Over priced and managed by idiots, Reading's Vue Cinema is wisely avoided in favour of the town's Showcase. The tickets are laughably over priced as are all refreshments there, the cinema screens themselves have often been unpleasantly cold, I have twice found the toilets smelling quite abysmally, and the lack of sufficient staff invariably seems to mean that the box office is closed forcing you to have to stand behind an army of chavs, queueing to buy a ticket from a hot dog stand.
Beyond this, my singular run in with the management has left me astonished that the place is still in business at all. Visiting with my girlfriend who is a full time student at the University of Reading, I bought her a student ticket - as seemed appropriate - being careful to ensure she had her University card with her. However, on attempting to enter the screen, we were stopped because the university card does not have an expiry date visible on it. I pointed out that my girlfriend had only recently started at the university and that the card was clearly brand new and unblemished. Also, that we had been unaware that a university card with an expiry date was needed. But my appeal to common sense fell on deaf ears. I requested to speak to a supervisor and was approached by the most senior monkey available. It was policy, I was told, to only accept university cards with expiry dates as proof of student ID. That it didn't say this anywhere clearly, and that we had quite obviously made an understandable and perfectly innocent mistake - presuming that a student at the town's own university, in possession of a valid student card, would constitute 'a student' in the illustrious eyes of Vue - proved startlingly insufficient to entice the one-off discretionary "okay, but remember for next time"' that should have been forthcoming under such circumstances. Instead, in a move that showed a complete lack of initiative, business acumen and customer service, I was told to surrender additional funds to cover the upgrade to a full adult ticket or we would be refused admission - this from a man who indignantly corrected me that he was the manager not a supervisor (as if that had any real meaning in a cinema) when I pointed out it was surely at his discretion to just allow us through this once as the auditorium was by now filling up. If it was within his power - and with hindsight I suspect it may not have been, pathetic peeon that he was, or perhaps the decision demanded greater intellect than was at his immediate disposal - he could have let us in, lost no money since my girlfriend was, in fact, a student, left us happy and ensured we knew for next time. Instead he chose to be obstructive, unjustly demanding further payment which was inconveniently time consuming, and ensured I would never willingly set foot in there ever again. His justification was bewildering; that without a date on the card, a student could have left university already. Okay Sherlock, explain to me how the presence of an expiry date on a piece of plastic proves that someone has not left or dropped out of university with any greater certainty. It doesn't, of course. In any event, I paid the monkey, expressed my frustration at his existence, and entered the cinema in time to take up the last remaining seats in the front row... which being the Reading Vue, means that watching the film from this position entailed the inevitable cricked neck and considerable discomfort. So thanks Reading Vue and your retarded approach to customer service for an unforgettably bad experience. Your extra £1.25 was undoubtedly worth ruining my evening and costing you hundreds in lost revenues from my subsequent cinema trips to anywhere else.
A crap cinema, poorly trained staff and ludicrously over priced. If that sounds like your cup of tea, head on down! read more
