11/3/2005
Last week I started a trip report about our recent stay at Caesars Palace, participating in an invitational slot tournament. I promised the rest of the story for this week.
First, the scam about which I dangled a few clues at the end of Part 1. The person who should have known better was yours truly. The second day of the tournament, Brad was up in the Palace Tower tournament area playing one of our four sessions. I was down on the casino floor at the row of NSUD machines where we were camping out, working on getting in our required number of points to receive the rebate of our $5,000 entry fee. I had some cash tickets from the previous day’s play, so I put one for $625 in the aisle machine (first mistake). Then I partially turned my back (second mistake) for just long enough to feed another ticket into the adjacent machine to save it for Brad, who’d be coming down from the tournament area soon. I put in his slot card, placed a bottle of water on the flat-top machine, and hung a sweater on the back of the chair so no one would think it was a free machine. Then I turned back to “my” aisle machine, put in my slot card, and started to play. Shock! There were no credits on my machine.
Right then I knew I had lost $625 before I played my first hand of the day. Yes, I saw that $625 had been cashed out – it said so right on the monitor. But why hadn’t I heard the distinctive sound that is made when someone cashes out a ticket? And I had turned my back for less than 30 seconds – why didn’t I, out of the corner of my eye, see a hand hit the cash-out button, then take the ticket.
To make a long event into a short story: Yes, I called a supervisor right away. She checked the machine innards and it showed that the ticket had been cashed out less than a minute after I’d put it in; the machines keep records of everything. The cash-out ticket had a number that they checked, but it had already been cashed in at a kiosk. The supervisor put surveillance on watch, but that was like locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen. The crooks were long gone. I say crooks (plural) rather than crook.
The supervisor explained how they work in teams. Since the cash-out button and ticket dispenser are on the very edge of the machine near the aisle, at waist level, one person can casually saunter by and, barely moving his arm, hit the cash-out button, then continue walking without breaking stride. His partner in crime can wait a few seconds and follow the same routine, swooping up the ticket. Why didn’t I hear anything? Although the other machines in the bank made a loud sound when cashing out, this particular machine’s soundmaker wasn’t working (or was turned off).
So I was taken in by pretty smooth crooks. They were probably aware there was big-money play during this tournament time, had scouted out the machines, and knew the weak points they could exploit. That didn’t, however, make me feel any better than if they’d been dumb crooks!
Brad was philosophical about it, though. He said I could have lost that $625 after I started playing in less than 10 minutes, maybe even five minutes if I’d played fast. So we just added it to our regular play losses and I tried not to think about it. Fortunately, we continued to hit four-deuce jackpots right and left and that helped to erase the theft from my mind.
Bottom line: Even with many secondary jackpots (total $40,000), we pulled out a VP win of only $13,000. This gives you an idea of the severe drain that occurs in between jackpots, even when you’re hitting them regularly. However, we were very happy for this amount, since the game itself is negative and any win is a good one.
We came in 10th in the tournament (out of 100 entries) for $5,000. These tournaments are very top heavy in the prize structure and we felt lucky when we realized that we beat #11, who got only $2,000, by six points. Three thousand for six points shows you it surely pays to play as fast as you can
11/11/2005
It used to be that when we talked about casino benefits, we were referring mainly to cashback and comps. Comps were most often for food and rooms; if they also included shopping options, it was usually in the casino gift shop and other casino-owned in-house outlets. Today, many casinos, especially in Las Vegas, are expanding their benefit options to retail stores outside the casino.
This option can be in the form of gift cards or vouchers that players can earn, either in an ongoing or a short-term casino promotion. It might be in the form of shopping-spree invitations that casino marketing departments mail out periodically. Or, as during this time of year, it might be in the form of holiday shopping, using special points you’ve earned all year, besides your regular cashback points.
We’ve earned these “outside” benefits for grocery stores like Vons and Albertsons; Rite-Aid drugstores, where we could use it even for co-pay on prescriptions; gas stations; Wal-Mart and Target; hardware stores like Home Depot; and department stores, from good old Penney’s and Sears to the upscale Macy’s, Neiman-Marcus, and Saks.
The casinos offering holiday shopping usually set up a “mall” in a casino ballroom and you can use your points for a variety of merchandise, including jewelry, toys, clothing, appliances, and electronics. Occasionally, casinos offer merchandise for points, using a catalog. Harrah’s is one that does this.
Our favorite gift-card/voucher offers are those for big shopping malls (like the ones for the Outlet malls that the Cannery regularly offers on certain days) and debit cards from credit-card companies like Visa and American Express. These give us a big choice of where to shop, thus making the benefit even more valuable.
Often, shopping offers are in addition to cashback, comps that can be used only inside the casino, or other casino benefits. Many Strip casinos have sent out these shopping-spree invitations in the past, including the Hilton, Caesars, NY-NY, Bally’s, Paris, and Harrah’s. Sometimes players can take gift cards instead of cashback, like at the Cannery and the Rampart, with the gift cards worth more than the cash they’re replacing. Popular during this energy crisis are gas benefits. The Cannery, Rampart, and Terrible’s have run or are still running promotions for these, in which you have to earn a certain number of points to get the gas. This is often a double-dipper promotion, in that sometimes you don’t have to redeem the points, thus saving them for cashback too.
The fact that many Vegas casinos are turning to this kind of promotion is a positive trend for the frugal gambler. And my favorite frugal trick is, as much as possible, to wait to use my gift cards until I find a sale at that particular store. Gift cards also make wonderful gifts to almost anyone. My grandchildren love it when I slip in a Wal-Mart or Target gift card with a letter. And I use them extensively for gifts and tips for hosts or other casino employees who’ve given me extra service.
Although these shopping benefits from casinos can be extremely valuable, all of them aren’t uniformly good for all players. Next week I’ll discuss some of the issues, including pitfalls, you need to consider about these kinds of offers.
11/18/2005
Last week I talked about a growing trend in casino promotions — gift cards/vouchers and shopping sprees in retail outlets outside the casino — and how they could be a great benefit for casino gamblers. This week I want to talk about some of the things that you must consider when you’re deciding whether some of these shopping and gift-card offers have good value for you personally.
Brad and I don’t take advantage of every promotion we hear about or that’s sent to us. The first thing we do is analyze the promotion in the context of the whole play we’d be making in that casino. What video poker schedule would we be playing and what are the other benefits we’d be earning, like cashback, comps, bounce-back, etc.? After adding all those things together, plus counting the shopping promotion, the whole play has to have a positive expectation for us to be interested.
You may not have such strict requirements, but you might still want to do some figuring. You don’t want to play so much or on negative machines that your theoretical loss is greater than the value of the shopping. The math tells you to skip that promotion.
You also need to look at the value of the promotion realistically. Many of the shopping-spree invitations we get are from Strip casinos, usually for upscale stores. For example, Caesars sends us an invitation for a certain amount of shopping money, but only for designated shops in the casino or the Forum mall. Sometimes none of these shops have anything we’re interested in buying, so we don’t accept this offer; it has no value for us. Other times we can find things we want or like, but the prices are extremely high compared to what we could buy similar items for in other stores. Then we value this offer at about half, or even less than, the dollar amount on the shopping-spree certificate. Brad says he gets no thrill out of wearing a $300 shirt!
Gift cards have some specific hazards of their own. Many gift cards have an expiration date. And many start charging a non-use fee, often around $2 a month, after a certain length of time, often a year or even less. If you hold a $10 gift card for too long, such as five months after the free period, and you might find you now have a balance that is zero! The key here is to read the fine print on the back of the card or on any literature that comes with it. There’s usually a toll-free number, and sometimes a Web site, where you can check your balance. And when you’re figuring that “free” period, don’t make the mistake I made that caused me to lose some value on some gift cards. Sometimes the casino has obtained the cards several months before it actually gives them to you and the fee period may start sooner than you expected.
Another warning comes with general gift cards that are issued from credit card companies like Visa or American Express. If you have a specific store card, like Sears or Best Buy, you can give your card to a cashier, who can inform you of the value of the card, whether it’s fully loaded or partially used or expired. However, if you have a card issued by a credit card company, you can’t get the balance at a store. And stores can’t take the card for purchases unless you know exactly how much is on the card and they can key into the register that amount. This isn’t a problem if you have a full card, but if you have a couple of hundred cards from umpteen different sources, as we do, you need to be organized to keep track of balances on partially used cards.
11/25/2005
I’ve had some interesting input on the subject of gift cards, which I’ve written about in the last two Frugal Fridays.
About trying to keep gift cards organized and tracking the balances on each one, one reader wrote:
“I use mini post-it notes to solve this problem. Each time I get a gift card, I write the balance on a mini post-it note. As I use the card, I write down each use, and keep a running tally of the amount left. The mini post-its fit right on the card and don’t get lost. As Jean said, it’s not a big problem for individual store cards, but when you have generic gift cards (like the Visa ones we were getting through the Coast Casinos promotion), it really makes sense to keep track.”
Another reader gave a couple of Web sites that have information about the state law governing Nevada businesses that issue gift cards:
http://www.loeb.com/CM/news/news204.asp
http://www.lvchamber.com/government/2005_legislative_issues.htm
I would add here, however, you might get a gift card in Nevada that was issued by a company in another state, so this is a hazy area of law. Each state has its own laws to govern this, but the trend in state laws is to make gift cards more user-friendly. The bottom line: Always read the fine print on your cards or in the literature that comes with them.
I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. And now the serious holiday shopping begins. Let’s see how many gifts the casinos will help us procure!
THE ALL-STAR GAMING EXPO HAS BEEN CANCELLED BUT HERE’S A FREEBIE!!!!
The All Star Gaming Expo, originally scheduled for Fiesta Rancho this coming weekend, has been cancelled, and all tickets purchased will be refunded. So that people planning on attending aren’t totally without classes, Bob Dancer will be teaching “”Secrets of a Video Poker Winner””, free, beginning at 11:00 a.m. in Club Tequila on Friday, December 2. All attendees will be invited to join Bob and Shirley for a complimentary Festival Buffet lunch afterwards.