Bengaluru : One man in Bengaluru just took that frustration through the courts and came out on top.
PVR Cinemas, INOX and BookMyShow are facing a lawsuit after a moviegoer 30-year-old Abhishek MR’s movie Sam Bahadur started 25 minutes late because of advertisements that lasted too long. He’d gotten a ticket to a 4:05 PM show in 2023, by which time he thought it would wrap by about 6:30 PM and that he could get back to work. Instead his schedule went awry because of the long pre-movie ads resulting in financial and personal losses.
Claiming this as an “unfair trade practice”, Abhishek went ahead to take the case to the consumer court, and the judgment was in his favor! His time, the court stated, “time is money” and “cinemas are not entitled to reap the profit when people waste their time.” PVR-INOX was directed to pay the complainant ₹50,000 for unfair trade practices, ₹5,000 for mental agony, and ₹10,000 as legal expenses. In addition, they were penalized ₹1 lakh whose direction will go to Consumer Welfare Fund.
PVR-INOX which had justified its asking of money stating that they are legally obliged to screen the public service announcements, said that the court put the insistence back on it and said that the PSAs should only be for 10 minutes and not for 25-30 minutes.
