In March I took a party of six to see The Mastersingers of Nuremberg at English National Opera in London at a total cost of £727. During the long interval we, and indeed most of the audience, left the auditorium to find sustenance and visit the facilities.
However, one of my party (the last to return but still in plenty of time) was singled out and refused re-entry on the grounds that she had no ticket (I had them). She was not permitted to come and get her ticket from me, and was threatened with ejection. She was left with no recourse but to purchase another ticket to see the rest of the performance.
I complained to the then acting director, Anthony Whitworth-Jones, on 9 March and received a quick response saying that he would be “certainly looking into this further” and that his colleague, Cressida Pollock, who was about to take over as interim chief executive, would be in touch once they had spoken to the staff in question.
Since then I have been ignored. I wrote in April, enclosing copies of the original correspondence. I received no reply. I wrote again in May, and then in June – all to no response.
I am aware that ENO has financial and management difficulties, and that it has been put “in special measures” by the Arts Council, but I do feel that the inability of the now interim CEO, Cressida Pollock, to provide even the courtesy of an acknowledgment is beyond belief. JP, Cambridge
This was an unusual case, and the first instance we’ve come across of a person being refused re-entry to a theatre following an interval. To deny the person the chance to find their ticket’s holder strikes us as extreme. Forcing a customer to buy a second ticket is bad enough, but the fact that ENO then ignored your repeated letters, which were sent recorded delivery, was exceedingly poor.
In fairness, as soon as we took up your case, ENO moved quickly to resolve the matter. It has gone a long way – further than most organisations we deal with – to put the matter right.
“As a result of this incident, we have reviewed our customer service procedures with all front-of-house staff,” it told us. “As compensation, we would be happy to refund both the price of the original seat and the extra balcony seat. As an additional gesture, we would like to invite JP and his guests back to the London Coliseum to any future ENO performance, free of charge,” it says.
A generous, if long overdue, outcome.
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