Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: No film delivery

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Posted by Burleigh Ibbott (Member # 3917) on 10-11-2009, 09:14 PM:

I had a nasty episode where i was waiting for Time Travelers Wife to turn up from a crossover. It was suppose to be here Friday morning. I have a small single screen cinema where people can pay and pre book tickets. It was sold out on both shows on Friday. By 3pm i was told it was in Cambridge so be with me by the hour. to cut a long story short it never arrived. The evening was a nightmare and can not believe i had a no show for a film. The print handlers was given duff information from the couriers. Its now six weeks after i emailed the couriers which they have admitted it was there fault. I told them what my compensation is and heard nothing since.

Entertainment Films are not happy this has happened too.

What do you think i should do next? Shall I get my insurers to deal with it?

Burleigh

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-11-2009, 09:19 PM:

Since the courier has admitted fault (hopefully you got the name of the person who admitted it), I would total up your losses and send them a bill. Keep after them until they pay. Keep going up the managerial ladder until you get to somebody who can make a decision to pay you.

You could threaten legal action if you think it might help, but I would strongly caution doing that because if they say, "Fine, go ahead and sue us!" then you're stuck with hiring a lawyer and there goes all your cash. A better solution would just be to keep bugging them, daily if necessary, until they pay up.

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 10-11-2009, 10:05 PM:

The distributor of the film is responsible for getting the film to you and are who hired the non performing courier. The courier is responsible to whoever hired them. The contract between the courier and anybody they deliver for probably limits liability in a case like this to refund of whatever the cost of the shipping was.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-11-2009, 10:58 PM:

My guess is Bill is right. I've had a few missouts over the years, all that ever happens is we don't get billed for the shipping.

It's the distribs responsibility, maybe you can negotiate down the percentage for the week.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-12-2009, 12:50 AM:

quote: Bill Enos
The distributor of the film is responsible for getting the film to you and are who hired the non performing courier.

This is true, but in most cases the courier won't say "it was our fault." They will just come up with stupid excuses to save their own butt. But in this case, since the courier SAID it was their fault, I'd think he'd have a good chance of collecting. Of course, it was probably some low level flunkie who admitted the fault, so it could be a waste of time trying to collect...but they might pay up just to make him go away.

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 10-12-2009, 01:53 AM:

Depends on the courier company. The big ones say "So sue us."
We still have half a print of a film; the other half just never arrived.
There was also a fairly valuable tape player that arrived smashed up. "What do you expect us to do about it?" was the carrier's response. (same carrier).
All we can do is to never use this particular carrier again and recommend (privately of course) that no one else uses them. So far this would have cost that company much more than the cost of making things right in the first place.

Posted by Andy Frodsham (Member # 4061) on 10-12-2009, 03:12 AM:

Sadly, you cannot take anything for granted when dealing with print deliveries. Even though we book films weeks in advance, there are frequent situations where we have to chase-up prints.

Get to know all the telephone numbers of those people involved in the delivery chain and be prepared to do some phoning around if you start to suspect a non-delivery. It is often possible to locate where the print is located and take some action to either personally recover it or speed-up its progress. You have to be very pro-active.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-12-2009, 08:15 AM:

quote: Andy Frodsham
Get to know all the telephone numbers of those people involved in the delivery chain and be prepared to do some phoning around if you start to suspect a non-delivery.

Good advice, though a nightmare to acquire. When UPS took over the Technicolor deliveries I had to spend days hacking my way up the corporate ladder. I finally got the local depots phone number, which they protect like it is gold.

The bigger the company, the bigger the pain in the butt. I'm sure there's an MBA dissertation somewhere that divines the point where a company gets so big it is incapable of saying "Sorry, we screwed up, what can we do to fix it?" That sentence alone could save thousands of man-hours and frustration on all sides.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 10-12-2009, 12:42 PM:

We must be lucky, in that we've had no problems with the Technicolor/UPS transition. As with DFS, any film that is not delivered by Thursday (or that we don't pick up from the depot ourselves) either arrives by private courier or we circuit ourselves. In these cases we know about the issue by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Don't know why it should matter, but we had one past case, where a Technicolor/DHL print did not arrive by Friday night. Luckily, it was only a second feature and we were able to carry over the old one for that day.

Posted by Burleigh Ibbott (Member # 3917) on 10-12-2009, 12:45 PM:

Thanks for that. I do think Mike is the way to go and i will perserveir to get the right result. Thanks Andy for your true words and its been a learning curve since i opened in March this year. I will post pics of the place soon. I normally use DHL but Entertainment uses another company and this was there first delivery here.
I will email the couriers again tonight.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 10-12-2009, 06:28 PM:

Yes, having your UPS depot's phone number is definitely a goldmine. We've had ours for years, and the folks at the depots are always helpful when you call them about package problems--I think it must be because nobody else has their phone number [Smile]

We've never had any problems with UPS for TES film deliveries; I have occasional minor snafus with them on other packages, but that's par for the course, and doesn't rise to the level of complaint...

Burleigh, I have to say, if you're emailing people about the problem, rather than calling, it would not surprise me if they did not take you seriously.

--jhawk

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 10-15-2009, 12:13 PM:

quote: Andy Frodsham
Sadly, you cannot take anything for granted when dealing with print deliveries. Even though we book films weeks in advance, there are frequent situations where we have to chase-up prints.

There seem to be an ever increasing number of couriers each doing a small part of the UK print (and digital drive) transport, sometimes subcontracting to other companies when overnight transport is needed. It is not uncommon to have four (or more) different companies collecting or delivering films.

Often information does not reach the cinema in time, so a print is collected by the normal bulk return service instead of the overnight express carrier (who does not know what film they are due to collect, or where to deliver it).

Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 10-25-2009, 02:01 PM:

I had a print of "Vampires Assistant" not arrive for a midnight showing on thursday. Technicolor finally called back at 7:45 to say the print was at the local UPS depot and they had no way to deliver it until the next morning. I asked if I could pick it up and they said we could but that the depot closed at 8:30 Luckily I made it in time.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 10-25-2009, 08:29 PM:

I'd have told technicolor to call a taxi service to go pick it up for you. I've had many prints delivered by taxi and it was Tech's responsibility to get it to you for a screening.

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 10-26-2009, 08:18 PM:

Why do distributors arrange priority (before 9AM, 11AM or midday) deliveries of films without telling the cinema?

These can be delivered from 8AM (depending on courier) when almost every cinema is closed.

Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 10-27-2009, 04:04 PM:

Somtimes the theaters and/or delivery company are careless in the other way. Back in '89 - while I was still in the video marketing business - we were anxiously awaiting the release of Tim Burton's first Batman movie. Warner Brothers was telling us that there would be unprecedented levels of security for this highly anticipated film...so much so that we may not even be invited to the advance industry screening required by law in the state of Pennsylvania - something we were typically permitted to attend. They were particularly keen to make sure no bootleg video would get out before their official video release and were gearing up to make sure that didn't happen. (They even started a months long sting operation that brought down a Philadelphia area film dealer...but that's another story.) Imagine our delight when we were not only permitted to attend but allowed to invite a few clients and even a friend!

My friend Chaz and I were excited and arrived quite early for the 10:00AM screening...probably about 9:30. We parked in the parking garage above the AMC Olde City twin in Philadelphia and took the elevator to street level. As we rounded the corner into the thru-way which included a nice restaurant, street-level parking lot and the entry to the theater we spotted two film cans on the ground. I think I said something like "No fucking way!" Yep, there it was...the most highly anticipated film of the year and subject of Warner's most intensive security program ever...sitting on the ground in front of us clearly labeled "Batman". Print #0001. Weeks before it's theatrical release! Better yet no one else was there. We stood there for a long time...at least fifteen minutes...before anyone else arrived. We could have walked off with that print and never been caught. Just pop it in the trunk and then wait until 9:55 and show up for the screening. Of course we didn't, but so much for security.

Posted by David E. Nedrow (Member # 4981) on 10-29-2009, 10:02 AM:

quote: Mark Hajducki
Why do distributors arrange priority (before 9AM, 11AM or midday) deliveries of films without telling the cinema?

These can be delivered from 8AM (depending on courier) when almost every cinema is closed.

That's always been a major pet peeve of mine. I don't know how many times I've had a package sent back to the depot marked "business closed". And of course, these aren't available until the next morning at the depot, even if I find out at 9am that they attempted an 8am delivery.

It's even worse now, with the theatre I'm renovating. I've got signs on each of the front door window panes explaining that we're renovating and all deliveries should be made to an adjacent business. I've had deliveries returned to the sender with "out of business" notes. Argh.

Now, I have everything (that I have control over) sent in care of the depot. All of them are within just a few minutes of the theatre, so I can stop in on my way to work to pick stuff up.

David