Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Is it Fair?

Upon the insistence of the Missus i went to buy tickets for the much awaited Harry Potter Movie, the last installment of the series (which was further divided into two parts, no doubt because of the length). Aware that one could easily procure seats for a movies through the internet i utilized the godsend online booking system but alas, to my discovery there existed a discrimination in terms of seating. While gsc does not even let you pick and choose your seats TGV only allows you to choose seats 4 tiers down from the good spots. The diagram clearly divided all the 8 tiers into 2 types, up above were the reserved seats while 4 tiers down, its for the untermensch, those who chose to buy their tickets online rather than line up at the cinema.
What nonsense is this?

Granted, that ticket-selling business is not something that is specifically statutory regulated meaning to say it operated on the whims of the cinema operators themselves but aren't the moviegoers consumers too? with their own rights and protection? Specifically, the online ticket buyers/bookers, why are we being discriminated against? Not only we only given limited choice of seats, we have to pay additional Rm 1 for it.

I guess i could stomach the fact if the Rm 1 acts as a collateral that is payable to the operators should the reservation be cancelled but its not. Lets say that two tickets to a movie which is Rm 6 totals up to RM 12, since you made a reservation or booking or chop dulu or whatever you want to call it, automatically additional Rm 1 is charged to you which is payable upon the collection of the tickets at the ticket counter. Its not collateral its bloosucking pure and simple. Just because we opted not to line up we had to shell out extra RM 1 and are denied the choiciest seats in the cinema hall, again i ask this,

what nonsense is this?

Shouldn't it be the other way around? since we had to pay extra, should we the online reservationist (if there is such a word) be given the prerogative of choosing the seats including the best seats available? One might say that i am blowing things out of proportion over Rm 1 but hear me out, when i did the online booking almost all the seats marked out for online reservation are already taken. For an online booking the number of seats that can be booked are limited to 6 so since the configuration of seats for online booking are 12 seats per row and theres 4 rows, that makes the profit the operator makes from online booking on per hall/showtime basis around Rm 8 if all the bookings/reservations are for real and believe me since its Harry Potter we're talking about, people are jostling for any seats they can get their hands on,all seats will be taken. Consider the showtimes for Harry Potter, last time i checked it plays around 5 times a day (since i reckon TGV will have to use their big halls for HP)so taking into account what i said earlier, its going to be a mad jostling for seats, the operators can make Rm 40 on online reservation fees daily while a blockbuster movie runs (Enthiran does not fall into this category, its a superblockbuster).

Do you see my logic here?

If we're paying extra to watch a blockbuster shouldn't we be given the option of getting the best seats available?

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