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For the past 10 years we've been accepting Hollywood Movie Money checks for admissions and painlessly depositing them into our checking account. Unfortunately, it seems that a good workable system has been extinguished. I got my first new "ITEM" about Thanksgiving weekend for Happy Feet. As I trusted in Hollywood Movie Money I accepted the item after carefully checking the expiration date and the terms. I've yet to get paid for this item.

When settling the boxoffice for the night I realized that my item did not have the MICR encoding on the bottom used for check processing. So I read the faint red printing at the bottom which said "BOXOFFICE: Refer to the special instructions for the Sears Happy Feet program provided by your circuit's promotions department or call our toll-free automated help line at 866-341-0676." I called the number and learned that they had created a new program which basically depends upon you having a credit card machine to process this item. Unfortunately, I couldn't leave them a message to send me the program details and the stuff necessary to get paid because the message box must have been full and the automated system just hung up on me. I tried again 2 weeks ago and got through to leave a message but have yet to hear a call back or a mailing with the necessary information. So I just chalked it up to live and let live and decided to decline any others presented. I now check every item from Movie Cash and Hollywood Movie Money to make sure that it has the MICR encoding on the bottom. I've now declined quite a few of these items.

If you haven't seen any of these yet I should tell you that they are printed at home on the customers printer so they could look pretty bad and not be in color at all. In fact I've come to the conclusion that they are a cashiers nightmare as they are extremely difficult to read and figure out how many tickets and at what prices they are allowed to go. Even if they sent me the information I'm not sure that I would honor them as the amount of back office work calling them in everyday and then sending in the actual items along with the huge risk of cashing them incorrectly seems to be inordinately risky. Too bad It was a good program for years.

Try this link for some other contacts for this outfit.
http://www.quantumloyalty.com/hollywood_movie_money.php

Try writing to Brad Wasserman direct. I emailed him a question last week about an expired ICE AGE ticket and he wrote back the next day.
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Those home printed tickets are a terrible idea.

So what happened with this, Beckwith?

I've had no reponse from them. My Happy Feet item which is worth $15.50 in total ticket sales (That was three tickets) will expire at the end of January. I don't know if I will pursue it further or just decline all Hollywood Movie Money items from now one and tell the customers that this company does not respond to their phone calls from me. I am really short of time nowadays as you have probably noticed I don't often write much here. I do all the payroll, W-2s, tax returns etc, myself and now find myself working the concession stand during the week by myself. Before the minimum wage in Ohio went sky high I used to be able to afford an employee to do that. Now I sell all tickets on the weekends and work the tickets/concession during the week. (At least I often get Tuesdays off.)Not complaining that is just how it is and why I am probably not going to pursue Hollywood Movie Money any more.

[This message has been edited by BECKWITH1 (edited January 24, 2007).]

We have had to contact them because our ticket booth took one of their checks where the customer had cut off the routing numbers on the bottom. We had no problem with them honoring the check. We just had to contact them and mail it to them instead of cashing it at the bank.