Problems with Promotions

Las Vegas locals are getting really confused – and not just a little frustrated – with changes on the local casino front.  Slot clubs keep changing their programs.  Casino policies are resulting in the exclusion of more and more categories of customers.  Restrictive promotion rules seem to prohibit rather than encourage more play.     This customer unhappiness  is seen in the private e-mails I am getting, the comments on my blog, and on Internet gambling forums.  Here is an excerpt from a post from that last source:

I was interested in playing one of the Boyd “Locals” properties (Gold Coast, Orleans, Sam’s Town, Suncoast) on Saturday night to take advantage of their 6X-points promotion from 9PM – midnight.  I arrived about 9:30PM and sat down to play.  After about 5 minutes, I remembered you have to swipe BEFORE you play.  So off to the kiosk I went.  I was surprised to see that there was no multiplier option listed.  At the player’s club they told me that you have to swipe before 9:15PM, otherwise no multiplier.  This detail IS clearly spelled out in their rules for this promotion.  I accept that it was my fault for not reading EVERY clause in those rules.  However, I do have another criticism of Boyd, their UNDOCUMENTED policy of eliminating swipes for multipliers at Orleans on Senior Wednesdays after 4:30PM when the multipliers are valid until 7PM.

Boyd is certainly within their legal right to make such rules.  But I would think that a business that is heavily dependent on customer good will would make more of an effort to show that they consider ease of use and simplicity for their customers.

What can we, as players, do to guard against casino rules and policies that seem confusing and arbitrary and often really make no sense that any of us can see. Well, the writer above does allude to one safeguard we can utilize – the printed rules that are usually found at the players club desk. These days I just make it a habit to look for these BEFORE I start playing any promotion. Never mind if I have done what seems to be the same one in the past – you never know when there has been a change.

However, checking these rules is not always the final answer. The rules are not always clear – and then I start my search for someone who can clarify the details. And that is not always an easy task, and I often make a point to talk to several people to verify information. You might think the higher you go up the chain of command the more accurate would be this information. Not! – as I learned some months ago.

I was talking to a vice-president of a large Vegas corporation who, for some reason, had come down from his ivory tower to settle a problem I was having with a boothling giving me a benefit I knew I had earned. (So often these employees have not been given an explanation of all the details.) This executive threw back the broad shoulders filling his expensive Italian suit and declared, in a booming voice, that there was no such benefit I was speaking about. The scared little players club employee stopped shaking – she was in the clear.

Well, I drew on my many years of experience as an English teacher of high school slow learners when I would read out loud to them to help them understand something. And that is what I did here. I plucked a brochure from off the counter and began reading the description of the benefits I had because I had reached the specified tier, including the one I was requesting. Of course I read in a calming sweet voice.  Needless to say I had that $100 comped dinner within 60 seconds!

Of course all incidents like this do not have such happy endings. Sometimes you just have to give up the fight.

The older I get the less I get frustrated over casino changes. I just write blogs about them and then forget it! Blogs are great stress reducers!  And I offer you a stress reducer too – you can vent in the “Comments” here!

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6 Responses to Problems with Promotions

  1. Mission146 says:

    First time comment, first of all, would like to say I thoroughly enjoy this Blog and have followed for a long time.

    That said, I recently had something similar happen at a Local (non-Vegas) casino, yesterday, in fact.

    Every Sunday for the last (insert absurdly long length of time here) there has been a, ‘Swipe & Win,’ promotion by which you earn 100 points ($500 coin-in, VP or Slots) and you will spin a wheel that appears on the Points Screen and win between $10-$100 Free Play. Given the ~98.44% JoB and ~98.44% Joker Poker and the fact that you are guaranteed to win no less than 2% of coin-in, this has been a very small advantage play for a long time.

    Anyway, I’m in there Friday in the early a.m. hours playing off some Free Play and earning a free hotel (200 points—$1,000 coin-in—is a free hotel room any Sunday-Thursday in the month, can earn 1x per week, any day the player chooses…best combined with other points-driven offers) and they still have all the, ‘Swipe & Win Sunday’ signs, it was the month of May and five days since Sunday, so I assumed it was still going down.

    I played on Sunday and noticed all of the banners were gone having earned 36 points, when I inquired at the PC, they told me Swipe & Win was gone for the forseeable future and is replaced by machines randomly selected to play a Horse Racing game for earning 40 points within select two-hour periods, non-guaranteed.

    Basically, we just can’t assume anything. Probably want to call ahead and verify any desired promotion is still happening, and then ask again at the PC when you get there just to be safe! If someone says something is going on when it is not, then at least there is someone to hold accountable and one could make a (usually successful, in my experience) argument that he/she should be entitled to the minimum possible Free Play that the promotion would have yielded.

  2. dan says:

    I/we stopped going to casinos. Not worth the hassle and annoyances any more. Screw is what I say. They got rid of the games we played or made the games unplayable. To worried protecting the money they aren’t making

  3. Richard and Darla says:

    To Kevin, we don’t come back any more. We stopped 2 years ago. We go to a casino one hour away when we feel the need. We’re also watching the construction of a new racino 15 minutes away.

  4. Lorrainw says:

    So I’m not the only one that gets confused ! whew ! What is the benefit of confused customers ?
    I also dont understand why casinos run a really good buffet special one day that causes too long of lines and stressfull work for the employees.

  5. mo says:

    I am not sure about the west coast but some areas on the East coast allow you to do a survey on their website). I think that a united front on a survey ( example everyone does the survey at 6AM the first of the month) might get someone’s attention.
    If the computers could handle that amount of “mail” it might be worth the try.
    I you are willing to STAND in line twice,
    what’s a few minutes more for the month.

  6. Kevin Lewis says:

    My favorite recurring annoyance has been, you have to earn X points to get a free buffet or a billion dollars’ free play or a whack on the head or something. Because the requisite game was -EV, you played JUST enough to earn that 1,000 points or whatever. You triple-checked that the reader said you’d earned those points. So you stand in line at the slot club while some LOL shows the boothling pictures of her grandchildren, etc. etc., and just as you’re beginning to hate yourself for having gone to all this trouble, the brightly smiling girl asks, “Can I help you?” and after bringing up your account, tells you that you’ve only earned 999 points today. After you start to lose it, she cheerily suggests that you just go back and play one more dollar. Fuming, you do so (losing that dollar), and then stand in line all over again. By this time, you’ve wasted half the afternoon. The slot reader says you’ve earned 1,001 points, but the boothling says it’s 1,000. Seething, you clutch your buffet comp ticket and stand in line at the buffet. You don’t get to enjoy the buffet, though, because you faint from hunger before you can get in.
    It’s hard not to believe that casino promotions are constructed to produce maximum annoyance for the customer. I know of no other industry that blithely and deliberately antagonizes its customers but still expects them to come back. But we DO come back, don’t we??

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