Mlife Summer Offer - Can This Be Right?

My offers showed up and I'm still trying to figure out how this is possible. My spring offer was 3 nights stay which we used at Bellagio from Jun 1-4. No food or freeplay. This was the results of that trip:

My wife and I played slots and I was told we had $19K coin-in when I checked out. I played quite a bit of BJ and the host said my avg bet was $270 which he then said made me a "good player" (gee thanks). We earned about $280 in express comps (is this even right for the amount played?) which we used. I ended up winning $5K in about a 20-minute run the last morning to prevent a 5-figure loss.

Anyhow, my summer offer for Bellagio and the other tier 1 casinos is:
•Complimentary Deluxe Room for 1 night Sunday - Thursday with 2 night stay and a special rate from $129 per night Friday and Saturday

•$75 Food and beverage credit

One free night? Are you kidding me?

I get a whopping 2 nights Sun-Thurs from the lower tier casinos.

I never looked up the tax info on the Mlife site and it was somewhat shocking that it only showed me -$400 for table games but the slots appeared to be correct.

Can this possibly be right?

 

You didn't say how many hours they had you down for BJ.

That Express Comps number almost sounds like it doesn't include any of your table play.

$6,000 coin in a night should get you a room at any MGM property except maybe Bellagio. If it's the corporate cross-property offer, it's not that surprising, although it's also quite possible that the offer isn't factoring in your June trip.

 

I would say it was somewhere around 4 hours a day as I primarily play BJ and some poker and the majority of the losses was at BJ. My wife was the one that mostly played slots but I did play some this time around since she came out there with me.

I appreciate the info on Express Comps as I thought we had earned more than that during our stay.

The host I spoke with when I checked out was kind of an ass. He was the one that quoted my avg bet and confirmed my loss. I know Mlife has gotten worse but I used to be an RFL person in the past.

The summer offer has T70 for me.

 

Well, I'd say $6,000 coin in a day plus 4 hours at $270 should still have you at some level of RFL, just not through stuff generated by MLife's system. And again, the June trip may not be reflected in the offer you got.

I think I calculated Express Comps for craps at something like $0.001 per dollar bet. If that's correct, then the ratio of Express Comps to theo for table games is

$0.001 earned/.014 (HA on craps) = 7.14% of theo

Let's say MGM puts the HA on BJ at .0066 (0.66%) and hands per hour at 100.

$270 x 0.0066 HA x 100 hands/hr x 12 hours puts your BJ theo at $2,138. 7% of that is about $150, just from BJ.

And $19k coin in on non-specialty machines alone I would expect to generate about the amount of Express Comps you noted.

Even if you played so-called specialty machines, your Express Comps and PointPlay earned there might be lower, but that wouldn't affect your theo on the machines, so playing specialty machines shouldn't affect your offer level.

 

I am guessing your June play isn't included in your offer. I don't know what my coin in was on my last trip 3 day trip in March of this year, but I earned 100,000 tier credits. If you simplify that, with $2 getting you 10 tier credits, my coin in was around $20,000. I know I played specialty machines and VP so my coin in was probably a bit higher than that. I think I earned arouned $240 in express comps.

My summer offer was comp nights at Bellagio and Aria, comp suites everywhere else, $300 in FP and $150 food and beverage. So basically my play was very similar to yours on slots, but you had table play which I didn't - so I really can't see that your June trip was included in your summer offers. They do look at your past history for 18 months though, for me that involved a 220,000 tier credit trip last September.

 

Maybe that's the case then that it wasn't included in this offer. I realize I'm not a whale but I bumped my LOC from $5K to $10K and brought cash for this last trip and had basically exhaused it all until my heater on the last day.

I suppose I may need to start spreading my play around to other properties instead of being focused on giving it all to one location, especially Bellagio. It is the second time I've received some attitude from hosts there when I asked them about comps. There's one there in particular who really thinks he's something special.

I didn't deal with him my last couple trips but was sitting in Noodles having lunch when he and a couple other hosts sat down next to me. It was during the Jordan golf tourney and they were talking smack about some of their players. The only thought running through my mind was "Do you really think this is the appropriate place to do this?".

 

If you're not totally in love with Bellagio as a property, give a full day's play to some other MGM casino on your next trip.

Or, contact a host at another property, Aria I believe has a hosts contact page on their website.

Or just call VIP Services at another property, they'll probably put you through to a host.

 

Thanks for the info about Aria. I may try them next as I like to play poker and prefer to stay somewhere that has a good poker room.

 

This was posted on the MLife Facebook page. Rather interesting.

Just to let everyone know, spoke to a VIP rep, and apparently alot of people were over comped last year to get them in the door and now they are under comping to make up for it. We were VERY disappointed with our summer offers, especially after we increased our plays, our trips and moved up a card level. Sort of poor business tactics.

Tried to logon to MLife and it is unavailable due to updates/improvements. That never seems to work out well does it?

 

There's not really any reason for them to under comp now to make up for over comping last year. They don't really lose money by over comping, they get more people in than they otherwise would; if those people don't gamble as much as they expected they don't make as much money as they hoped.

But they're not going to make up any of that shortfall by stiffing profitable players. If you're profitable, you can still get what you need; it just may not show up in MLife. I understand that a lot of people aren't aware of that yet.

It is very poor business practice in the sense that their system of communicating offers is not reliable or predictable.

 

This is a totally illogical statement. Comps cost them money. Otherwise they would be giving out rooms, meals, drinks, etc to everybody. Think about that for just a second.

BUT, I would agree that cutting comps to good players can be counter productive. In a perfect business world, the mgmt would figure out EXACTLY how much to give away to gain even more back. In reality, humans make decisions based on various factors as to the level of comps they give out. Sadly, somewhere in the process bad mgmt and poor data mining results in bad decisions. Either too much comping or too little. We are then impacted as a result.

But, don't say over comping does not cost them money.

 

I suppose I'll be more patient the next time around. We decided to go out there on a whim this last time and probably picked the worst weekend since it was the jewelry thing. Wife had a B-day offer from Mandalay that they wouldn't let her use because they said it was booked.

My B-day is this month so I'm curious to see if I'll get anything like hers. Thought I would've received it by now.

 

Mlife did respond to that comment:

Hi Christina, we appreciate your comment. We apologize that or representative conveyed information that wasn't quite true and M life Members are not being "under comped" in any way. Thanks for your loyalty and let us know if we can further clarify.

 

The overhead associated with a room with people in it not that large. Better to have it filled than not filled, if you have a large inventory.

I don't know the exact details of the accounting, but I believe the casino operation and the hotel operation are separate. The casino gets billed by the hotel at a discounted rate, around 50% of the cheapest rack rate.

So what's the aggregate casino rate for a standard room hotel night across all of MGM's properties? Probably something like 40 or 50 bucks.

They may have lost money on some people they made offers to, but I find it hard to believe they lost money overall by over comping.

But, they will not recoup the overestimated profit margin by swinging too far the other way and under comping, because if they use too broad a brush. they are just going to cut out some profitable players who will no longer show up.

So they have to adjust and try to "appropriately" comp. Someone whose offers aren't as good as they used to be calls that "under comping". The problem for MGM is, appropriate comping and under comping is all in the eye of the beholder.

 

Maybe what the wanted to say was something like:

Last year we were comping a bit higher. After further review, we have adjusted our comp policy.

That would make perfect sense. After all, comps, offers would go up and down based on many factors. Some of which we can see, and some we do not.

 

In reading this, my take on it is:

- The OP's last trip was less than a month ago
- The corporate offers came out a couple of weeks ago
- MLife updates everything on a three or four month cycle so play this last trip will probably not be calculated until the fall offers come out
- This sounds more like a corporate offer, which are worse than hotel specific offers. If the OP gave all that play to Bellagio alone then they'll probably get a better a better offer directly from Bellagio when they next send out their own offers.
- The three nights offer the OP booked for their June trip was probably a Bellagio specific offer and not a corporate offer.
- The OP said they upped their line of credit this trip and brought cash, but doesn't really say how that reflects towards their history of play. When the casinos look a players history, that doesn't just mean last trip a couple of weeks ago, but more their history over the last two years. A big spike up in play has some value to it, but not as much until it is established that this is a players new level of play, which comes after repeat visits at this new level.
- Somebody mentioned MLife maybe undercomping now to make up for last year... thats not true, but they did change their program last fall to make it more property centric. The OP was saying they might spread their play out some more next trip, but that will actually have a negative impact on future offers - they might start getting offers from properties they currently don't get offers from, but they won't be as good as offers that come from a specific property if they concentrate their play at that property.


But with all that said, I do think the big thing here is that the OP's trip was just one month ago and that things have been updated in the system yet. We were in Las Vegas this past April and we gave Monte Carlo a fair bit of play, trying to up the offers we get from them... which worked as they sent us an offer for three nights in a suite with a load of free play and some resort credit, but that didn't arrive until mid June, two months after our April trip.

 

I used a corporate offer for the last trip. Hadn't received any worthwhile casino specific offers in the spring. I don't go out to Vegas as much as I used to, but actually played bigger when I stayed at Bellagio in Apr 2011.

My LOC was in the past was $5K but I usually brought $5K+ cash. Decided I'd rather not do that anymore to limit the amount of cash I'm carrying around.

I usually avg $200+ on BJ tables and this got me better offers in the past.

 

My summer offers stink too.

My spring offer gave me 3 nights in a suite, 300 fp, and 150 fb.

My summer gives me 2 nights S-Th; $99 a night on F and S; 2 for 1 tickets for a show.

I stayed at Bellagio in March and earned approximately 90,000 points and $270 in express comps over 3 days (loss of about $1 thousand a day - not coin in; purely a slot player and trackable) plus played for about 3-4 hours at Mirage on last (4th) day losing about $800. So, I don't think I low played them at all. Plus, I played many "premium" machines and earned less points.

I did contact a host at Mandalay and they were happy to host me for 4 nights (in a Spa suite- slightly upgraded regular room), 250 fp, 100 food credit, VIP check in and limo to and from airport for our December trip. Bellagio would only offer me 1 night free and charge for other nights; though they did send me a separate summer offer for 3 free nights, 300 fp and 300 food and beverage. Maybe they'll send me something better closer to our travel date but I didn't want to wait as the corporate summer offer was so bad.

It's kind of disheartening when you play so much specifically with one corporation to earn better comps and they don't recognize it.

I guess our best best is to call and book with individual properties who reach out to us.

 

I would agree that June play is not yet reflected in offers.

Calling a host should get something better if your play was tracked correctly. Always check your points before and after each visit.

I know for a fact that other MGM casinos that you have NOT been playing at will from time to time reach out if you have good play with the family somewhere.

In our case, play at Beau Rivage got us offers at Bellagio. Then the Bellagio play got us offers at Aria, with no play there. And then M-Bay. And Mirage, which for years could not match the offers we had at Aria or Bellagio finally jumped in with sweet offers, and visits from us. MGM Casino has never acknowledged us. Strange.

When we do visit we do tend to focus our play on the casino where are room is. After playing hard, drinking late into the night, we love to just walk to the room without going outside or dealing with cabs.

 

Hi Christina, we appreciate your comment. We apologize that or representative conveyed information that wasn't quite true and M life Members are not being "under comped" in any way. Thanks for your loyalty and let us know if we can further clarify.
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Well, of course they are gonna type that.

Problem is, over-comping does you no good when you are just gonna pull the rug on them when you get there. That's absolutely BACKWARDS. But thats what they did last summer, when they got a bunch of people in the door, then they got buyers remorse and screwed everybody in the end.

If you play tables at a large number, MGM will take care of you, as Shifter and others have attained. Anything below that, they are gonna find a THOUSAND ways to screw you through resort fees, premium slots, and under-comping. Why anybody would put up with this shit is completely beyond me.

There are 50,000 bad stories about Mlife on this board. What more do you need people.