Yes, it is a business, and allowed to do whatever it wants within the law, or whatever it can get away with. I just recently had a long email discussion with a poker buddy over an article about a casino trying to collect from a person to whom they extended credit / markers which the person then refused to repay -- my friend thought it was unethical for the casino to loan an "obvious problem gambler" so much money ("obvious" became part of our discussion). While I acknowledge there might be a problem in such behavior, the personnel at the casino usually are primarily responsible to the business, not the customer - who might well take offense at being denied a loan that he/she considers within his/her means! We went back and forth at length, the crux of my argument was "it's a business", along with "buyer beware".
However, I do think that consideration for the customer is good business, and extracting every penny you can from a customer at the cost of good customer relations (and good public image) may be very bad long-term business. How far that consideration should go and where it should stop is decided by each business, and the rest of us each have our opinions - and may choose to express them by our choices of who to patronize.
I know that I am always pleased to have done business with a company where it is obvious that the employees have been instructed to keep the customer happy. At casinos, only the host seems to have that role, and with very limited discretion, while the rest of the business seems to have the role of setting and enforcing policies that will maximize company profit WITHOUT regard for customer satisfaction, except to the extent necessary to maximize profit still more -- good relationships with the customers are not usually cultivated. This was not always the way the industry operated, and of course, there are great variations in the extent to which some casinos ignore this while others attend to it, now as well as in the past.
As for the specific case of changing a frequent / favored player program adversely for the player, if I were a casino, I would be making such changes very tactfully and apologetically and with efforts to compensate the customers, at least initially, for the change in some way, to take the sting out of it short-term, while still reaping the benefits of the reduced program long-term and hopefully retaining customers while doing so.
I think most of us have the impression that casinos are not so very thoughtful in setting these policies.
--BG
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3c. Re: Venetian Palazzo 9/6 Changes
Posted by: "Rob Reid" rreid0859@yahoo.com rreid0859
Date: Sat May 2, 2009 6:51 pm ((PDT))Hey, it's a business. It's not UNICEF...
--- On Sat, 5/2/09, Barry Glazer wrote:
Like the other companies that you mention, the new "terms" are often not easily
known (no letter clearly stating "hey, we're about to give you the shaft"), and
you may have signed something when you signed up agreeing to "their" rules,
whether you realized that's what you were signing or not, or they may have
something in the policy like "use of the card constitutes agreement to our
rules".Consumers of everything are at the mercy of big business; patronize those that
respect that by treating you fairly and providing you with clear and open
communications about their policies and changes to them, and complain loudly and
with your feet for those that don't.Or forever hold your peace.
There may be a few laws protecting consumers against the most egregious abuses,
but certainly not enough.--BG