In this column about movie ticket stubs Cecil says that the theater keeps the stubs to occasionally check them to make sure the ticket takers are not palming tickets and reselling them.
Not really.
For one, there are better ways of catching the ticket taker doing this. Checking the stubs from a week ago wouldn’t really tell you which ticket taker was on the take. (presuming you have more than one person take tickets)
The actual reason a theater holds stubs is that it is a requirement from the film studios.
Films are ‘rented’ by the theaters. They pay a percentage of the ticket sales back to the studios. The real oldest scam in the movie game is the theater under reporting how many tickets were sold to the studio and thereby paying less rent. If the studio suspects that a theater is under reporting, they can do a spot check and ask to see the ticket stubs. A theater can become suspect as their performance history is closely tracked and comparisons are easily done. For instance, theater A may have a history of doing very similar business as theater B. When theater A starts reporting much lower numbers than expected, an investigation may take place.
Theaters are only required to hold the tickets for 30 days and then the stubs are tossed.
Cecil, you also left out another function. You (and Zebra above) covered why they don’t let you just keep the ticket after verifying it, but not one of the reasons why they give you back anything at all. Usually the guy taking the stub sits between the theaters themselves and the lobby where you can buy stuff. If you need to go to the lobby, or even leave the entire theater complex, you can come back, present the stub you kept, and get yourself back in.
This is the most basic function of ticket stubs, although many other places use stamps or bracelets.
Live theatre? I don’t know. Baseball, been belly belly good…
Movie theater is what I know. I’m sure live theatre has their reasons. For both, a torn ticket is treated differently for refund purchases than an untorn ticket. So they tear the ticket and give you back half so you can find your (usually) assigned seat.
I work at a theater. Cecil is, for the most part, correct. The main reason to tear the ticket is:
it’s proof you paid and saw the movie.
If the ticket isn’t torn, you can come back later and claim you never saw the movie. Either you bought an extra ticket for someone that never showed up or you bought advance tickets and couldn’t make it yourself. If I see a torn ticket, you’re lying (usually). It’s that simple.
If we keep the whole ticket untorn, it can be resold but the more likely problem is we couldn’t give you a refund if necessary. Imagine paying in cash, not getting a receipt and giving us the only proof that you paid (your ticket). How can you prove you didn’t sneak in if you have to leave early? You can’t.
On top of that, you can’t get a refund on a credit card transaction without a ticket stub. You need both. People would demand a refund with their receipt then come back later and demand a refund for their stubs. It’s the same line of thinking as going to any store for a refund. You need the item and receipt. No store would give a refund with just a receipt because you could keep the item and claim you threw it away.
Basically, keep your stub. The absolute best we can do without it is give passes and you had better be very convincing to get that.
It can be used to prevent internal theft but it would be very very rare to catch a thief that way. So rare that I’ve never seen it done but theoretically, it could be done. Chances are, we’d catch an employee any number of easier ways (security cameras or computer tracking).
Unless it’s a big theater, they probably don’t have multiple ticket takers. The smallest theater I’ve worked in was a 12 screen and they didn’t even have one most days. They weren’t budgeted for it from a payroll standpoint. So, you’d be able to track it easily if this was a scam someone tried. Either you’d physically see the money change hands or you’d notice a long line at the ticket taker stand.
The box office could do it pretty easily though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it but I’ve seen way more complex scams happen.
I’ve never heard of anyone trying it and they probably wouldn’t be very successful if they tried. Most ticket takers don’t handle cash making the scam easy to spot.
This might be true but I’ve never ever heard of it happening. It would probably take a huge amount of under reporting for a studio to take notice. An employee could steal hundreds a night with only a handful of tickets. No studio is going to notice a dozen people not showing up. If the employee did it with multiple movies, a studio would never get wise to it. The theater management would probably catch the person before it ever got a studio’s attention. Technically, there are ways to combat this kind of theft (studio checkers and cameras in the auditorium) but I guarantee studios allow some variance for theater hoppers.
Also, we keep our stubs a minimum of three months. This could be extra time just to cover our butts, but I wouldn’t know. I don’t handle that kind of stuff and, again, I don’t see the studios ever do this anyway.