Virtual Casino's innovative marketing technique

[Casinomeister]

In case you missed this week's newsletter, Virtual Casino has implemented a new innovative marketing strategy - dissin' the competition. This was forwarded to me today from a VC player:

From : Danny <danny@casinosupportcenter.com>>
Sent : Tuesday, July 20, 2004 1:28 AM
To : <"Undisclosed-Recipient:, "@sendmail.thevirtualsupport.com>
Subject : new danny letter of the day


There Are Good Ideas
There Are Great Ideas
Then There Are Ideas That Meet A Better Higher Standard
And Those Are The Only Ideas That Matter

That Is Reality
And That Reality Is Virtual Meeting A Better Higher Standard

Have something to say about the casino or myself send it for me to post here

Letter of the Day

Danny I'm sending you a copy of a complaint I have with xxxxxxxxcasino.
You might be able to direct me to someone who can help or maybe you can. I
should have listened to you and stayed away from this casino. I had an
account with this casino for about 8 months. About 3 weeks ago I won $400.
My brother wanted to join so he opened an account at his house. The next
day he played at my house under his account. After a couple of days at his
house he won $600. Then this casino froze both of our
accounts saying we have multiple accounts. I discussed this matter with
xxxxx at accounting he said you need to prove that he is a different
person with a different ip address id and etc. so he did. He sent lots of
identification. They released both of our accounts. I still was waiting
for my withdrawal so was my brother. A few days later they closed both of
our accounts again. They insisted that we have multiple accounts because
he played on my computer. Basically the conversation went nowhere. He just
kept on saying that we have multiple accounts and that we both will not
get paid. There system detected it even though we proved who we both are
and opened separate accounts. We proved who we are but they proved
nothing... they keep saying our system detected multiple accounts and we
will not get paid. They offer no help and wished me good luck when I said
I will complain to someone. I hope you can help or direct me to someone
that can. I played at havana, casino delrio, casino lasvegas, and the
virtual casino. All have paid me with no problem, with a good support
staff. What do I do? I sent this letter to interactive gaming council. I
never heard of them. Ok Danny now my brother is thinking of joining your
casino because he has seen how helpful you are. If he opened an account at
his house can he then play on my computer with his account? Thanks Kevin.
Account namexxxx

Danny comments: Kevin Kevin Kevin. Why didnt you listen? We know you
guys play other casinos, that's fine, but please be careful of who you
choose. There are a lot of fly by nights out there. You are the 4th
player I have to have played there and not got paid. Go to
http://disputes.montanaoverseas.com/ and file a complaint.
They are very helpful One of my players got paid 36 hrs later after filing and she
waited for a long time before that. Good Luck


I've removed the player's account number which the casino had left in the email. Brilliant!

I think most of us know which casino VC is referring to. This is almost verbatim word for word from the complaint posted here - and which was submitted via "Pitch a Bitch". Apparently the player simply explained his problem to the casino, asking for advice (and asking if this is acceptable at VC). What a clever thing on the casino's part to use this against the competition.

Good going VC! Me thinks you've broken your probation.

[jpm]

Well they've crossed the line from marketing to politics with that little bit of mudslinging. I wonder if the casino that was mentioned in their email would have a libel case against them for doing this. I bet their lawyers would like a copy of this Bryan. Setup a rogue casino deathmatch!

[Black21Jack]

I have played at Virtual before with no bonus and had no problem cashing out over $4000.00. I had not played there in a while because I thought they were listed as a bad ccasino but I looked in the "Rogue" and "Not Recommended" section and could not see them listed. Were they ever listed? or are they listed and I just can't see it? Let me know because I will play again if all is well with them.

[Casinomeister]

Originally Posted by Black21Jack

I have played at Virtual before with no bonus and had no problem cashing out over $4000.00. I had not played there in a while because I thought they were listed as a bad ccasino but I looked in the "Rogue" and "Not Recommended" section and could not see them listed. Were they ever listed? or are they listed and I just can't see it? Let me know because I will play again if all is well with them.

They were listed there for quite a while. But as of January 2004, I placed them on probation with the agreement that if there were few to no complaints, they would be removed. Fair is fair. Not much of anything came in for a while and they were removed. Redemption is possible at Casinomeister.

But then, this puts them back on the table.

[virtualted]

Bryan,
First off this was not sent out as spam or any other marketing technique. This was sent to select players who have been asked to be placed on our daily mailing lists. This was also posted on our www.virtualdanny.com website, where we give different daily bonuses. Before making comments or jumping to conclusions, you have jumped into this post in the middle. We asked OUR customers to send in things that they thought were good and BAD, about us and casinos in general. We got a number of responses and told people we would answer and post some. While most gave rave reviews to us and Danny, a number were negative, sighting certain terms and conditions here or past experiences. We posted the good and the bad. We have never claimed to be perfect, and have not always honed up to out mistakes, but we have recently changed that. As you have agreed, “The Leaf” has changed here. We were responding to a direct customer’s inquiry, we commented to the customer before he ever posted. We told him to go RTG complaints section. Any customer reading our reply could also have complained about us on the same forum. I think that it is funny that everybody claims that the casinos should help self govern them selves, but when a casino has a problem, we are chastised for speaking up. Have to tell you Bryan, if this is truly how you run your board, than I do not care one way or another, if you want to claim we are rouge, not recommended or whatever.
Ted

[jpm]

I think it would have been one thing if you blanked out the casinos name (unless it was one in your own group), but this seemed to be rather blatant competition bashing imo.

[kniepm]

I have a dream that one day, all rogue casinos will beat, one upon the other, and stop screwing over their customers.

[Casinomeister]

Originally Posted by virtualted

Bryan,
First off this was not sent out as spam or any other marketing technique. This was sent to select players who have been asked to be placed on our daily mailing lists. This was also posted on our www.virtualdanny.com website, where we give different daily bonuses. Before making comments or jumping to conclusions, you have jumped into this post in the middle. We asked OUR customers to send in things that they thought were good and BAD, about us and casinos in general. We got a number of responses and told people we would answer and post some. While most gave rave reviews to us and Danny, a number were negative, sighting certain terms and conditions here or past experiences. We posted the good and the bad. We have never claimed to be perfect, and have not always honed up to out mistakes, but we have recently changed that. As you have agreed, “The Leaf” has changed here. We were responding to a direct customer’s inquiry, we commented to the customer before he ever posted. We told him to go RTG complaints section. Any customer reading our reply could also have complained about us on the same forum. I think that it is funny that everybody claims that the casinos should help self govern them selves, but when a casino has a problem, we are chastised for speaking up. Have to tell you Bryan, if this is truly how you run your board, than I do not care one way or another, if you want to claim we are rouge, not recommended or whatever.
Ted

I never claimed this was spam. It is clearly your newsletter. There is no doubt about this.

There is also no doubt that you are attacking one of your own competitors.

Danny comments: Kevin Kevin Kevin. Why didnt you listen? We know you
guys play other casinos, that's fine, but please be careful of who you
choose. There are a lot of fly by nights out there. You are the 4th
player I have to have played there and not got paid.

This complaint was posted in this forum, and it was also submitted to me. Any visitor here would know who you are referring to. This is truely unprecedented. I've never seen a casino disrespect another casino in its newsletters, especially one which uses the same software provider. You guys are probably right down the street from each other. I'd be pissed off royal if I were Mr. Spears.

I'm glad you are getting player responses on what the good and bad are, but it seems like danny is taking advantage of another casino's misfortune. If that's how you feel your casinos should market themselves (this is marketing isn't it?), well my hat's off to you. I've never seen this technique used before.

[virtualted]

So Bryan, is this any different than you or any other user’s on your web site, possible bad mouthing or commenting on other forms? We never said who the casino was when we responded to our customer. You allowed the post of which casino that was.
We still stand behind what we did, we our here to give our customers the most enjoyable on line experience as possible. We are here for our players, and if one asks where a good hotel to stay at is, or what movie they may enjoy, or yes, which casino to avoid, than we will help OUR customer. I think someone such as your self dealing in customer service would agree. Nothing we said was not 100% honest, I am asking you, Bryan, should we have not helped the customer? Yes it was done publicly, but that was what the customer asked for, he wanted us to answer on line. What is funny, that post could just have easily been posted about us, because we follow a lot of the same conditions, and we do use the same software. Once again I think that you have your own opinion, and god forbids anyone should ever have the right to quell that. When you use your board as a platform that is where, you have stepped over the line the line. You have always been of service and fair to us in the past, but I have to tell you, you are WRONG on this one.
P.S. This was what a customer responded to us. Once again, we have blacked out which casino they had a problem at.

I would NOT post anything negative about you or your casino. I'm not generally a "poster". I am also intelligent enough to read through the anger that a lot of people spit out and I see that a lot of the bad mouthing is due to misunderstandings or failure to properly read the T&C, etc. Honestly, there are some legitimate complaints against casino's out there but there are just as many, if not more, that are totally unfounded. You can find a complaint against even the most respected casino's if you look hard enough. Everyone has a bitch about someone or something. That will never change because that is just human nature (they didn't win enough or they didn't get paid fast enough or they spent too much or they bet too stupidly, etc etc etc)
You can tell which casino's are really bad because people have valid reasons and aren't afraid to post them (with good grammer!) and there are usually multiple valid complaints against the same casino. These aren't missing some tiny print in the T&C, these are out and out failures to pay, etc. That's the kind of complaint I have with xxxxxx. I fulfilled ALL the obligations, I even have the withdrawal "approved" but can't get them to send me the money. They just choose to ignore me instead. I've been waiting a month yesterday for a measely $45. That's bad customer service and that is the kind of experience that needs to be posted. I didn't run out and start posting against them, I waited until I was absolutely sure I was just being lied to and it wasn't any sort of misunderstanding.
You might be interested to know that even though I see "Virtual" listed a lot on the message boards (i.e. Avoid Virtual casinos, Virtual casinos are bad, etc etc etc), I NEVER see anyone post a reason why they say those things. It's like a snowball effect. They read it somewhere and therefore feel they need to write it somewhere else. I even saw one message board that someone had posted "Don't just say they are bad, say WHY they are bad" but no one did. Obviously they couldn't. If I believed everything I read without an explanation, I wouldn't be putting money in Virtual almost daily. Haha. Even though there are things on a lot of different boards, they are not substantial. I wouldn't get worked up about it. Stupid people write stupid things and even stupider people believe them. You don't want those people anyway because they will just be headaches in the long run.
I personally will make it a point, a personal mission if you will, to counter-act those things I read and write my positive experiences with your casino when I can. Would that make you feel better I cashed out $200 on Memorial Day (hit the nickel progressive on Diamond Mine Deluxe). I provided the documents requested and was paid in a reasonable amount of time. No problems. (p.s. and I HAVE posted that experience on at least one forum!)
And on another note.... why would someone get mad at you for doing the things you do? Certainly not the players. You make us happy and that's all that matters because without players you'd have nothing. Gambling is all about someone willing to put their money on a chance. I don't know about you but if I'm uncomfortable somewhere I won't take the chance. Obviously that's not the case with you or Virtual. And value. That's another IMPORTANT thing. I've played just about EVERYWHERE. Hardly a casino on the web that I haven't at least tried. A lot of them entice you in with great promos but then they just stop. Especially for the small depositor like me (not realizing that even though I deposit small amounts I deposit frequently. Small amounts at a time are just my personal way of metering myself!)
You won my business, my loyalty & my heart when I saw your last letter where you told the player where to file a complaint against another casino. THAT is rare in this business and THAT is customer service above all other.
Don't be discouraged and don't EVER stop what you are doing.
Robin U

[jpm]

Originally Posted by virtualted

So Bryan, is this any different than you or any other user’s on your web site, possible bad mouthing or commenting on other forms?

Yes its TOTALLY different since Bryan IS NOT RUNNING A CASINO! And neither are 99% of the other posters here. Those that do aren't bad mouthing their competitors, they are answering problems/complaints about their own places. And this is a casino watchdog forum. C'mon Ted, don't play stupid, you're obviously smarter than this.