My complaint:
Sadly I need to make a complaint. My step father had booked for us to see Bullet Train at your Eastleigh branch this afternoon but two members of female staff (one with very short hair and large glasses, punk looking and another darker haired girl wearing glasses and a face mask) refused to let my 15 year old daughter in without ID. Her passport (which is out of date) is back in Somerset and her father was not home to take a photo and email it. I offered to show them photos of her 15 birthday which the first woman refused and I explained calmly that I had no other way of proving her age, couldn’t I vouch for her? That I wouldn’t be bringing her if she wasn’t old enough. She was officious and patronizing and said no. She then said she didn’t have to put up with the rude way I was talking to her. I said I was perfectly calm and talking respectfully and she started to argue with me and tell me I was aggressive. I said she made me feel like a bad mother and I work in a school and would never allow an underage child to watch a film she wasn’t old enough for. She told me again I was rude and just walked away like she’d been physically hurt! I said to the second lady we’d be needing a full refund then and that I’d never been treated so badly by Cineworld or Odeon. The second lady told me that if those places are so great I could go to them instead as they didn’t want people like me!! I told her I found her rude and that perhaps she was working in the wrong job if she thought it was ok to speak to people the way she and her colleague were speaking to me. At that point I was a little agitated and I did speak firmly but not rudely as I’m just not like that. The two staff members were passive aggressive and defensive from the minute I said ID for a 15 year old wasn’t possible. They weren’t prepared to be flexible and take my word for it – I would have got the photo for them but it would’ve taken me a couple of hours. It was an exasperating experience as I was told by both women I was aggressive when actually they were behaving this way. The first woman must be struggling with her mental health and needs help, she was acting as though she was being personally and verbally attacked when all I asked was for her to be flexible. I appreciate there are rules, but my step Dad was honest and said we didn’t have ID for my daughter. We were being honest and were treated appallingly. I wish I had recorded this incident on my mobile phone as it really wasn’t very nice at all!
Suggested solution:
Train their staff in how to treat customers fairly and be flexible when rules cannot be followed. Ensure these two women are supervised until they learn what good customer service is - clearly neither of them like their jobs or represent the cinema company in a good way.
Some sort of written apology from each of them?