Stations no-mails after Gaming complaint

[rickdrickd2002]

Just a heads-uo to everyone out there who plays at Stations properties:

Back in May, a friend of mine was dealt some royal cards at a bartop machine at Red Rock. She held them, but as she pressed down on the deal/draw button, one of the buttons for a held card popped and un-held one of the royal cards. The first cards out on the draw would have completed the royal.

Red Rock refused to pay her for the royal. (They were extremely rude to her about it, too. She was actually more upset over the way she was treated than she was over non-payment of the royal.) She notified the Gaming Control Board of a dispute and filed a complaint.

She received no mailers from either Stations or the Palms for June or July. When she inquired, she was told she was no longer eligible for promotions.

She was a regular high-limit player, mostly playing 99% games (8/5 Bonus and 15/9/4/4 Deuces), and prior to this was receiving Stations mailers with over $1000 free play each month plus Palms mailers with several hundred dollars free play per month.

To add insult to injury, Gaming ruled against her. (Do they EVER rule in favor of a player?) They said the buttons were tested by the casino afterwards and worked. (Of course they worked AFTER the button popped loose!) She was told she could request a hearing but chose not to because she has no confidence in Gaming anymore. Can’t blame her for that.

I personally was so disgusted with the way she was treated that I have discontinued all play at Stations properties. I just don’t have the stomach to do business with an organization that would do something as sleazy as what Stations did to her.

If you play at Stations properties, just be aware that you shouldn’t expect to be paid if a card is un-held for a jackpot hand, even if not due to your own negligence, and that filing a complaint is likely to do more harm than good. Or you could be like me and just play elsewhere…

[nightoftheiguana2000]

Rick wrote: “To add insult to injury, Gaming ruled against her. (Do they EVER rule in
favor of a player?) They said the buttons were tested by the casino afterwards and worked. (Of course they worked AFTER the button popped loose!) She was told she could request a hearing but chose not to because she has no confidence in Gaming anymore. Can’t blame her for that.”

Actually, in my experience, your odds are better at a hearing than with the agent, the gaming agent tends to default in favor of the casino. I would have requested that they check the surveillance video, it should have shown the card in question being selected and then unselecting itself on its own. Assuming that is what happened. This kind of machine malfunction is unfortunately not that rare, it’s just one of the many things that makes actual play in a casino very different than play on a software simulator. And unfortunately casinos tend not to like customers who complain to gaming, so this should be taken as the last resort, knowing that play at that casino is probably over. If I was getting a thousand in freeplay, I would think twice about going to gaming.

[rickdrickd2002]

It’s my understanding that most casinos routinely pay these types of things.

The one time I saw this happen to another player was at the Aquarius Laughlin many years ago. The player was paid immediately. The impression I got was that this was no big deal to them.

I have a friend who is particularly clumsy and says he has had this happen to him many times at several casinos. Most of the time it was entirely his own fault. He says he’s been paid every time except one. He just quit playing at the one place that didn’t pay him. Their loss, since he’s clearly not an advantage player.

nightoftheiguana2000 wrote: Actually, in my experience, your odds are better at a hearing than with the agent, the gaming agent tends to default in favor of the casino.

That’s good to know.

nightoftheiguana2000 wrote: I would have requested that they check the surveillance video…

Unfortunately this only helps if the camera is pointed at the machine. In this case I believe there was no video.

nightoftheiguana2000 wrote: And unfortunately casinos tend not to like customers
who complain to gaming, so this should be taken as the last resort, knowing that play at that casino is probably over. If I was getting a thousand in freeplay, I would think twice about going to gaming.

The one time I made a complaint to Gaming the casino in question did nothing to me. (And yes, Gaming ruled against me.) Granted, this was years ago, the casino in question was not a Station casino, and a sample size of one doesn’t tell you much.

Personally I think what Stations did was a pretty stupid business decision. 99% games are profitable to the casino even with perfect play on 6x point days. And the player in question is pleasant and very well-liked with many friends. Do they really think she isn’t going to tell anyone what happened to her? Even her host was pretty upset and surprised by the decision, but had no power to do anything about it.

[write-to-me]

Although I agree she wasn’t treated nicely by Stations, I am left wondering if the VP machine she was playing was a continuous shuffler machine.

I would guess it most likely was a continuous shuffler RNG and the odds were overwhelmingly against her pressing the draw button at the exact same nanosecond for those needed royal cards if the hold button hadn’t popped out. Even the briefest twitch of shock she experienced at the hold button popping before pressing the draw button likely changed the cards completely.

It always looks bad when you see the needed cards you missed on the draw, but more likely than not she didn’t really lose anything if the shuffling is continuous after the original deal.

[write-to-me]

Maybe I can re-word my above posting slightly better.

If the hold button had NOT popped out and everything went smoothly, she likely would not have drawn the needed royal cards, anyway, due to the timing of the button press being off by a few nanoseconds. (Yes, today’s CPU clocks run billions of calculations per second.)