I had an interesting interaction with AMC the last few days. After my comments on Friday I decided to really get to the bottom of the concerns I had and did some digging. I finally found their corporate contact info on a business-related site and called their Vice President of Operations. I didn’t actually reach him but I did reach his assistant. She was a great asset to the company and made me feel immediately heard. She wouldn’t let me go without speaking to someone in charge of corporate Guest Relations.
I ended up speaking with someone by the name of Troy who is in management there. Troy assured me that my concerns were not falling on deaf ears and that AMC has been actively working on finding a solution to these issues—especially the cell phone problem. He said that he wanted to get in touch with the General Manager of the Cherry Hill AMC theater and talk over the concern with her and that she’d get back to me.
Monday afternoon she called. We had a long discussion of at least an hour. She wanted to know every detail. When did I last go? What shows have I seen? Did I know about their frequent movie-goer program? Who didn’t speak English?
It was all very good to hear. It’s clear that AMC has very good people in the right spots and the Cherry Hill General Manager has a pedigree that is just what’s called for. In fact, I felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t called her first. I didn’t given my past interactions with Loews management there and that’s my mistake. She pointed out that, indeed, Paranormal Activity caught them entirely by surprise on a night when they expect traffic to be below what it turned out to be and that I can understand.
In the end I still don’t have a full sense of how they’re going to resolve the cell phone issue and I do really hope they consider the face-to-face approach to curbing it over hoping another pre-movie on-screen announcement or something printed on the ticket will have any impact on this.
For my part I’m going to keep an open mind (and remove the bear trap that had been keeping it closed of late) with respect to going there and give it another shot. We’ll see what transpires. It’s really a good company with good, well-meaning people. Here’s hoping the execution shows through on subsequent viewings.
