Really if you're asking for money back, it should be for having to sit through my bloody valentine. That's 2 hours of my life i'd like back.

Fandango did him a favor by not letting him see that terrible movie.

Maybe they collaborated and threw the tickets away, therefore doing him a favor by not subjecting him to the horrors of yet another lame sequel?

@Mooshie: argh! you beat me to it.

@Mooshie: one of my buddies said it was awesome because it was a crappy horror film, but they knew it was crappy and put lots of 3d boobs and gore in it... plus he was high. i would go see it. for half price.

Jason and his date went to the theater and found a single open seat on the front row, which they shared.

They sold more tickets to the show than seats in the theater? Sounds like information the Fire Marshall would be interested in.

If a bunch of people couldn't get their tickets, why was only one seat available?

Hell, if they bought two tickets, and everything worked, but showed up 10 minutes late...who would be held accountable for only one seat being available?

Does buying a ticket through Fandango secure you an actual seat, and not just a ticket?

Can't you print out the tickets you purchased through Fandango? Or am I thinking of another online movie ticketing service?

I don't trust buying anything through any third party sites - fandango, travel-booking sites...
Buy from the source and they can't deflect the blame.

To avoid any future issues, it might be best to print the tickets in advance, so you have them in hand before you go to the show. Give you peace of mind, It is one of the reasons I hate will call tickets.

This is why you never purchase tickets from a 3rd party.

@AlteredBeast: i think they just couldn't find the lone empty seat there is in the middle of the top rows of seat

Fandango could have made massive strides by just comping him on a couple more tickets rather than pointing fingers and generating bad publicity. Now instead he's ticked off and complaining publicly.

As for the full theater....folks don't always close ranks, so he found 1 open seat in th front row. That doesn't mean there weren't 2 or three others scattered around the auditorium, they just wanted to sit together and probably didn't want to stand there for ten minutes peering in the darkness to find other seats, particularly since the movie (or more likely the previews) had already started.

Regal Entertainment Group is a pack of homophobic bastards. I worked for them for a few years as a manager. Mike Campbell, their president, was married to someone his own age (early 40s)while I was there and divorced this nice lady to marry a barely legal girl from my theater. His Mom is a lush of the first order. He fired my janitor and put his drunk mother in my theater to clean at night and she was rotten. Mark Jarvis, a former mortician, was my a home office something. He was my District Manager for a while. He hated gays and would hound any out of the company. When Clinton beat Bush, Regal expected everyone to wear "Don't Blame Me I Voted for Bush" buttons. I refused. I could go on and on. I am not the least bit surprised at how this person was treated. WARNING: DO NOT EAT THEIR HOT DOGS!! If you knew what I knew you would run screaming from the concession stand at any Regal Theater.

Those stupid kiosks are just for looks I've come to the conclusion of. The ones in Hyannis don't let you get or print tickets either.

I don't trust buying anything through any third party sites - fandango, travel-booking sites...
Buy from the source and they can't deflect the blame.

I'm reasonably sure that, at least with movie tickets, Fandango basically is the source. They're owned by Comcast now, but originally they were a subsidiary of Regal. And I think that most theatres offering online ticketing have an exclusive arrangement with one or another ticket service. So unfortunately, if you want to buy in advance without going all the way to the theatre, there isn't really an option.

To avoid any future issues, it might be best to print the tickets in advance, so you have them in hand before you go to the show. Give you peace of mind, It is one of the reasons I hate will call tickets.

When I went to see The Dark Knight on opening night, the whole system wound up going down, and they couldn't scan pre-printed tickets either. Luckily I had gone earlier in the day and picked mine up, but my friend who had printed her ticket from the website was nearly SOL before the manager intervened.

His email didn't have a confirmation number. That points to Fandango having a problem.

This is why you build a home theater setup.

Yeah you dont get to see the movie when it comes out right away, but most suck anyway...

@Mooshie: I thought it was fun. Oscar nominee? Hell no. But it wasn't too damned pretentious, and it didn't pull any hokey supernatural garbage. Straight-up gorefest through and through.

I've got nothing to say except I work in the same building that Fandango is headquartered in.

Thanks for reading my completely useless comment.

@cynical_bastard: I have a decent set-up... but nothing really compares to a good theater. They have gear that most of us simply can't come close to competing with at home.

shoudl've demanded a replacement ticket for coraline that movies way way better and actually way creepier.

@sleze69: If I don't receive some sort of reference number after I've provided my credit card details for an online purchase, that company is getting a phone call from me immediately. I have no proof of purchase.
The problem should have been rectified well before they showed up and tried to use the kiosk. It would have been if they took responsibility for their online transaction.

@cynical_bastard:
I 100% agree!

For under $1,000 I was able to buy a 480p projector (producing a 100" image), easily build my own screen, and buy an 800watt surround sound system.

My family and I watch about 4 movies a week on it, plus the movies I watch myself, and all the video games I play on it.

You can pause it when you want to go to the bathroom, rewind it if you miss dialog, turn on subtitles if someone has a thick accent, and you don't have to deal with the film being out of foucs or the sound too loud/soft.

Seems to me that those Kiosks at regal union square are ALWAYS broken. It might be somewhat conspiracy theory on my part, but I'm convinced they are that way so they can try to sell you on the "Regal Rewards" program when you pick up your tickets in the normal line.

The Theater on Western Ave in Chicago (near the Target just north of Fullerton) has this problem almost every time I go. I have had friends wait in the regular line and they get their tickets before I do on the Fandango machine.

Good concept, bad execution.

@Russell Miller: It's the least I can do. After all, people read mine.

I bought some tickets off Fandango for that Tom Cruise Nazi movie Xmas day in Boston. We get down there 20 mins early and there are no seats, people sitting on the stairs and some 16 year old kid offering with a mobile snack stand screaming about how if we were too lazy to go get food in the lobby how we could purchase snacks from a limited selection in is cart.

So we left and Lowes refunded the ticket price but not the Fandango fee. I emailed Fandango to see if they'd refund the $2 but they instead sent me some lovely auto-reply form letters.

So 2008 marks the end of my use of Fandango or going to a movie theater. I've given it many tries and it rarely works out well either on the theater's side or Fandango's or both. From now on I'm either waiting for Netflix or Hulu or if I really can't wait I'll pirate it for free. Hope the $2 was worth it Fandango.

@AlteredBeast: I think the "bunch of people" that was having trouble getting their tickets counts all movie showings, not just this one. Dozens of people having problems may only be 1 or 2 per screen. And some of them probably used the line to get their problems fixed, like the OP did.

The other patrons that packed the theater may have well purchased their tickets at the box office. It doesn't say that they all used Fandango.

@Underpants Gnome: What on earth were you expecting when you bought a ticket to "My Bloody Valentine 3D"?

I thought it was a fun movie due to the 3D.

@MrsLopsided: I understand your point, but then your argument should apply to credit cards too. So you shouldn't ever use a credit card. But like credit cards, buying through some third parties usually provides some sort of protections in your purchase.

In my opinion, when using third parties, have a backup. Print the tickets out at home if possible, because you don't know the availability of the remote location. But I wouldn't let that preclude me from buying the tickets from a third party in the first place. My rule of thumb is this: if you're going to get tickets in advance, have them in your hand when you get to where you're going. If I order tickets in advance for a concert or sporting event, I never do will call. Same for movie tickets.

@savdavid: And you feel that you're being a better person by posting that? You judge him because of who he married and you judge his mother but you're mad because the DM judged people because of their sexuality? Sounds to me like you're just as mean-spirited, rude, and judgmental as you claim Mike and Mark to be.

@Underpants Gnome: My friends and I intentionally went to see it because we knew it was going to suck. We laughed the whole way through. I love the tag line: "Nothing says date-movie like a 3D ride to hell." But I think the best line of the movie was "Guess he woke up."

@67alecto: Don't get me wrong. I enjoy bad horror movies. I'm one of the 3 people on earth who actually enjoyed "Grindhouse". I even enjoyed "Zombie Strippers". It just seemed like they used 3D as a gimmick to try to salvage a truly terrible plot, and only a handful of scenes even tried to utilize the 3D effects.

Regal Union Square is my movie theater (just saw Coraline there) and I can commiserate with Jason. The kiosks really are always broken, and on a saturday night, the lines to retrieve a purchased ticket can be longer than the one at the box office. Out of their 8 or 10 kiosks, typically at least 3 are out of order, but the screen never says "out of order," it just lets people come up over and over again and try to retrieve their tickets before getting an error message. I dont know why they don't station an attendant near the kiosks who could at least alert someone if something is not working, or help out people like Jason without making them wait in the long box office line and miss their movies.

Maybe I'm missing something, but what about a chargeback?

@MrsLopsided: How do you define a "third-party" site? Fandango used to be majority owned by Regal (before they sold it to Comcast), and it's still the only place on the web you can buy tickets for Regal cinemas. If you go to Regal's website and click "buy tickets," it just redirects you to Fandango. So if you want to see a movie at this particular cinema where most popular movies sell out, and can't get there way ahead of time to buy your tickets in person, you're stuck using Fandango.

Also, the kiosks at this particular cinema are indeed often broken. The last time I went there (it's the closest non-art-house to where I live), out of 20+ kiosks, only 2 were working. All the others were broken, and none of the employees seemed to care at all.

I'm pretty sure the employees @ Regal were just laaaaaaazy, unless Regal's policies are different from the competitor I worked for. At AMC, we could return tickets that were bought online, but first the customer had to pick them up. But you wouldn't have the service fee refunded.
Of course I stopped seeing movies ages ago, no matter how awesome a movie is, I can't justify paying more than 10 bucks to see it in NYC. I'm saving up for Watchmen in Imax.

I refuse to use the system because of the cost

$2 ain't much, but why is it per ticket, is it harder to sell 10 tickets via fandango in advance, NO

When there is this kind of pricing I think Ticket-disaster, I mean Ticketmaster. Which basically means we take the money and think you're funny.

I take enough crap in life, no need to pay for extra.

@SabreDC: So.... people cant say anything bad about people who persecute other people only because they are gay because that is judging them? Your logic escapes me.

@AlteredBeast:

Agreed. I work at a movie theater, and all the time someone claims 'there are NO seats left' when there are 8 perfectly fine single seats available in the theater.

@sponica:

I work box office, and I am not allowed to refund a ticket without manager's approval, so when he says that they are not authorized to refund a fandango ticket, they are probably telling the truth.

I used Fandango once, for Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. Usually I don't go to movies at night, and NEVER on opening weekends. I go Sunday morning when everyone is at church.

The Fandango site was okay, and I printed my ticket, but it was more expensive than just going to the theater. I'll probably never use it again. Since I don't go when the theater is packed, I probably won't have to worry about it.

One notable exception was The Return of the King; I saw that at a Saturday afternoon show a week after it opened and it was PACKED. We had to stand in line for thirty minutes.

Point 3 isn't valid. Are you saying that you'd rather the box office employee not print out his tickets? At my theater I can't refund anything without a manager unless it was my fault (IE I punched one too many tickets in. ). I get people coming in 20 minutes after the scheduled time all the time, why would I assume that someone would not want their fandango tickets? Seriously consumerist, box office workers are generally teenagers paid minimum wage with 0 authority to do anything without a manager, don't blame us!

I stopped using Fandango years ago after a similar incident. I printed my tixx at the theatre, but there were literally were no seats available. A manager insisted on visually confirming this ("We don't oversell...") and then reluctantly refunded only the ticket price--not Fandango's service charge. Fandango's 800 number said it was the theatre's fault and that they successfully provided their service, so no service charge refund.

It took letters to the CEOs of Fandango and the theatre to get a comped pair of tixx from each. The theatre was much more interested in rectifying the situation and apologizing than Fandango was...

Sounds like they still haven't gotten their act together.

I've had problems with the Regal Union Square kiosks before, but was luckily able to get my tickets from the box office fairly easily (if by fairly easily you mean waiting on the godawful line). The truth of the matter is that that theater is so high volume, that it doesn't matter if they piss off the occasional customer. They're still making money hand over fist over there.

@Aladdyn: There's a time and a place and a protocol. Get in touch with Regal's board of directors. Maybe it's just me, but I think one should always take the high road and try to at least exhibit some tact. Let me ask you this, what difference does it make if the President of the company and another adult developed a consenting relationship, other than just being gossip? Does that mean that he can't effectively run a company?

My point is that two wrongs don't make a right. You shouldn't condemn someone in a completely unrelated matter and then get mad because the DM (which has nothing to do with the President) condemns someone. People in glass houses, yada yada.

Here in L.A., we are fortunate to have Arclight Theatres. The best feature is one can select one's actual seats, print out the information (show/time/seat numbers) and receive loyalty points for the process. This is an in-house system, too. No lame excuses if something goes wrong - only apologies and making things right. Oh, did I mention there is no surcharge for this privilege?

Arclight tix are generally a tad higher than the going rate at other chains. However, there are a few other things they do exclusively that make it well worth it to me.