Should I switch from CET to Mlife?

I'd love to get your opinions on this.....a little background....My husband and I are both Diamond CET players and have stayed at Paris exclusively for about six years now, at least twice a year, sometimes more. We formed a "relationship" with a host after meeting her when we asked about comps before checkout. This was about two years ago. Since then, we have booked our trips with her, instead of just calling the desk.

We have gotten five nights free up front, except for the last time, when we had to pay for two nights, not much, but I was surprised.

Problem is, we had two different reservations and things got messed up...for the second time. We talked to our host on the evening of the first res. being up, and she said all had been cleared except for the tips. We tried to see her on the night before we left, and she had left early. The other host on duty just removed RC's which I believe anyone at a TR desk should have done.

Our host usually gives us at least a little more than our RC's cover. We have not gotten free play at CET, unless it's for certain dates, from mailers, and we never seem to be able to go on those times.

At check-out, we found that charges had NOT been removed from our bill, but all our RC's were gone. I have emailed my host, and have not heard back, so intend to email the property. Not sure exactly who to send the letter to, will do some research.

We have also, in previous trips, given some play to Mlife, also visited Beau Rivage. This time, we double booked for three nights at Aris, with $400 free play and two Viva Elvis tickets.

We have a combined budget of $1000 a day to gamble with, and I know the hubby goes over that sometimes.

Do you think, at this level, we would get more offers like this, or better, at Mlife than we are with CET?

Also what would you do about the host? I am pretty frustrated at this point. Don't ask for more than we deserve, but it's REALLY frustrating when RC's are taken and not reflected on the bill.

Sorry I was so long -winded, but any advice, opinions would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Tammy

 

Interesting, I'm getting the same feeling - my budget is similar, and I have a host at PH who reserves free rooms on my trips.
However, last trip, we had some friends come with us and she gave them the casino rate on my behalf.
Upon checkout, she asked if we wanted to take my friend's room charge off, but since they had a winning trip and already paid for the room, they didn't care.
I asked her to take care of my charges, and was surprised to see she used my RCs, given she wouldn't have used my RCs to cover the room charges, I'm assuming?

 

If you stay 5 nights, you will have a heck of a time getting that out of MGM. Having said that, the general consensus here seems to be: Tables, play at Mlife....Slots, CET. I will echo that myself.

 

I've been told that all RC's will be taken, then she will see what else she can do. Just mad, this time, that RC's were taken, no credit given, and I still have not had a reply from the host.

 

Do you think, at this level, we would get more offers like this, or better, at Mlife than we are with CET?

Cant say about MLife as I have never booked through them but our BR is around 2/3 of yours and we have gotten comps at MGM propertys along with other perks at our level.

 

Based on what I am seeing, I think it would be worth to give all our play to Mlife for a bit and see what happens. We were both Diamond in Tunica, with some visits to Biloxi and Vegas. Started giving Gold Strike and Beau Rivage more play and they have converted us. Only thing we do with CET in Vegas is hit the lounge and use up some points left over. At this rate, probably will not be Diamond next year, but so be it.

 

What ever you are getting at CET expect less at MLife.
Search on MLife and my username and you find many frustrated posts.

Each year we gamble more and each year we get less.
We actually talked with one of the head hosts because we were not pleased with what they were going to remove from the bill at the end of the trip.

She commented that we gambled more our previous trip than this current trip which I insisted was wrong. What really happened is one the previous trip we played mostly the older slot machines. This trip we played all the new slot machines as they were awesome. Come to find out with MLife they don't count the coin in the same for the new machines as they do the old machines.

If you have $100 coin in on an old slot machine this may be 20 session points.
If you have $100 coin in on a new slot machine this may be 8 session points.
MLife does not count coin in but rather session points. So although we gambled more in their eyes we gambled less.

Among having host issues I am almost done with MLife.

For our next trip I contacted a CET host who is comping me our stay. I am really looking forward to testing the CET waters.

You will find more people going from MLife to CET instead of CET to MLife.

 

Yeah. All that +1

 

When you say your budget is $1,000 a day, I am going to assume that means your loss limit.

You say you "double booked" an Aria offer. The Aria offer looks pretty good. If your plan is to stay at Paris, and just use the Aria freeplay and Viva Elvis tickets, I think that would be a mistake. If you low-play or no-play them, you'll kill your status with MGM.

If that's the case, what I would suggest is that you actually stay at Aria on that offer and cancel your Paris reservation. Play only at Aria and other MGM properties on the trip. Then wait a month or two and see what pops up in MLife.

Other than perks, your comps at CET are not based on your Diamond status per se, they are based on how much you play per day. So I would be less concerned about maintaining your Diamond status than I would be about getting an MGM stay under your belt and seeing how their offers compare.

If you do two trips a year, and the trips are short enough that you don't want to switch hotels mid-trip, I would suggest splitting your trips between MGM and CET until you see how the offers and comp systems compare. You may temporarily lose your Diamond status at CET as a result, but you have to consider exactly what Diamond is getting you. Your offers from CET are not going to get worse if you play the same amount, but only stay once a year instead of twice.

MGM gives you Express Comps which work like RCs at CET. At $1,000 a day, you are right in the zone where both chains are going to pretty much cover your room, but are going to expect you to use your Express Comps and RCs to cover other charges. But, just like with CET, you can go to the MLife desk at the end of your stay and see if they will pick up any charges without using Express Comps. And your MGM offers at that play level will probably usually include a decent amount of freeplay and F & B credit, which means you won't have to dig into your Express Comps as much.

Some of this depends on what you play as well. If your husband blows the $1,000 on $100 a hand blackjack in an hour, that's much different than playing slots all day. But if table games are in your mix, I think everyone pretty much agrees that for a lower average bet table player, MGM gives you more bang for your buck than CET.

One difference is that MGM now seems more property-focused than CET. If you concentrate your play at one CET casino during a stay, your offers for all of their properties aren't going to change much. But let's say you're staying at Aria on that offer and you decide you'd like to stay at Bellagio in the future. Go over to Bellagio and give them one entire day's play. You should end up getting offers directly from both Aria and Bellagio. The Bellagio offers might not be quite as good as the Aria offers, but you should get some.

Bottom line is it's good to have options. Comp policies can change and you never know when you're going to have the rug pulled out. If you go at least twice a year, I think it's wise to split your stays and play between the two chains and keep the offers coming from both.

 

Thanks, guys, for all your replies. I appreciate the time. We did gamble quite a bit in Aria this time and actually stayed . Gthere two nights. I really like that casino. Good drinks, BEAUTIFUL place, new, comfortable machines, lots of good food choices. I do also love Paris for its intimacy, MAG and the Eiffel Tower. Love a fountain view room there so much! So, it does seem that splitting between the two might be the thing to do.

We will see what kind of offers we get from Aria.I think ours may have been so good this time because of our stay at Beau Rivage last December.

This time, we played only with my husband's card at Paris, and he has retained Diamond status for another year. Even though we are supposedly linked at Aria, we used his card there too. Hopefully, this will help.

So, if we get offers, we will probably just book for three and three for November.

Again, thanks for your replies. I will let you know how it goes.

Big winnings all around!

 

A couple of thoughts:

MGM properties rarely give out more than 3 days comped up front. You can ask at the end of a trip at the MLife booth to have them comp additional nights, but some people prefer to know up front just how much the hotel is going to cost them.

However, MLife is more likely to give you extras, or better extras, as part of an offer - talking about free play, resort credit, show tickets, etc.

But if you like getting offers for slot and VP tournaments, you are more likely to get those through Total Rewards.

Also, how you play is actually important: If you like to casino hop and spread your play around you will do better with Total Rewards for your overall offers - last fall MLife changed their program to make it more property centric, where you would still get corporate offers from your overall play, but those offers are much weaker than the offers that specifically come from the different properties, which are based on the play you give that property.

And finally, what you play is also important: if you play table games, especially blackjack, you will find overall better rules at MGM properties... and for slots the overall selection of newer slots is going to be better at MGM properties, however Total Rewards is more likely to reach an exclusivity agreement for some of the big new slots (IE: Total Rewards had exclusivity for 3-6 months on games like Hangover, Lord of the Rings and Clue... you can find those everywhere now, but when they were brand-spanking-new for the first few months they were only at Total Rewards casinos).


The big thing with all this is that there isn't one program that is overall better than the other. They both have pluses and minus and in some things MLife is better than Total Rewards and in other things Total Rewards is better than MLife.

Personally, I prefer MLife of the two: I like the luxury feeling of their resorts over that of the CET properties, the median room quality at MGM properties is going to be much high than at CET properties, almost all their properties have food courts for cheap dining options, they give decent amounts of free play with their offers, their show selection (in my opinion) is better, they have a better overall selection of newer slot machines and their table games generally have more player favorable rules.

But that said, we usually go to Las Vegas for six nights so we usually break our stays up where we might do 3-4 nights at an MGM property and then 2-3 nights at a CET property. The main reason we do that is with the MLife part of our stay we will usually be at Aria or Monte Carlo and play primarily there and visit all the neighboring MGM casinos... then for the second leg of the trip we'll move to somewhere like Harrah's and then spend that part of the trip playing at that end of The Strip.

 

If you don't seem to be on the same wavelength with your host at Paris, request a new one. Personally, I think everyone should diversify their options in Vegas. But I think I would agree that splitting time between CET and MLife may not be the best way to go. CET can be forgiving but I don't know if the same can be said for MGM casinos.

As for the hosts taking RCs, they are under more pressure to do that. My mom's local host explained that RCs show up on the balance sheet as a liability and they are going to do what they have to get them off the books. That doesn't mean they don't want to do discretionary comps. If the host promised to comped everything over the the RC balance and didn't, then she should have explained what changed to keep her from doing that. It's poor communication that is at the root of a lot of people switching casinos and I don't get why the casinos don't get that.

 

Something to add about stay lengths - CET's online system or your host will probably let you book 5 day stays, MGM to my knowledge, will never send a marketing offer longer than 3 days.

But if your budget is $1,000/day and you're not playing in a way where you're likely to get wiped out fast (betting too high or betting a lot on low probability stuff), that's enough so that if you call or get a host, MGM should have no problem hooking you up for 5 or 6 nights. Call them on an offer and tell them you need 5 or 6 nights instead of 3. It really shouldn't be a problem as long as you can maintain that budget.

 

Thanks again for the replies. I think we will split the stay for November, 3and3.BTW, I play mostly quarter vp, sometimes more, at Aria, and husband plays mostly slots there with some poker. he plays those Aztec looking ones with three different progressives a lot. Will def. Check to see if they are the ones you get fewer credits for, but I don't think they are. They are the ones closest to the players card desk in a group of six with three on each side.

Auggie, I also love the luxuriousness of Aria and the restaurants.

Chuck, or anyone else, do you have the name of a host you can recommend at Aria and a number or email address? I understand if you can't share...don't really know the etiquette of that.

BTW, after I sent the email to my host, again, that I had sent a week ago, she finally did reply...to say that she had already replied...NOT!!!....and she would again in a few days because she was so busy!!!!

I am pretty mad about hat and not sure who else to contact at Paris, but am going to do that. I will give her a day or two, but not much longer. you would think that six years of loyalty, with both of us at the diamond level for the last two years, would mean something, but that remains to be seen.

Again, thanks so much for the replies. Love this board.

 

From what I can tell, this is sort of true, and false.

They do count coin in. But, on some machines, especially those with big names (Wizard of Oz, SexnCity, etc), the points you get per dollar coin in is less. Some back room accountant has made what appears to be a good decision on paper into a bad decision for players. And ultimately for the casino. They save very small bucks on comps, but just piss people off.

As to new vs. old. Not sure that covers everything, either way.

 

Does anyone have a definite answer on this. I know I've asked this question before, and was told coin in - was coin in - regardless of the machine you played. Mlife pays 1 point for each $2 played on regular machines and 1 point for every $10 played on themed machines or VP.

If I put $100 in and am playing $10 a spin - and it takes me 20 spins to lose that $100- regardless of whether I am playing a 3 reel slot or a themed machine - my coin in is still $200. Yes, playing the themed machines I will have only earned 20 session points and playing the 3 reel machine I will have earned 100 session points (if all my math is correct).

But I was to understand that while my express comps and tier credits would suffer, that my coin in would still be $200 - and that this amount is what determines your future offers.

 

The following is the quote received by the host I e-mailed:

Notice the above states "points" and NOT coin in.

 

I seem to waffle on where I'm going to concentrate my play every year. I am Diamond at CET and Platinum at MGM. Offers on Mlife generally blow but I have phoned a host and had four nights comped including a weekend at the Bellagio last month and I have a host at the Mirage comping me three nights at the end of a weekend in August. This last weekend I was comped four nights in Octavius.

While my room at the Bellagio was nice, it was not better than an Augustus or Octavius. My room at the Mirage will certainly not be better as well. Because I go to Vegas so frequently (6-10 trips a year) I really get value out of my Diamond Card as I am almost always comped at Caesars. But not always and when I have to stay somewhere else I start grumping as the property fall off after Caesars is big.

Now if you are a guy that goes to Vegas 1-3 times a year I am willing to bet Mlife may work better for you. As Beejay and I discussed on my last trip via text, no way would the Bellagio comp me 6-8 times a year but CET will. So this works better for me. I also like property jumping and CET dones not care where you play but MGM does. So like it or not, if you are on a bad run you may have to play more at the MGM casino you are comped at or risk future offers. Now Beejay who is down to twice a year is better off hitting it hard for those trips as Mlife will totally hook him up due to his furious play on those trips.

Having said all that I will easily keep my Platinum this year and although I was gonna let the Diamond slide for the first time in 5 years this year, I found myself putting on 3000 Tier points the last three days at CET and I will get that darn Diamond again before December. I also played at MGM but only put on 47 000 Tier Credits.

What you should do depends entirely on the frequency of your trips in my opinion. Fewer trips I say MGM as the properties are better. More trips...I say CET as room comps are easier.

That's the advice from a guy that almost plays exclusively at video poker with craps thrown in occasionally.

 

so funny how Gaggles and I were just debating this issue over text recently. We are probably in the same play ballpark as you. Well we are in theory, until the alcohol kicks in and the wallet fills with ATM receipts.

I have been riding both for about 3 years. Like Gaggles, Diamond CET, Platinum Mlife. I let my diamond go this year and have earned 10, count em 10 tier points this year (about 300,000 mlife tier points).

I've found CET nice for availability of a free room almost all the time. Mlife seems like I get 2 solid 3-nighters with freeplay per year.

Again the problem is once I'm below getting Caesars on weekends, I have zero use for CET. Also CET props are not as fancy, have worse gaming conditions, and never offer anywhere close to mlife freeplay or food.

In your specific situation I think I would "use" CET to fill your room needs for trips over 3 nights while giving 95% of your play to Mlife, probably best to give it all at Aria and develop a host relationship there. I think you can ride out a few years of CET room comps by concentrating that 5% of play into one day for maximized ADT.

The ride down on comps is slower than you'd think. I basically zero played CET this last trip while staying in Octavious at Caesars and its yet to effect my offers. I wasn't able to get Caesars during the weekends anyway since killing my ADT on Great Race last year. But I do have weekends at P.Ho and Paris.

Also, like Gaggles mentioned, even if you have no offer, you can always call VIP at the Mlife props. That 4-nighter Gaggles got at Bellagio was on a busy sold out weekend with rooms averaging over $350 a night for the 4 nights.

 

Oh, Gaggles and I also failed to mention two small details:

#1 Resort fees. they alway say you'll be charged resort fee at MGM's even on comp rooms. I have yet to be charged, also not charged against my points.

#2 Macker's mom fees. Macker's mom has a master key to all MGM prop rooms. She will expect cab fare on the pillow in the morning.:evillaugh