Question of the Day - 16 September 2021

Do those numbers only include found tickets (ie those which you state that the casino must hold pending a claim but then go unclaimed) or all uncashed tickets? 

If someone puts a $1,000 ticket in a jacket pocket then forgets about it does the casino take all the forgotten amount after the same period or is this split with the state too? 

Some casinos give the player the option to donate those pennies to a choice of a few charities. 

If the money is donated, does 100% of the amount go to the charity, or is that split too?

'That may seem like stepping over dollars to pick up dimes, but it gives you an idea of the financial incentive for casinos to require players to go one extra step — or several, depending on how long the line is at the cage — to get their full slot payout.'  If this were truly the case, they would give the change at the ATM, not just the dollars. 

before the pandemic I would get those little tickets! Now I get them a lot, I just save them for last day, cash all at once and donate the change. 

Lost property? If I find a quarter on the floor, am I supposed to hand that to the casino too? C'mon!! Maybe the casino has a "legal" obligation, but you and I don't. And, to ACP's question, what are the casino's "obligations" to tickets that THEY do NOT find, but just remain uncashed? With all their video, certainly they can identify the person who got a $1,000 TITO but failed to cash it. Are THEY stealing by not locating the person?

Wynn has this system, for one.  Basically it rounds up any TITO with an uneven amount and solicits the change for a "charity".  

Say you insert a TITO for $50.37.  The screen then gives you a choice of four options to donate that.37 cents. One of the four is "Workforce Development" which I've assumed means somehow distributed among employees but I really don't know.  (This came about after the reopening.)  

Anyway, if you select one of four "charities" it says thanks and spits out your $50 in bills as usual (your .37 is gone).  If you select the small button on the screen that says you want it all, the machine spits out your $50.  Then you must wait for a separate ticket with the .37 change (no coins) to be spit out in a separate slot.  

You can play that .37 cent ticket, or give it to another player.  I've not tried at the cage.

It is annoying.  And the "charities" aren't like Salvation Army or Red Cross.  Holds up the line, too, while people try to figure it out.

Candy

are casino employees required to make a thorough search of the box of lost tickets considering a 25% win?  Or for that matter making any effort to locate the owner of a lost ticket.

Many beverage servers receive tips with tickets.  Since those tickets weren’t earned on there players card are they breaking the Nevada law?

Exercise care and caution with regards to money/TITOs that's been lost or abandoned. Any money in a machine, regardless of the amount, is the casino's. Period. Silver mining, or the act of seeking out machines with a nominal amount left in them and playing it or cashing out the TITO, is a felony in the state of Nevada and has led to many a gambler being trespassed.

Cash, OTOH, is a much different matter altogether. My understanding is that "in plain sight" and "reasonable effort" are key terms here -- the former is money found at waist level and above; the latter means at least a cursory effort to find its rightful owner. My understanding the dividing line is $20 -- if it's over that, take it to the cage. If it's under that, you can keep it at that moment.

IOW, Ray, don't sweat that quarter you find on the floor. You can keep that.

1. Casino employees only know about lost tickets if a guest seeks them out for assistance in finding one. So long as the guest has pertinent, basic information (machine TITO was cashed from, time cashed out and approximate amount), they can not only find it, but determine whether it's been cashed out. If it hasn't, they can put a stop on it (woe be to the person who tries cashing it!) and pay the player independently from the TITO.

2. You don't need a players card to be in possession of a TITO, and many casinos don't allow employees to have players cards at their casino of employ, so the answer here should be obvious. 

TITOs carry a disclaimer that state a length of time that the ticket is good for, and then it becomes void. Uncashed tickets are no different than "found money" that's turned in -- it becomes the property of the casino.

YES you can tip with a TITO, just like you can tip with chips or cash. 

As long as the employee is given it legitimately, from the rightful owner, it’s fine for them to accept it. 

Many years ago I was at the Fremont and needed to run up to my room quick. I cashed out, grabbed my coffee and card, but I forgot to grab my ticket (just over $100).  It was a very old slant top, where the ticket was delivered into the coin bucket rather than spit in your face.  Once I discovered my mistake (within minutes), I found a floor person and they looked it up in the system told me that the ticket had been intercepted and had been inserted into another machine.  They made no attempt to help me recover my loss.  How much does the ticket need to be worth before they will actually help you?  I think this is just their stock PR answer.

MGM Detroit tried not to cash my expired ticket (expired during the casino’s 5 month shutdown due to COVID). The cashier and I kept sliding the slip back and forth until I asked for a manager and she finally cashed it. I was ready to go all the way to the top over that $50 with as much money as I spend/lose in that place. Would have stopped going altogether had they not cashed it 

A lot of times when a person cashes out at a table they'll have a handful of chips. If a chip drops to the carpeted floor they might not hear it, especially in a noisy casino. One time I was walking by a blackjack table and I noticed a green $25 chip laying on the floor under a chair that had a nice looking middle-age woman sitting in it. I picked the chip up and tossed it into her pile of chips in front of her, thinking she'd dropped it when sitting down at the table with the chips in her hands or maybe when getting them out of her billfold. She gave me a big smile and winked, then I noticed she only had red $5 chips. So it was probably from some other player, and the way chips can roll it could have been from a nearby table. The dealer saw what I did and he was cool about it. And she definitely had a $25 smile. 

"“With respect to abandoned tickets, players should definitely not play or cash out tickets that do not belong to them, as they're considered lost/unclaimed property,"

Well of course! "lost/unclaimed property", until after a period of time unclaimed, it's conveniently claimed by the state of Nevada and the casino, how dare someone who finds it claim it use it. Got it.

Does Nevada or LV do the same when someone finds money on a city sidewalk? "It's not yours, don't you dare touch it citizen, it's the city's and/or states money now by our decree!" is how that goes too? 

Aside, given many people play with a players card, seems an easy solution exists here and that's to connect the ticket to one's player card. Ultra easy programming change. Not 100% given everyone doesn't play with a players card, but would certainly return that ticket to most owners I would say if a unique digit sequence existed on the ticket connecting it to a players card/account.

A TITO is good for 180 days but the annoying little slips you get for your change expire in 30 days.  I just came back from Vegas and left my accumulated slips for change with the housekeeper's regular tip (but felt a little uncomfortable doing this because they then have to go around and cash them if they want them, so they probably throw them away).  If you want your change, another thought would be to take the entire TITO to the cashier cage instead of making the trip to a dispensing machine and then waiting in line at the cashier cage.  

The question was still not answered and it sounds like another nickel and dime method of ripping off the customer and not honorable or ethical and has to add up to Thousand in extra revenue for the shareholders...Just Boycott these places.

The technology is available to give the patron the .37, the casino is blaming COVID to keep the change. The other option is to round UP to the nearest dollar and make it EASY. It works both ways! The casino is NOT willing to make a few cents sacrifice but YOU should. 

A lot of casinos hate dealing with coins. It's one of the reasons they went to TITO on the machines, it eliminates a lot of employees to deal with loading coins into the machine hoppers, plus handling coins in the count room. So it's not surprising they don't want the ticket redemption machines dealing with coins since that would require employees to regularly fill the machines with coins.