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No more nickels at AMC
posted by
Michael Zoldessy
on
August 3, 2007 at 10:40 am
Just when you thought large movie chains had squeezed every last dime from you, apparently they can get a few more cents out of you.
Reader Anthony says he paid for his movie ticket with “$8 and some change.” The transaction resulted in AMC owing Anthony a nickel.
But AMC doesn’t carry nickels. They told Anthony that if he wanted his nickel he’d have to go get it from the “Guest Services” desk. So he did. But instead of a nickel, he got attitude.
Has anyone heard of other businesses doing this? Read the full story at the Consumerist.
Comments (5)
What a ridiculous story. I can’t believe that even there wouldn’t be ONE nickel at all anywhere, in any register at the theater. Maybe someone paid their concession purchase partly using nickels. Or, the Manager could have easily given him 5c out of his pocket, or heck, even a quarter back and a voucher for a free soda and popcorn, just for the sake of apologizing and providing good customer service. It should have never escalated to the point where Anthony had to take names to report it to the next level.
And yet another examples of why chains like Classic Cinemas and small independents like the LaGrange do so well.
I work for a small independent chain and we don’t have change other than quarters. Everything is priced to the nearest quarter. If a customer needed change it would have to come out of the managers pocket if he or she had the change on them. Since most theaters don’t sell items with prices ending in penny’s dimes or nickels there is no reason to order that change from the bank, or keep it on hand. When we get small coin it goes directly to the bank in the daily deposits. We try to ask our patrons for whole bills or quarters, but we will short ourselves if they only have small change; ie; they need 0.25 but have 0.30.
When I worked for AMC all transactions ended in multiples .10, so no nickels or pennies were really needed for change and none need therefore be owed. This was done to speed up transaction time and make cashing up easier. If such a transaction such as the one above occurred, customer service instructions were to give the customer the benefit of the nickel.
This has been AMC policy since at least 1985.
It’s nice to round up the price because it does make it easier and faster but you should still have small change. Don’t they even have small change it the petty cash?
I worked for General Cinema and we also rounded prices up but we still had some smaller change on hand. We used armored car so we didn’t deposit loose change because the bank charged more if we did. We would wait until we had a few rolls of change to deposit it and only get charged once.