vpFREE2 Forums

Stations no-mails after Gaming complaint

#1

I use the touch screen and have had the following treatment:

At Rampart, if a card falls off the screen after I’ve touched it and hit enter, they check and find the card and pay me what I’m entitled to - consistently and pleasantly.

At Fiesta when that has happened, I am treated as if I am trying to cheat them though generally they pay but warn me 'that’s the last time.'

Karen
The secret to staying balanced in this world is a
low center of gravity, and a high center of levity
Swami Beyondananda

#2

Now is the right time to ask for a hearing. Station has already effectively 86d her (welcome to the club!) so ticking them off more is costless. And you want to notify them immediately to save the surveillance tapes. If they write over them, that hurts your
case — but if they’re officially notified, they’ll save them.

It’s effectively a freeroll — where it’s possible she could win and she can’t be hurt anymore

You mentioned she played in the high limit room. If this is a $20,000 or higher royal, there’s certainly money to get help from a lawyer. They usually work on a contingency, so if she collects, they’ll get 30% and she’ll get 70% (or whatever the deal is.
If she doesn’t collect, she’s not out any more. And a good attorney will tell her whether she has a decent case or not.

I don’t know if Bob Nersesian is interested in cases like this, but I suggest your friend find out!

Bob

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#3

I appreciate all the feedback and constructive suggestions in this thread and will certainly pass them along to her. I will say, however, that she seems quite disinterested in pursuing this further. She is a multimillionaire and the amount in question is “only” $8K. For her I guess that is slumming it! As I said, she was more upset over the way she was treated than she was over the loss of the money. She actually told me that if they had said “we’re sorry, ma’am, but casino policy doesn’t allow us to pay this”, she would have been fine with it. (I sure wouldn’t have been fine with it, but I’m not a multimillionaire!) She was mostly upset over how rude and hostile they were to her.

I think her most likely course of action at this point is to take her play to Bellagio and the Wynn, where she already plays, and just forget about Red Rock. Why play where you are treated poorly when you can go where you are treated well?

I started this thread mostly to give others a heads-up. When I moved here approximately 15 years ago, Stations was a first-class operation. I remember it being one of the 100 best employers in the U.S. Both players and employees seemed happy. I would never have expected this sort of thing from them. But times have changed and so has Stations.

I suppose it’s their right to provide bad customer service to the players and make short-sighted business decisions if they want. It’s their business. But it’s also the right of the players to play elsewhere if they choose. I posted this so everyone on this group can make an informed choice.

Thank you again and good luck to all,

  • Rick D
#4

I had a similar thing happen. I held a pair of queens, but just as I hit the deal button one of them un-held.

The draw filled in the royal.

When they came to pay me, I insisted that I should get only the 5 coins for the pair of queens. They agreed quickly.

(No, this was not at a Stations)

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On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 3:13 AM, rickdrickd2…@…com [vpFREE] <vpF…@…com> wrote:

I appreciate all the feedback and constructive suggestions in this thread and will certainly pass them along to her. I will say, however, that she seems quite disinterested in pursuing this further. She is a multimillionaire and the amount in question is “only” $8K. For her I guess that is slumming it! As I said, she was more upset over the way she was treated than she was over the loss of the money. She actually told me that if they had said “we’re sorry, ma’am, but casino policy doesn’t allow us to pay this”, she would have been fine with it. (I sure wouldn’t have been fine with it, but I’m not a multimillionaire!) She was mostly upset over how rude and hostile they were to her.

I think her most likely course of action at this point is to take her play to Bellagio and the Wynn, where she already plays, and just forget about Red Rock. Why play where you are treated poorly when you can go where you are treated well?

I started this thread mostly to give others a heads-up. When I moved here approximately 15 years ago, Stations was a first-class operation. I remember it being one of the 100 best employers in the U.S. Both players and employees seemed happy. I would never have expected this sort of thing from them. But times have changed and so has Stations.

I suppose it’s their right to provide bad customer service to the players and make short-sighted business decisions if they want. It’s their business. But it’s also the right of the players to play elsewhere if they choose. I posted this so everyone on this group can make an informed choice.

Thank you again and good luck to all,

  • Rick D
#5

I understand the “it’s only $8,000” feeling. Although $8,000 would be big enough for me to pursue (usually — although maybe not if I felt i was really close already to being 86’d), I wouldn’t go to the mat for $200 — and others might. It depends on your
personal circumstances. And there are some who will do it for $5 because “it’s the principle of the thing.”

That said, the fact that it was $8,000 might have been critical in Station’s decision. On a hand where the miskey would have cost $250 or so, the casino might well pay that quickly because keeping customers happy is an important principle and $250 is comparatively
small change.

But there is some point (and $8,000 may well exceed that point) where the casino (or that particular supervisor) has a policy that they are not going to pay these things. It might all sound the same in principle, and it is, but running a large business
sometimes results in “cut and dried” rules. We don’t know if this was the supervisor making the decision. Or if it is a casino policy.

Were I to take this to court (including, perhaps unfairly, Gaming Control Board as part of the court system), I would point out that bartop buttons are extra sticky because drinks get spilled frequently. And when the slot tech “checked” the
button, he likely hit it squarely over and over again. That’s not the way people play. Players often use multiple fingers to hit the buttons, kind of like touch typing, and often don’t hit the buttons squarely. A “glancing blow” on a semi-sticky button could
very easily be at fault and the slot tech’s testing wouldn’t uncover that. Which is part of the reason slot techs are trained to test the machines that way.

It is also possible that this lady didn’t hit the button with enough force to cause it to hold. That might not clearly show up on surveillance video. You would probably see her finger hitting the button, but there’s no way to tell what force was used. If
the video showed she was having trouble with the same button for some time, that would be telling evidence. But since she doesn’t think it’s worth her time to pursue, we’ll never know. But if this were important money to me, I might well want a jury to decide.

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#6

Video poker is mostly an intensely boring and mind numbing game with the occasional payout that makes it all worthwhile, maybe, but I think as a result many video poker players play too fast, trying to power through the boring stretches. Of course this is where the casino makes its money, from bored players making play mistakes on the boring hands and not even knowing they are doing it. Most players do a fast two step process: hit the hold cards, hit the draw button, repeat. I’d like to suggest there should be more steps involved: hit the hold cards, move your fingers away from the touchscreen or keys (this looks good on camera), pause a split second to visually verify that the cards you want held are held and the cards you want discarded are discarded and everything’s nice and stable and if not make corrections, then hit the draw button and repeat. On a good machine this process can actually be done fairly quickly, on a bad machine you may find you have to make too many corrections for bad keys or bad touchscreens, in that case it’s probably best to find another machine. I wouldn’t rely on a bailout from the casino, if you request this enough times they are going to conclude that you are just angle shooting. In this situation a casino could lose a lot of money to angle shooters.

#7

I have always been under the impression that casinos do not pay if there is any malfunction of the machine. If she didn’t hit the button hard enough ( which I have done many times) and lost her hold then that is also not going to be paid. Now if the hold was solid and then it didn’t hold, I don’t know.

Pat McCauley

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On Jul 11, 2017, at 2:38 PM, Bob Dancer bobdance…@…com [vpFREE] <vpF…@…com> wrote:

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