Comments on: Thanks for ruining my Thursday night, Hoyts

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:50:14 +0000

Anyone from Hoyts reading this? No?

Or yes, and cringing silently at your screen?

Going to do anything about it?

By: david

david — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:13:53 +0000

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.

By: nicky

nicky — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:30:05 +0000

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.

By: Rae

Rae — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:06:13 +0000

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

By: Door

Door — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:23:47 +0000

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.

By: Alfonz

Alfonz — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:10:27 +0000

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.

By: Caitlin

Caitlin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:16:32 +0000

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?

By: Trevor

Trevor — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:28:54 +0000

PS: LOATHE that crap new website Hoyts

By: Trevor

Trevor — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:26:43 +0000

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.

By: The Doctor

The Doctor — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:26:35 +0000

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……

By: Kevin

Kevin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:21:54 +0000

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.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:24:20 +0000

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.

By: DG

DG — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 02:41:31 +0000

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.

By: Al

Al — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:45:01 +0000

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.

By: Paulie

Paulie — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:21:15 +0000

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.