Printing Movie Tickets At Home

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the it's-about-time dept

Fandango, which is quickly taking over the Moviefone role of being the place to get your movie tickets online (thanks mostly to (1) being owned by a bunch of movie theaters and (2) signing exclusive deals to keep Moviefone out) is now testing a new service that will let people print their movie tickets at home. It will print a bar code, and the ticket taker will scan the bar code and give you a receipt. I see problems in situations like the Metreon theater where on weekend nights they’ll often take tickets directly in front of each screen – as they’d need a lot of these portable bar scanners. Also, how do you deal with “in and out” issues where a ticket stub would suffice with the old system? Right now, since so few people order tickets online, even on the busiest nights, I’ve found it’s much easier (and well worth the service charge) to just order tickets online and pick them up at the kiosks (which never have a line). However, my personal experience with Fandango makes me question their technological know-how. I’ve attempted to buy tickets through Fandango four times, and only once was I successful (the other times the system just hung and never completed my order) – and even then the emailed “receipt” was garbled text.