Paying clients treated like garbage.

Last week Friday, the schools closed and I wanted to take my 2 children to see Jurassic World at Ilanga Nelspruit as they have seen all the other movies and were looking forward to this one. I wanted to make it a special experience for them and treat them to watch it at the cinema. I saw that the only option left for this movie is in the Subs cinema so I ended up taking out a subscription and paid for it immediately.

I wanted to book our seats on Saturday morning for the 16:30 show on Saturday but saw that it doesn’t specify whether the movie is PG13 or 13R so I checked on Google to get clarity and all the sites say PG13 so I booked our tickets and paid for our snacks and glasses as it was a 3D movie that was showing. The website also asked me to select how many of the glasses should be for adults and how many should be for children.

When we got to the theatre, we were stopped by the staff and told that my 1 son is too young to watch the movie. We informed staff that we will also be watching the movie and they will not go in alone as parental supervision is needed for a child younger than 13 in a PG13 movie.

We were informed that according to Ster Kinekor, no children under 13 is allowed even with parental supervision and that Ster Kinekor has their own ratings for movies and have decided to increase the rating to 13R without any clarification thereof. The manager took us to an office where he called the regional manager who just shouted “no, no, no, no, no” which we found to be incredibly rude and unprofessional.

The manager then called customer care as I already paid and they cancelled the booking but insisted that I will have to wait 7 days for my refund which is ridiculous! I still haven’t received a single cent of my money back.

After that, another area manager arrived and told us that we should have checked the rating before booking (WHICH WE DID) and that Parental Guidance does not mean that a child younger than the age can watch a movie with the parents present…

I also saw on Hello Peter that another person’s child was also refused even though he is 13 just because he “looks too young” as well as multiple other complaints.

So basically now my kids will now have to watch the movie at home as clearly, Ster Kinekor hates children and have put policies in place to ruin the movie experience for children and parents. Clearly Covid has not hit Ster Kinekor hard enough as its quite clear that Ster Kinekor does not want clients and does not care about losing clients or treating their clients like garbage.