Please remember that our policy is not to promote or suggest that people circumvent the rules of offers or figure out ways to "game" the system. This is often a topic in the airfare reimbursement threads, but it happens in other sections too with contests, offers, rewards, reimbursements, and games with Vegas rewards. Our position is that if enough people abuse the system, the offers will disappear for the rest of us. If you're resorting to unethical and possibly illegal acts to get a discount, you're doing it wrong. Thanks.
LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! it’s so much easier to for them to just take the benefit away from everyone than police the ones that abuse it. The Hyatt/MGM relationship was there as a perk for us loyal to either MGM or Hyatt. Their intent was not to provide a way to keep MGM Gold perpetually without spending or gambling $$$. (Yes, I’m bitter that relationship is over because it was helpful for when I stay in Hyatt Properties.)
Disappointing news from Anthony Curtis. The BOGO buffet at South Point for LVA members was abused and discontinued. This was not a coupon in the book but an online coupon for members. Somehow some people were duplicating the coupon when it was supposed to be a one time use only. I'm staying at South Point in a couple weeks and was looking forward to this. Now it's gone because people always looking for ways to bend the rules.
100% agree, however I think a distinction needs to be made between "gaming the system" and "unethical or illegal" activity. A great feature of this forum is ways to game the system in completely ethical ways, including figuring out ways to benefit from ignorant casino policies.
“Gaming the system” is exactly why perks are taken away. This attitude ruins it for us that are honest and work within the intent of the policies. That is where ethics fall apart.
"Gaming the system" is a pretty broad term. What does that include: - what is a gaming day? - what's the best video poker paytable? - what's this extra service fee on my bill? - what is rat holing? - how do I count cards? - mgm is having a black friday sale - there is a 5x multiplier on this date A lot of interpretation there, kind of like the difference between art and pornography, you know it when you see it but there's no accounting for someone else's taste.
I mean flat out cheating. I mean buying a ticket and canceling, but using the receipt to get a credit you don't actually deserve. I mean not being an a-hole, basically. The main function of this board is to figure out how to work the system, not figure out how to cheat it.
I'd add staying within both the spirit and the letter of the rules. In the case of the coupon, for example, if it was intended to be one-time-only use, and said that it was for one-time-only use, the fact that individual cashiers might not necessarily notice that you're doing something wrong doesn't mean that you should abuse it. Otherwise it gets taken away and we can't have nice things.
I don’t believe in unlawful activity. There was a thread that was locked in the past week. I don’t know why it was locked? I shared my experiences. Was it locked because of me? Where are we drawing the line? Isn’t tier matching exploiting the system? That costs casinos millions. Im totally confused here…
Please send me a PM with the thread in question and I can give you more info. Usually, if a thread is locked and you don't get a PM from me about it, it wasn't because of you. I'm not sure where the confusion lies. Is it using the word "gaming" instead of "cheating"? I thought I was being less accusatory that way, but maybe I just caused more confusion. The line is when it crosses into unethical/unlawful activity. The last two decades of this board have been full of helpful information on: Maximizing Comps Maximixing promotions, like multiplier days. Making the most of your freeplay/comp offers Finding the best VP Paytables Tier Matching offers Finding good happy hour deals Using coupons and discounts Playing games like MyVegas or the WynnSlots to get free stuff Etc. None of that is a problem. It's absolutely what this place is for. For getting and giving information on maximizing offers is great. I love it. The casinos do to, sort of. However, when you're telling people to use a fake receipt to get airfare reimbursement, or how to make extra copies of a coupon that is intended for one time use, or endlessly searching for loopholes and shortcuts to comps you haven't earned, that's where we get into the unethical arena. Does that clarify? I'm happy to change the title from "gaming" to cheating, if that would be helpful too.
I guess I think both sides (coupon abusers and South Point Casino) share blame on this one. People should absolutely be honest and only use a coupon that explicitly states "one coupon per person per year" one time per year. However, it would be extremely easy for South Point to require players to go to the club booth to get a voucher for the buffet which would immediately eliminate coupon abuse. If I were a player that didn't get a chance to use the coupon before it was canceled (hey, wait a second, I am such a player!), I'd be miffed both at the coupon abusers and South Point who didn't feel it was worth the little bit of work it would take to prevent abuse. Almost all players clubs now require you to convert internet/LVA/ACG coupons into vouchers to prevent coupon abuse.
IANAL and all that, but yeah, that's how it looks to me too. The "systems" have all kinds of room to work within the rules to maximize your benefits. That's great. Looking for ways to "cheat" yourself into extra benefits is the problem.
Oh, for sure. I just meant in terms of @Sonya's point about discussing it on the boards. If anything, I put it more on South Point for not anticipating the issue (always think about how things can go wrong and/or be taken advantage of!), but no matter whose "fault" it is, probably best to not talk about it here. And now I have a random desire to go to a buffet tonight.
Hi Sonya, I pretty much dropped off the message board when covid hit. My wife and her mom who lives with us were extremely high risk so we went into lockdown until shots were available. Last Vegas trip was 2/2019 which seems like an eternity. My first was a couple weeks before Circus Circus opened (still a kid then) and I haven't missed many years since. I can't wait to get back but we have 7 y.o. twins who used to go with us but now my wife thinks that is a bad influence. Really? OK maybe so. Anyway I am glad to see you are still here and leading the board. I have a two day trip to Lake Charles this week but it is not Vegas. Horseshoe is offering 10x tier credits so I pitched it as getting back on the free cruise offers and my wife said sure. Needless to say I booked immediately? All the best
Over the years every time we used the South Point Buffet coupon that we printed off as a perk from lva we had to bring it to the desk with our players card and they printed out a voucher I thought that's how they kept track of only one per person
That's definitely how most casinos handle coupons these days, but apparently that's not how South Point was handling the coupon in question. I never got a chance to use it, so I'm not sure exactly what it looked like or how it was different from the coupons in the LVA book.
