For several years Niagara's monthly newsletter contained 3 bounceback coupons, typically cashable one every ten days. If you failed to take the coupon with you it wasn't a problem. Any cashier in the casino would swipe your card, have you enter your magic number, and give you the cash.
That is, up until February 2007. Effective with the March issue they no longer offer these.
I visited the casino the second week of March and was told by a boothling at the players club that:
(1) There's a new management team (interestingly, most of whom came from Casino Rama - anybody know what happened up there?).
(2) The monthly coupons would be replaced by a bounceback system whereby they would mail you a coupon within a "few days" of each visit IF you had sufficient play. These coupons would have an expiry date, and MUST be presented to get your cash - ie -no more swiping your card - no coupon, no money. This sounds exactly like the system in place at Rama.
Anyhow, I played for 4-5 hours that Saturday, and put around 375 points on my card (about $7,500 coinin).
Assuming it would work like Rama's system, I expected a coupon in the mail. None arrived.
On April 10 I phoned the VIP line (gold card member) and spoke with a host, then with a supervisor. I'll spare you the details of 4 different conversations and summarise as follows:
- the initial contact at the VIP line said that my $7,500 coinin was definitely enough to qualify for a bounceback coupon. But she could not check out the details - I should speak with a host.
- all the personnel I spoke with (including supervisors) claim they have no way of checking the system to see if a cheque was issued to me. Either this is a load of bullcrap, or somebody designed a very bad system.
- initially I was told by two different people that (for security reasons for MY protection), I had to come down and present myself in person simply to have them check out my problem.
When I insisted that a 3-hour round trip on spec was out of the question, they conceded that "your host, if you have one, can check it out".
Unfortunately, all the hosts seem to live at the new Fallsview casino. When I told them I play only at the old casino Niagara they were nonplussed, and put me through to a supervisor who presumably had authority to check my play.
Supervisor A (they offer first names only) said he'd check out my problem and call me back in an hour. He didn't call.
The next day I callled again, and got supervisor B (A had the day off).
B checked the computer which had my play history, but still claimed he had no access to information on whether or not a cheque was sent to me.
- my March 10 visit showed "4 and a half hours play at an average wager of $4 (I played both 50-cent and $1 Pickem). This was NOT enough to generate a bounceback cheque.
CONCLUSIONS
- The Rama team may have moved to Niagara, and brought their system with them, but it
sure don't work as well as it did at Rama.
- while $3,500 action in a day was enough to generate a bounceback cheque (of around 0.4%) at Rama, twice that play level seems to be insufficient at Niagara.
- Niagara has effectively eliminated the bonus bounceback (at least at my play levels), and restricted low-medium rollers to cashback only.
Comments?
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