Changes to How You Earn and Redeem SCENE Points Start November 4
By Elaine Jair
August 5, 2015If you're a SCENE member, here are some important updates for you!
Starting November 4, Cineplex is changing the way you can earn and redeem SCENE points. These changes were first reported on RFD by forum user chimaican a couple months ago, when Cineplex reached out with a survey regarding proposed changes. The changes have been finalized as of August 5 and here's the lowdown on what to expect.
Currently, movie tickets for General Admission, 3D, UltraAVX, IMAX, D-Box and VIP tickets all earn you 100 points each while a child's ticket will earn you 50 points each. This upcoming change will differentiate between general movies and premium movies, and the points you earn and need to redeem for these tickets will change accordingly. Here are the changes:
- General Admission: Earn 100 points per ticket; Requires 1000 points to redeem
- Premium Movie Ticket (3D, UltraAVX, IMAX, D-Box): Earn 150 points per ticket; Requires 1500 points to redeem
- VIP Cinemas Movie Ticket: Earn 200 points per ticket; Requires 2000 points to redeem
For child movie tickets, you'll earn 50 points for a General Admission movie ticket and 75 points for a Premium movie ticket. You'll require 1000 points to redeem a free General Admission movie ticket and 1500 points to redeem a Premium movie ticket.
In addition to these changes, how you earn and redeem points to Front Row Centre events will change starting November 4 as well. For example, tickets to Family Favourites will now earn you 25 SCENE points, while tickets to the Digital Film Festival will earn you 100 SCENE points and cost you 1000 points to redeem. You can see the list of all changes here.
Everything else about the SCENE program will stay the same, including your 10% discount on movie snacks and Tuesday tickets and bonus points events.
On the one hand, it's great to be able to earn more SCENE points when you're paying a little more to watch films in 3D or UltraAVX. On the other hand, you'll need to shell out more points to redeem free tickets to those premium shows as well. Personally, I have around 3000 SCENE points right now and will definitely be using them to redeem free "premium" tickets before November 4 rolls around and my points are devalued.
How do you feel about these proposed changes? Let us know in the comments below!
Showing 40 Most Recent Comments
View allI download all my movies ... all in HD quality.
Too bad I have unlimited internet at home at gigabit speeds .. so one 2GB HD quality movie only takes minutes to download.
I can't say how but if everyone does this, large corporations wont dare to scam innocent loyal customers like this.
This was my third time using an expired Admit One, but only the first time it was flagged by their system -- I was really starting to think the printed date on the back was meaningless. In this case, the pass was four months expired (Feb 29), but the staff member just had her manager override it immediately, no questions asked. That said, I have one last Admit One with the same expiry date, and I plan to use it ASAP in case the age does start to matter!
(you'll only get one set of points if you redeem two tickets in the same transaction)
The only downside of scene is you get zero points for your guest
Can anyone else confirm if Admit One vouchers still do get points or do not?
Also, another disadvantage...unfortunately...with these vouchers is that you CANNOT redeem them ONLINE...you have to go to the Box Office to get your tickets with them. So if you want to watch a new Blockbuster movie...especially RESERVED SEATS for IMAX or UltraAVX or D-Box etc...you will have to redeem those vouchers EARLY at the box office at least a week or more before the movie is out (as long as pre-sale tickets go on sale online) because if you wait till the day you want to go to the movie to see it, you might not find the good seats you want for the movie you plan to see...or the entire show might be sold out.
You used to get 100 points on your scene card when redeeming prepaid voucher
That sux.
I got the email but it said quota exceeded.
I was wondering about what they are planning again.
It's just that $20 price tag per movie that irritates me! (when I don't have enough points to cash in)
A little steep.
I have only seen these coupons in their gift packs.
If you have a cineplex admit one coupon that you use to buy a ticket, you can upgrade that ticket with the free ticket upgrade option to 3D, UltraAVX, IMAX, or VIP.
You will also get 100 Scene points for using your admit one coupon.
In the same manner, your cineplex admit one coupon is considered as your purchase and you are eligible to use the buy one get one free admission to get another admission free.
You will get only 100 Scene points for this transaction.
If you intend to use Scene points instead to buy a ticket, you can still use the buy one get one free offer to get another admission free. You will not earn any additional Scene points (except the 20 points if the purchase is made online)
The new changes to Scene may make this very confusing, but if you bought a general admission ticket for 1000 Scene points, you can upgrade that ticket to 3D, UltraAVX, IMAX, or VIP for free with the free ticket upgrade coupon. You have to do this in theater only as online will not give you an option to entirely change the showtime to a different auditorium.
The Holiday Gift Bundle is very useful to people if they want to buy a gift card for someone. You can keep the coupons and give the gift card to someone else.
do these upgrades work with prepaid Cineplex tickets ? I have prepaid Cineplex tickets, can I use this with my scene card in January and get 1 free admission ?
It might never happen.
Also note the restrictions on the most recent offer from Cineplex "Get a FREE Holiday Gift Bundle with a $40 Gift Card" as they did not say any of these in the email they sent out, trying to make the deal sound better than it really is. I used to buy into this even better deal earlier when I got $40 to $50 worth of gift bundle with a purchase of gift card greater than $30. You don't realize that you may not use all the deals within the three months they give you and you will likely spend more to make use of most of the deals anyway.
• One Buy One Get One Free Admission valid from January 4, 2016-March 31, 2016 (Sunday-Thursday only) – Redeem online or in theatre.
Valid for General Admission. Valid for 3D, UltraAVX, IMAX®, and VIP with applicable surcharge
• One Free Ticket Upgrade valid from January 4, 2016-March 31, 2016 (Sunday-Thursday only) – Redeem online or in theatre
Valid for 3D, UltraAVX, IMAX®, or VIP
• One free regular popcorn valid from January 4, 2016-March 31, 2016 – Redeem in theatre
• One general admission ticket for $6.99 valid from January 4-March 31, 2016 – Redeem online
• One half price poutine or nachos valid January 4-March 31, 2016 – Redeem in theatre
• PIN Code for 100 SCENE® points valid from January 4, 2016-March 31, 2016 – Redeem online
Cineplex should reduce the cost of all realD 3D movies by $1 and charge $1 for anyone who would like to borrow the 3D glasses from the theater.
I bought Hobbit realD 3D glasses for $20 a few years ago when the first Hobbit movie released and they were very comfortable than the glasses distributed at the theaters. I often forget to take them to the theater though.
Oh but count on me and being upset over the new point increases for viewing a film. I pretty much now wait and watch the movie at home on my projector anyways. Gives me a sharper picture and it even does a better job with 3D thanks to the boost in colour and again sharpness.
By the way, how was the "Scouts Guide..." movie? Is it worth seeing?
I don't think it did well financially as it has been relegated over the past 2 weeks to just one showtime at Cineplex cinemas...and not even early shows...but later evening shows.
I watched the Last Witch Hunter and Scouts Guide over the last few days and didn't buy food either time. The 10% Scene discount wasn't enough of a value proposition, not like the Seats & Treats used to be.
After cancelling the Scene Visa Card I have started making all my purchases on the American Express Simply Cash Card. At 1.25% cash back on ALL purchases, this is the best card in the market without an annual fee.
https://www.americanexpress.com/ca/en/c ... mply-cash/
If you spend $20k per year on the credit card you get $250 cash back credit that you could use to buy anything you want.
We can talk about non travel rewards.
How about Shopper Optimum points being devalued?
http://blog.ellenroseman.com/?p=850
How about Sear Points?
sears-card-points-program-sears-club-changing-829731/
Petro Points and Esso Extra Points get devalued all the time, they have previously jacked up the amount of points to redeem for gas or car washes.
http://pointshogger.boardingarea.com/ne ... s-program/
"This is just another reminder that we should not hoard our points. Whenever you get a chance to redeem them, go for it, because you never know when a devaluation like this will hit."
I wish I could just go to some other theater, but Cineplex is a major monopoly with theaters that I have no where else to go. I don't know how the canadian competition bureau allowed this to happen.
There is nothing wrong with expecting absolute perfection for a service that you are paying for. Especially when it comes to premium theaters like VIP, IMAX and Ultra AVX. Your expectations will vary when you go to a restaurant where you pay $10 for food vs a restaurant where you pay $25 for the same food. When you like a company, you can overlook small mistakes but it will be the opposite when you don't. So if you don't like the service at the more expensive restaurant you are more likely to complain.
You can read my comments above regarding the 3D glasses. Anyway, it won't be a problem going forward as I will only go to IMAX movies from now as I will watch only 5 movies per year in IMAX only.
I will watch everything else at home and stay far away from the Cineplex Store to buy Blu-rays.
I never applied for a travel reward points credit card because devaluation and expiry is very common with them. SCENE points never expire as long as your card is active.
There were several class action law suits filed against some of these travel rewards devaluations and expiry:
Aeroplan lawsuit:
http://bc.ctvnews.ca/angry-customers-la ... -1.1104441
Airmiles lawsuit:
http://www.merchantlaw.com/class-action ... ass-action
Your statement about my foresight is ridiculous by comparing Travel Rewards to Scene. If you invested a few thousand in stocks, and when the market crashes and your shares fall 50% due to the recession I will say the same to you and see how you feel. Its like saying all investors should have seen it coming because market crashes so many times and people lose money all the time.
I didn't know that Star Wars advance tickets would be up this early and even if I did, I don't have the time or patience to buy and sell star wars tickets on ebay.
I also thought of just taking the hit and watch movies for 1500 points going forward but what if SCENE makes each movie worth 3000 points in a year from now. So its best to just spend them as soon as you can and NEVER ACCUMULATE POINTS. I will aim to do that going forward.
I was just saying that some of the movies I watched in theater since the devaluation announcement turned out to be crappy. I wanted to see them anyway based on the trailer but I would've likely seen them at home.
All the movies I watched since the devaluation announcement was with 2 to 4 family members. Some of the movies I didnt like much are Black Mass, Hitman, Transporter, Sicario, The Visit, Crimson Peak.
All I could do is send an email to the SCENE customer service who responsed back saying "Please be advised that this is a program wide change, and is being implemented November 4th 2015 to all SCENE members. No compensation is provided, as per the terms and conditions of the SCENE program, it is subject to change. We have retained a copy of your email for future reference. We appreciate your understanding."
I was a Scene member for over 8 years and this is the response I get when i kindly requested for a solution
I accumulated 50,000 points = 50 * $25 = $1250 max value. My sister accumulated 20,000 points = 20 * $25 = $500 max value
I made 90% of all my purchases with Scene Visa Card.
A lot of my friends who got the Scene Visa Card and Scene card also accumulated several thousand points. These are all individuals who got into the program only based on my recommendation.
If you were in my situation you would be just as pissed off, unless you are a millionaire and don't care about a few hundred dollars. Don't start judging me about why I accumulated so much in the first place. Maybe I was saving it all to watch with my wife and kids in the future.
To answer your last question, if Cineplex is so concerned about the environment, then why don't they just use reusable realD 3D glasses like the IMAX 3D glasses. Read this article for a better understanding: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... dirty.html
IMAX corp requires Cineplex to wash the glasses on the site and reuse immediately. RealD 3D glasses are transported to a facility in containers where they are cleaned and repackaged. Isn't cleaning at the location more environmentally friendly. Transporting them everyday is causing so much pollution.
If you make me an environment inspector at large corporations, I can find several flaws from everyone so don't say I am damaging the environment by throwing a few RealD 3D glasses into regular garbage out of frustration over the past two months or so.
If you cannot make it to the movie...just call the SCENE customer service number and once you email them you proof of purchase...they will reimburse you with your SCENE points you used back to your SCENE account.