AMC Theaters "Doesn't Carry Nickels?"
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. Anthony writes:
"The ticket was $9 and I had $8 and some change to get rid of. So I paid with 3 quarters and 3 dimes which would have had me with a nickel change. The ticket seller told me they don't carry nickels and if I want my nickel I have to go to the Guest Services desk. I thought this was a bit odd so I went to Guest Services where I was told again...they don't carry any nickels in the drawers. So I asked to speak to the manager. The manager came over... he told me it's policy that AMC doesn't have any change in any drawers. Now I am not bent out of shape over a nickel, I am just utterly confused that a major movie theater chain would not have any coin change in any cash drawers (except maybe concessions). I asked for the managers name and he got an attitude and asked for mine which I gladly wrote down for him. "Well, we guess that when you never give out change you don't really "need" to carry any... but you'd think they'd have some emergency nickels laying around just in case. You know, so they didn't have to tell Anthony to take a hike over a nickel. If AMC owes you a nickel they should give you a nickel.
Silly.
(Photo:Paxton Holly)
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Comments:
Well, it does make sense that a company who sells products that cost a whole dollar amount wouldn't carry much change. I surprised they couldn't get a nickel from the snack bar, though.
While some might say, "it's only a nickel", that's the very attitude that the credit industry has preyed upon in a post-Depression era. A few dimes and nickels here and there start to add up fast.
Every time I get change, I put it in a jar at home and take it to the bank every year or so. Last summer, I got $50 or so deposited in my bank account just from loose change.
If they don't care about the nickel, they should let you buy the ticket for $8.95.
Did you know that JCpenny's does not carry dimes? My wife worked for them ages ago and it was a company policy not to have dimes in the register. Now they had plenty of nickles and pennies mind you.
I recall it had something to do with the founders wife or daughter chocking on a dime.
At any rate, why didn't they just give you five pennies?
That is pretty stupid. When I worked in retail if I didn't have a nickel I would give them a dime. Some things just aren't worth pissing people off about.
If I was standing behind this guy in line I would have given him a quarter just to shut up and go watch the movie. What a big deal over 5 frickin' cents. I could have panhandled out at the stoplight in front of the movie theater and made more money in the same amount of time it took for him to beg for his nickel.
At United Artists Theatre Circuit (before the Regal buyout), when ticket prices were at the $8.50/$10.50 mark, the cashiers only stocked half dollars (eliminating the need to count so many coins at the end of a cashier's shift.) Patrons were incensed - they had no use for the fifty cent pieces, and demanded quarters. Sometimes what works fine in theory for the cashier's office is entirely sub-optimal for practical use by patrons in the marketplace.
(You'd think that Guest Services would just give you a nickel out of their pocket as a gesture of Customer "Service"!)
@Hawk07: Wow you must not spend much in cash. My wife and I throw our change in a 5 gallon water bottle and I usually take it to the bank once every 6 months or so and its usually around $450 or so... Usually about the time where it takes an effort of will to pick it up and dump it on the table to sort and count :)
@LowerHouseMember: A lot of the local businesses do this. I've had totals that have come within a few cents of the nearest quarter cashier just rounded up instead of giving me a bunch of smaller change.
Nowadays, a nickel isn't even worth the breathe it takes to say the word, "nickel".
@Nemesis_Enforcer: I used to be like that, cashing coins worth $100 or so every few months at the bank. Since I've started using a check card I keep better track of where my money goes. It's been 6 months and there is probably $2 in coins inside.
No pennies?
How hard would it be for this place to have nickels?
@dougm: Yes, because when customers are inconvenienced by idiotic company policy, they should grin and bear it like good sheep.
Next time, Anthony should be a nickel short and tell AMC to cover the shortage with the nickel that they owe him from last time.
As B said, the tickets are usually rounded off to the nearest quarter, as are the concession items. Sales tax is usually included so there is no need for anything other than quarters. Sure, it is annoying but getting huge and heavy coin deliveries from the bank and keeping them in a smallish safe is also annoying. I worked at a theater for years and never once encountered a customer who needed change other than a quarter. Of course, we had a small amount of change just in case.
@Binaryslyder: Yeah I use my debit or CC for big things but I always like to have at least 20-40$ in my wallet just in case. You need gas just once when the ATM/credit card system is down and you start carrying emergency cash just in case.
@Nemesis_Enforcer: Assuming you generate your $450 evenly from day to day and could deposit it into a 6% account with daily compounding, you're ripping yourself off. You could have $456.80 instead of that measily $450. When will people ever learn that matresses (or water bottles) aren't suitable investment vehicles.
It isn't very clear whether they don't have any coins at all or just nickels. If the snack bar rounds everything to the nearest dollar, then the theater wouldn't need to stock coins. Otherwise, they should have given him a nickel from the snack bar. Very simple solution. But the people working there are not rocket scientists are they?
What are the odds that one person working there would not have a nickel to spare?
I worked for GCC (General Cinemas Corp) back in the early 90's when they went to the quarter system. Every thing was in .25 increments that included tax so they didn't have to do math. The asst. manager said, now we don't have to have dimes and nickels. I used the example like the original poster. Pretty funny the look on his face while he did the math.
It helped the cashiers, and most of the time people had dollars, so it was much quicker. Lots of times the customers could now know the exact cost and have it ready before the cashier would.
@balthisar: Ok so I am going to assume you meant that in a sarcastic way....Well I guess the 250$ a paycheck I deposit into a ING high yield savings account isnt enough for ya huh? And BTW the $450 or so I deposit also goes into my savings. And before you ask yes $250 is a lot for me to put into savings a check when you have to live in L.A. and take care of a 9 moth old..
Next time I see a movie at AMC I plan to pay entirely in nickels!
@Binaryslyder:
So what happened when someone paid with a dime or dimes at Penney's?
This sounds apocryphal.
If they owe him five cents and the smallest coin they have is a dime, then they owe him a dime.
Sad thing is, this is the kind of thing that pisses you off so much that you can't enjoy the movie.
You didn't lose a nickel. You lost $9.05.
With people going to the movies less (I haven't gone in years) you'd think they'd make an effort to be more hospitable. And isn't it time to start serving beer and decent food?!
@balthisar: Wouldn't it actually be less money once you factor in the cost of going into the bank everyday?
It's all this customer's fault because he should know better than to expect change from a transaction. Sheesh.
A friend of mine worked for AMC, and the previous commenters are right. They purposefully made everything in multiples of a quarter so that they wouldn't have to give small change. Usually they kept a roll of pennies, nickels and dimes in the safe but not in the drawers unless they had some in there already from a previous sale.
Mostly when people buy something that's 9.50 or 9.25 they just pay with a 10 or a 20. It's rare to see people pay with exact or close to exact change.
That doesn't make it right that the theatre banks on people's tendencies however. They do owe him a nickel.
On a side note, I was at the theater on sunday and was flabbergasted to see how many people were standing in line while the DIY machines off to the side stood barren. My friend and I walked to the machine, swiped our debit cards and had tickets in 10 seconds as opposed to the 30+ minutes we'd have to have waited otherwise. Cash sucks.
I would have said: OK, you can either give me the ticket for 8.95 or I can just go home and Torrent the movie.
while losing a nickel isn't a big deal... it seems sketchy...
@Greasy Thumb Guzik: When someone would give dimes to JCpenny's they would just deposit all of them in the store's safe during normal register balancing. My wife said most people paid with cards in her section anyways and it was rare to see more than 1 or 2 dimes in the register during the week.
If you've really got $450 every 6 months or so you should get a coin counter for $100 or so. The time saved will more than make up for the cost.
@Consumertaz: I had a couple of the cheaper $30 ones but they always jammed or broke. I wish my bank had a coin sorter like the Coin star type..without the fee of course. But as cheezy as it sounds its actually fun for us to sit around and count and roll them...you know the whole togetherness time and stuff.
Why would anyone complain about a half-dollar? It's money.
Even better, the Chevy Chase banks in the DC area offer *free* coinstar machines -- for everyone. You don't need to have an account there.
Although the teller usually tries to give you a pitch for an account when you go up to collect your money. But a simple 'not interested' usually takes care of that.
What's a nickel? ;-)
But obviously, situations come up where that doesn't work. And it leaves you unprepared. Hell, just having a little jumble of small change somewhere in the back of the drawer would be enough to resolve it, and you would still not have to think about it MOST of the time.
Are these places all getting bargain-basement cash drawers from countries with only three main coin denominations?
AAFES in Korea doesn't carry pennies. This isn't like in the US, though, where it's in the middle of a dollar economy, and there is a constant flow of pennies, though. Because AAFES doesn't ship any over (they figure it isn't worth it), the only pennies in Korea are those that individuals are carrying with them when they come from the United States.
Some of these get into circulation at AAFES, but it doesn't happen terribly often. So prices are usually rounded to the nearest 5 cents.
In my experience, it ends up being in AAFES favor about 4 times out of 5.
I would have taken one of my dimes back.
@LowerHouseMember: Seriously... I was at Subway the other day and their card machine was rebooting which I was not told until after my sandwiches were complete and would take about 10 minutes. I told the cashier, "I had my debit card and a ten" and my total was $10.59, so the employee just accepted the ten.
I'm not a big Subway fan but it made me happy to see an employee make the right service move.
I'm a bartender, and we only keep quarters for change. We never have dimes, nickels or pennies. All our beer ends in .25 or .50, so it's really all we need. What sucks though, is that if you give me 23 dimes to buy a $2.25 beer, I either have to put that in my purse and pay it with my tips, or not charge for it on the register at all, because it won't be counted (and as a matter of conscience, I won't do that).
And if you actually want that nickel in change for a beer, it's gonna be your last beer on my shift!
But a movie theater? That's stupid.
This is what those stupid credit card commercials - where the poor uncool guy pays with cash and causes havoc - are based on. Charge your movie tickets and quit ruining everyone's life!
Seriously, if I'm cashier or especially manager, you get a nickel out of my pocket. It's just good karma.
When your business model NEEDS the cost savings provided by not stocking nickels in your cashiers' cash drawers . . . you have a SERIOUS problem. How much money can this POSSIBLY save AMC? Perhaps the "savings" isn't in the efficiency, it's in people foregoing their 5 cents? Hmmmm
@jefuchs: You want them to serve beer at the movies? Like the talkative idiots aren't annoying enough, now we'll have to deal with *drunk* talkative idiot.
@swalve: Because invariably you will try to use the half-dollar at a store and the clerk will look at you like you just handed him a drachma. I have had this problem with dollar coins (USPS vending machines give dollar coins as change). You take it to a store and they don't know what to do with it.
My neighborhood theater serves beer (good stuff too) and gourmet ice cream. And it's crawling distance from my house.
I worked at an AMC theater, but moved on to a Regal Entertainment Group theater because of a payroll issue.
Either way both theaters have the quarter system so that everything is in 25cent intervals
Popcorn: $4.50
Soda $4.00
Gummy Bears $3.25
And yes its true, we don't stock nickels in registers, unless it was from a previous sale. Its not the theater's fault, next time know that you will need to pay in quaters, or at least have exact change.
Also to the poster above, we are all not stupid. Most of us understand what a dollar coin is, and how to deal with it.
Well, if they still owe you a nickel you can always take them to small claims court. Of course, it'll cost you $15 and a day off from work just to file.