The following is excerpted from the slot club chapter of Jean Scott’s book, More Frugal Gambling:
Bounce-back cash is a promotion in which the casino gives you some kind of cash incentive to get you to come back through the doors.
There used to be a fairly obvious distinction between "earned cashback" and "bonus bounce-back cash." For many years, if a casino offered cashback (not all did), as a general rule, it could be redeemed anytime, even on the same day you earned it. (It was sometimes referred to as "same-day cashback.") And the amount you earned was directly correlated with the number of slot club points you racked up. For example, if you put 1,000 points on your card, you could go to the slot club booth and redeem them for X amount of dollars.
Bounce-back cash, on the other hand, was something extra that came in the mail. Sometime after you visited and played in a casino, you received a cash coupon or voucher that you had to take back to redeem. You usually couldn’t discern the criteria for qualifying for this bounce-back cash reward.
Then casinos began changing their slot club policies and marketing techniques, at which point the terms began changing meanings. Many casinos, especially in Atlantic City, advertised that they gave cashback, but you couldn’t get it the same day you earned it; instead, a coupon or voucher would show up a few days after you returned home. It could be redeemed for your cashback only if you came back to the casino within a certain length of time. At most casinos, you knew how much you’d get; it, too, directly correlated with the number of slot club points you earned on that last visit. It was earned cashback, but distributed in a bounce-back fashion.
Then came the great casino innovation of target marketing. At many casinos, you could still determine how much cashback or comps you could get for your points. But many casinos (i.e., Harrah’s) decided that not all machines’ points were equal for earned cashback or bounce-back bonuses. You couldn’t earn 1,000 points and be sure of what you were entitled to as your reward. You had to go home and wait by the mailbox to see what coupons arrived.
Today, some casinos feature both earned cashback, redeemable the same day, and bonus bounce-back cash, which comes on a monthly coupon sheet. There are varying levels of these coupons sheets, although you have to be a persistent detective to find out what the criteria are for each level, since it’s not in any published casino literature. Other casinos have an elaborate bounce-back system to make up for not giving earned cashback, with published tiered levels, although the amount of play needed to get different bounce-back amounts isn’t specified and seems to change at the whims of marketing.
Often the criteria for the levels of bounce-back cash coupons are a deep dark secret kept somewhere in that mysterious realm of a casino called the marketing department. Any number of factors can be fed into the computer to figure how to best attract the kind of gamblers who will contribute the most to the casino’s bottom line: what games you play, how long you play, how much coin you put through a machine, what denomination you play, your skill level, your frequency of visit, how far you live from the casino, whether you’ve won or lost, or the color of you hair. Okay, I made that last one up, but you can see that the method for awarding bounce-back cash is exceedingly complex and often frustrating. It’s no longer possible to know exactly what you can do to get the most cashback for your play in a casino, whatever the terms you use or the type of cashback the casino offers.
Not all casinos send out bounce-back cash, but I’ve noticed that it’s one of the fastest-growing casino promotions around. We local Las Vegas gamblers call bounce-back mailings our "welfare checks." The first of every month I spend a good chunk of time scheduling them (I keep needing bigger and bigger calendars to write them all into!), since they always have a specified pick-up time, ranging from one day only to a usual period of three to four days and occasionally all month.
Most of the best and most regular bounce-back checks come from the locals casinos and you can get many of them only if you have a local address. Some locals casinos do send these cash coupons to out-of-towners, usually with a much longer period for picking up the cash, but on a more irregular schedule.
To continue getting bounce-back coupons, you must continue playing. Bounce-back cash is not only a reward for your past play, it’s also an incentive to attract your future gambling. Even if the specific reward levels aren't published, there’s the general perception, and a correct one, that the more you play, the more bounce-back rewards you’ll receive. Therefore, I must warn you that even though casino bounce-back coupons may be the best choice for some gamblers, for the majority of casino visitors, bounce-back cash is just another way to get more value for the entertainment dollars they spend in a casino.
