Recently I went to see Dark Knight Rising with my wife. The volume in the cinema was too loud and we didn’t enjoy it because of that. My wife went out to complain to the only person she could find. A security guard who couldn’t be arsed to do anything about it. He said he would “try” but there was no change in the volume that we could detect. I find this trend in increasing volume in cinemas to be disturbing.
On the plus side, they actually have a ticketing system for complaints.
On the negative side, at first their response was lousy but after a bit more complaining they improved. Conversation follows:
Hi,
on 6/8/2012 at 8:20pm session in cinema 8 i saw Dark Night Rising.
Right from the start of the movie it was too loud. My wife and I felt uncomfortable at the noise level.
After a while my wife left the cinema to complain. She spoke to the security guard on the ticket collection stand. He said he would “try to do something” but there was no detectable change in the volume level. it really was too loud during the action scenes and consequently we left the cinema with ringing ears. My ears continued to ring all night long.
I don’t really like to think I paid good money to have hearing damage. I’m not quite sure what was wrong with your setup but the system failed us on two counts.
1. it was too loud to begin with. you should have systems in place to ensure it is not too loud.
2. when we complained about it, your staff did nothing to rectify the situation.
I might also add that on leaving the cinema, we felt like complaining but the place was deserted except for the same security person who did nothing in the first place.
This is not the kind of experience I expect from the Event Cinema brand and frankly I doubt I will be attending an Event Cinema again for quite some time.
Yours, Jason.
To which they replied with the fairly lack lustre:
Hi Jason,
Thank you for contacting us.
Customer Service is of the upmost priority to us. We do endevour to make the cinema going experience the best for each individual & we can assure you that it is very rare that we receive feedback about our film volume levels. Please know that we do appreciate you bringing this to our attention and will contact the appropriate parties so this doesn’t happen again.
We hope that you will attend our cinemas again in the near future.
Kind Regards,
E Support – Event Cinemas George Street
This riled me up a little and I sent them this:
Wow, I’m pretty surpprised that you couldn’t even manage an apology. And not only that, your email aludes to perhaps the issue is my ears rather than your sound configuration.
In order for me to go to the cinema, I need to organise baby sitting. It’s not easy to get to the cinema, and when we got there, it was uncomfortably loud and your staff couldn’t be bothered to even fix it.
I’m very disappointed.
which apparently got their attention:
Hi Jason,
Please let me sincerely apologies for the interruption to your movie experience. As a mother of 5 myself I do know how difficult it actually is to get some time out from the kids to attend any outing. If you would like to forward your address to us, we are more than happy to provide you with some passes for you to come back & watch a movie at a time that suits you.
We will definately speak to our staff & the security company to ensure that any issues like this are looked after appropriately & accordingly.
Thank you for taking the time out to give us your feedback. It is feedback like this that we take on board seriously & use to better our service.
