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Moviefone (MOFN) is a publicly traded company that lets you purchase
movie tickets with your credit card via the phone or their web
page. Known as 333-FILM in the Boston area and 777-FILM in New
York it is avaliable in 30 major cities and serves 12,000 screens.
Moviefone has ATM's in the lobby of all theaters it services.
Each ATM has its own CPU, screen, printer and card reader. They
come with a test card which when slipped in and pulled out produces
a ticket that says "TEST" on it and nothing else. The ATM's use
a LAN (Local Area Network) to connect to the theaters managment
computers.
Moviefone has many uses beyond simply buying tickets. One of
the most obvious is getting ino R rated movies if you are under-aged.
Buy the tickets via moviefone and no box office person will ID
you.
Moviefone used to accept any expiration date so you could use
a generated credit card number, but nowadays it requires the proper
expiration date. This can be helpful if you find a number somewhere
but no expiration date. Simply hack it out via Moviefone by advancing
month by month until you get the right one. If you tried something
like this on an LDC (Long Distance Carrier) the card would be
blocked from making calls through the carrier even with the correct
expiration date.
So you got a card number but no card? Moviefone ATM's require
the use of the magnetic strip on the card via the card reader
and has no options that allow manual input of the card number.
However since the ATM's are on the LAN of the theaters computers,
tickets for Moviefone can also be picked up at the box office
where those terminals do allow manual entry of the card number.
All you have to say is "I left my card at home but I have the
number, can I still get my tickets?" One would think that the
box office people would be suspicious, but they never are - it
happens so often.
This technique can be used by box office cashiers for getting
extra cash. Before their shift in box office or while on break
they order tickets using stolen credit card numbers. The four
ticket per transaction limit Moviefone has installed is no good
as you can call back using the same number to to again purchase
four more tickets. The employee then punches up those tickets
while in the box office and sells them pocketing the cash.
It is safer than selling courtesy or discount tickets at full
price as Moviefone tickets printed at the box office are identical
to tickets purchased with cash. Anybody else could also refund
the tickets for face value in cash. This only works if you get
the tickets from the box office because when you get the tickets
via the ATM's they are printed differently and cashiers are not
supposed to give cash refunds for those. But you can still get
passes.
Using your own card it is possible to order and pick up tickets
which you then give to your friends. Then you go back to the ATm
to "try" and get your tickets. When they don't come out ask to
speak to a manager or somebody who can help you. Explain how you
ordered tickets and waited for the confirmation (most people that
don't get tickets don't realize that they have to wait for the
confirmation) but the machine says your order is not found. The
managment will check your card number on their managment station
which will show that you were charged for X amount of tickets.
No Moviefone or theater computer is able to tell if the tickets
were picked up or not. Only the time the theater recieved your
order, number and type of tickets purchased, your credit card
number, and the name of the movie is recorded. They will walk
you and another group of friends in so that you can join your
friends already in the theater.
The managments station keeps a list of all credit card numbers
used. During a busy weekend day you could pull up 500 or more
credit card numbers. For instance, at sony/ loews theaters they
use the Prism Theater Managment System. From the main menu you
click on "Daily Operations" then click on "Credit Card Managment".
The first selection on this screen is the one they use to see
if your card has been billed. You enter the card number and it
searches back up to three months (the default is 14 days) and
lists the tickets you bought. The other or second selection on
the credit card managment screen will give you a list of all credit
card numbers and other information previously listed with an option
to print to screen or printer. Prism puts 36 card numbers on each
page. When going to this screen it sometimes says "Error" but
just click OK.
Even after you use your own card you can call Moviefone for a
refund at 800-745-0009. Tell them you never went and picked up
your tickets or that you want to know what this charge is as you
have never used Moviefone in your life. (You can also call 800-745-0008
to change showtimes or perform other managerial tasks.)
There are many other uses for Moviefone, like using it as a DTMF
decoder, but this should give you a basic idea of some of the
possibilities.
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