible to get a real person on the phone (perhaps for the whole group it would be possible for someone to be available?)
And it got worse before it got better (come to think of it, it didn't get better). After trying the website then the phone, I decided to investigate the luddite route, got in the car and drove to the damn place. Now I probably would have been able to get a response but would have had to have queued up for probably 20 minutes to get to a real person.
As I'd had to leave the car outside in a paying car park, but deciding not to pay for what should only have taken 2 minutes,I thought it best not to join the queue. I did however find the anser to the family ticket question which was that it covers four people, one of which has to be a child. Fair enough. But before I carry on, this cinema used to reimburse your parking fees that you had to spend to watch a film, and apparently now they don't. Just as well in one way because that would have created even more problems, how do you claim your parking fees back if you book on the internet or phone (get in the 20 minute queue is the obvious answer I suppose).
Anyway, with this new information I drive back to the computer and go through the whole booking process only to get left at the end with a "we are now connecting to your cinema, we appreciate your patience" type message, which would have been fine if it hadn't come back with a "the connection has timed out" message - their fucking connection not mine I hasten to add!! This was follows by a message along the lines of "try again in a few minutes". That's OK for you to say, that means I have to enter all the same information all over again. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
Anyway, once I calmed down I went through the whole laborious process again, this time to be met with a " we were unable to process your transaction message". You must be fucking joking surely!
Well, I'd promised the kids so it was back to the phone. Fortunately, the film I wanted was the one they were "currently taking reservations for" so goodness knows what would have happened if I'd wanted a different film.
So, in the end I finally got it done, but it probably took over an hour of my time and a trip to the cinema itself to get it sorted. Is it me or did things used to be easier before we got the technology (the technology has probably booked me the crappiest seats in the house too)?
Thank God for home cinema!!!!
