During this time I have made several attempts to return to the Palms as a regular player, but have not found it worthwhile. In recent months about all I've done there is play enough to take advantage of one of the few positive things the new management initiated. If you earned one ticket for the weekly drawing and weren't called as a winner, they would give you $10 in free play good the next day. On $1 video poker, that requires $250 coin in -- a good deal, especially since my spouse would often play it for me. (The Palms recently wised up and now requires that you earn 10 drawing tickets to get the $10 free play.)
Today my spouse said that she wanted to go to the Palms and play for the gas cards they were giving away. She argued that she had received a pretty generous mailer from the Palms for the amount of play she had been giving them and that it might be worth it for me to give them yet another try.
The gas cards are part of a regular promotion that Palms runs called Play for Prizes. There are usually two sets of prizes, for the first and second halves of the month. Points accumulated on weekdays are used to qualify for the prizes, though players get to keep their points.
Today was the last day for the Chevron gas cards. Because we had not played during the second half of the month, we could get only what we could earn today. The lowest denomination was $5, requiring us to earn 2,500 points. That would also get us the $10 free play tomorrow. We valued the play at very close to $15 because we consider a gas card almost a cash equivalent and because the Palms' points, worth 0.25 percent, would make up for almost all of our loss on the deuces wild game (99.73 percent maximum payback) we would be playing.
So we played enough for our gas cards and went to the promotions center to cash in. At the counter, we were told that they were out of Chevron cards and we would instead be given Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf cards. I explained to the clerk that I did not consider these at all equivalent, that my car runs on gas and not on coffee, and that I did not appreciate being surprised by this news when the casino could have put up signs announcing the substitution. I asked him if I could get a rain check for a gas card. He said no. Not, "I'm sorry, I can't do that," just "no." I asked him if I could get free play instead. He said no. I asked him if I could speak with his supervisor. He said yes, and a young man came out from behind the curtain and agreed to put $5 free play on my spouse's and my accounts.
Problem solved, more or less. In the casino business, that's all that usually counts, so I told him I thought it was important that this situation be dealt with better if it comes up again. He assured me he would speak with his boss. I was satisfied with the way the matter eventually was handled, but if I had not made a fuss, I never would have gotten to speak with the supervisor. As my spouse pointed out later, many people probably just took their coffee cards and left unhappy -- especially if they had played a lot during the past two weeks and earned a lot of what they thought would be gas cards.
Here's what I think the Palms did wrong:
1. Someone assumed that gift cards of equal denomination are of equal value. My guess is that they had a surplus of the coffee cards and saw this as an opportunity to get rid of them, not stopping to think that some customers might not appreciate the substitution.
2. Because no one anticipated that some customers would be upset, no one thought to provide notice that they had run out of the gas cards. This could have been accomplished by posting signs at the entrances to the casino and at the players club.
3. If someone had been smart enough to do this, he or she might have taken the thought process a step further and tried to come up with ways to satisfy customers unhappy with the switch. No casino ever runs out of free play, and I believe this would have satisfied almost all customers. Another alternative would be to give points, which could be used for comps as well as free play.
4. The clerk at the counter who initially tried to "help" me was inadequately trained. Regardless of his own opinion on the matter, he should have expressed some sympathy for a customer who was being denied what the casino had promised. More important, he should have been the one to call in a supervisor if he couldn't satisfy the customer.
Under the best of circumstances, I am not a big fan of Play for Prizes. The prizes, usually gift cards, often have less value to me than their face amount. Plus, the process of obtaining the prizes is cumbersome. You have to go to a kiosk and get a printout of the points you earned for the promotion. This may entail waiting on line or dealing with a malfunctioning kiosk. Then you have to go to the promotions center and wait on line to get your prize. The last time I did this information had to be entered manually in a ledger before the clerk could get the prize. And, of course, there's always the possibility they'll run out of the card you wanted and give you something of much less value to you. This has happened to me before at the Palms.
As we left the casino, we stopped at the cafe. My spouse had a $10 credit and we wanted to use it to pick up a prepackaged salad. In the past I had enjoyed the gigantic chicken Caesar salads from the Palms cafe. I had noticed on previously that the size of these salads had been cut about in half. On this visit I observed that the price had also gone up!
Based on my visit today, I'd say the Palms is still badly in need of new management.
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