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Disappearing Comps at Binion's

My wife and I played pretty heavily on the triple play 10/7 DB
during the 2x and 3x promotions in April. About a week and a half
ago, we checked at the slot club and they confirmed that we had $500
in comps, which is the most they will let you accrue. We then made
reservations for the Steakhouse for last night, as we had good
friends in town. When we got to the club and requested the comp
slip, we were told that we had no comp dollars available. We asked
how that was possible and were told that when they switched the
computer system over the past few weeks (during which period MTR
took over the management from Harrah's), "Harrah's took all the
comps".

This seemed pretty incredible so we asked to see Elmer, the VP host.
Elmer confirmed what we had been told, but he said he would look
over our play and see what he could do. He came back and offered
$150, which will not really cover four people at the steak house.
When I asked if he could raise it to $200, he said that he could not
do any more because we had won too much during the month.
Eventually, we accepted and had an unhappy meal. Luckily, these are
good friends of ours, so there was no real embarrassment, but there
certainly could have been.

I suggest that anyone who has comps at Binion's check to see whether
they are still there. I intend to follow up on this and it would be
good to know how many others had the same thing happen to them.

As a postscript, the story has a somewhat happy ending. My wife (a
diamond card holder) had recently received an email from Harrah's
stating that she had not earned any points in almost a
year, and that she would lose her accrued comps if she didn't put at
least one point on her card. (There they go again, taking comps.)
After our Binion's meal, we went to Rio because my friends wanted to
go to the Voodoo Lounge. As long as we were there, she took out a
ten dollar bill in order to put one point on her card. Since there
are no decent games there and it doesn't much matter what you play
if you are only going to play two hands, she chose Royal Aces, an
aces or better game in which four aces pays the same as a royal and
a straight flush pays 500. After getting nothing on the first hand,
she was dealt QJT of clubs and drew the K9. From a purely karmic
point of view, this was even more satisfying than a royal as the
$500 was magically returned to us.

Hask

My wife and I played pretty heavily on the triple play 10/7 DB
during the 2x and 3x promotions in April. About a week and a half
ago, we checked at the slot club and they confirmed that we had

$500

in comps, which is the most they will let you accrue. We then made
reservations for the Steakhouse for last night, as we had good
friends in town. When we got to the club and requested the comp
slip, we were told that we had no comp dollars available. We asked
how that was possible and were told that when they switched the
computer system over the past few weeks (during which period MTR
took over the management from Harrah's), "Harrah's took all the
comps".

I found out the same thing when I got the new Binions players card.
Really bush league. Here's the e-mail I sent to Margie Charnock,
Marketing Manager:

Margie,

I got my new card the other day and casually mentioned to Liz at the
booth that the new system will show both the cash back and comp
levels, as communicated to us during the Focus Group dinner in early
April.

You can imagine my surprise when Liz said that the comp dollars "went
with Harrahs when they left".

I am very disappointed that the accumulated comp dollars disappeared
when Binions migrated to their new player tracking software. I am
even more disappointed that Binions is pointing fingers at Harrahs.
To blame Harrahs is a bit insulting to my intelligence. Harrah's was
managing the property, but the fiduciary responsibility belonged to
MTR. Harrah's management team left in mid-March...the comps were
available after Harrah's left...until Binions went with the new
player tracking software.

I hope this is not the way MTR plans to run Binions...it will be very
difficult to keep players with antics such as this.

Don

I'll let the group know if I receive a response...

Don the Dentist

ยทยทยท

--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "haskd89052" <hask@c...> wrote:

The day MTR took over management, I felt that there was hope for
Binions. The good blackjack that was the first thing Harrah's
destroyed was partially put back in place, but about a week ago MTR
killed it. How has the VP inventory changed from Becky, to Horrors,
To MTR?
Victoria