Harkins Theatres (Corporate Office)

This review is a reflection on the corporate office, not the theaters. The week before Christmas, my wife and I decided to buy our teenage daughter a 50 dollar gift card to Harkins as a stocking stuffer. Hoping to avoid busy malls and theaters so close to the holiday, we stopped into the corporate office which is near our house and asked if we could buy gift cards there. We were told we could, but we would have to fill out some paperwork that had to be faxed somewhere and that the process takes about 15 minutes. My wife said "can't we just purchase the gift card?" to which we were informed, that is the way to do it. Seems complicated and time consuming but whatever.

Next we were told that we had to pay a 6 dollar fee (that is 12% of our purchase price) for the cards. Really? We decided to go give AMC our money instead.

To be fair, the lady behind the counter was only following their process and was very polite - she did nothing wrong but really? Over 6 dollars Harkins lost our business.

As an aside, my daughter coordinated a meeting with several of her friends at Rogue 1 yesterday at AMC. Had Harkins been able to sell us gift cards without the fee, they would have had the business of my daughter, her friends, and their concessions. I'm sure with the remaining balance on her gift card from AMC she will continue to give AMC more business than just the original 50 dollars.

Maybe since we were at the corporate office Harkins was treating our 50 dollar stocking stuffer as some big commercial sale. I'm not sure but I'd recommend to them that they either make the process of buying a gift card as simple at the corporate office as it is most places or inform individuals that it is in their best interest to buy gift cards elsewhere before handing them paperwork.