Poor service for films festival

It may be a perfectly private affair but the Eden Century cinemas have lost one more customer through their negligence and lack of professionalism. Three times out of three that I went there during the European films festival I encountered major problems.

On one occasion my seat turned out to be double-booked and the manager tried to talk me into giving it up for the benefit of the family of three who also booked the same place along with two other seats near it. I agreed, provided that the new seat would be as good as mine because I had booked my ticket well in advance.

However, since the only seat that was offered happened to be in the corner, I refused to leave. As much as I did not want to cause any discomfort to the family, the usher's comment about how unchristian some people were (addressed to me) and the manager's reasoning that those people had bought their tickets before me and, therefore, had more right to sit there, as well as the unnecessary reminder that it was he, and not me, who was the manager, did not contribute to my desire to cooperate. I am sure the family received some sort of compensation but I also heard from them that it had not been the first time this had happened during the festival.

However, trusting the manager's statement that this was a rare occasion due to a computer mistake, after the show I went to the box-office to book a ticket for another film only to meet a puzzled expression on the clerk's face. I double-checked regarding the title and the date on the poster just a couple of metres away and it was all correct. However, the girl insisted she could not see that film in the computer system and that it was possibly showing in another cinema.

My husband and I tried calling the cinema on the number given in the newspaper for reservations but no one answered, except once when I was informed that I could not book on the phone but had to come to the cinema and buy the ticket there. I did so and the show which a few days before had been missing from the box-office computer schedule was now miraculously on again and I bought the tickets without any problems.

The Spanish film shown on the Sunday was great and the show ran without a hitch. However, when we came to see yet another film, on a Tuesday, (due to begin at 9.15 p.m. as stated on the tickets) we discovered that it had already started. If we are to trust the information in the booklet, we missed about one hour of the film, even though the usher said it had "only" started 15 minutes before. The previous encounter with the manager of the cinema still fresh in my mind, I did not feel like seeing him again, even if he was still there at that late hour, so we left quietly to never set a foot in that place again.

True, we paid just Lm1 for each film but I believe it would have been only fair to state that the discount was at the expense of service, if that was the case.