This business of the casino having the "right" to keep a player's money is getting a little old.
Just because someone has the right to do something doesn't mean doing it isn't wrong to do it.
The next time you see an feeble old woman standing don't forget that you have the right to keep your seat. Maybe you got there first. Maybe you reserved that seat. Maybe you waited for a long time for someone to get up. It doesn't matter what the reason is. All that matters is - it's your right to make her stand.
There was never a question about whether or not the OP broke a term. The question is whether or not breaking that term was in any way beneficial to the player or detrimental to the casino. It wasn't.
It had absolutely no effect on the outcome of his wagers and there was no attempt to hide anything apart from the actual cell phone number or cheat the casino in any way.
Some casinos just require a little more than an invalid cell phone number to say the player has committed an unforgivable offense.
This is a very big problem in the industry. Players have many rights under the laws and regulations of their own country, yet it is VERY wrong for them to exercise some of these rights because doing so isn't good for the industry and player community in general.
The "right" that is most dangerous for the industry is for a player to involve their bank as their first port of call in resolving a dispute with a casino. This is a right they have in law, and in the terms and conditions of their banking agreement. However, pursuing a complaint in this way does so much damage to the industry, and to other players.
This is another case where sticking rigidly to the rules is the wrong thing to do. If anything, when the amounts are small, players are encouraged to take the hit in the interests of the player community as a whole, rather than pursue their rights to the bitter end.
If casinos want players to continue to accept these hits in the interests of the community as a whole, they need to be seen to be doing their bit too.
The industry seems to be evolving away from "mutual trust" to a "them vs us". Once this becomes ingrained in the minds of players, they will be all out for themselves, and not care about waiving anything for the good of "them".
If you look at other big businesses who have treated their customers badly, we find that customers fight back by looking after number one, and it becomes not only socially acceptable to "get one over" on a faceless big corporation, it can make one a social "hero".
We have this in abundance in the retail sector, where it is seen as heroic to outsmart the big retailers by playing their own game better than them. If you are really good, you can reduce your shopping bill considerably, and perfectly legally, simply by collecting all the coupons you can, and learning the tricks they use so that you can outsmart them. Tesco has issued a profits warning recently, and it has dawned on their CEO that customers have gotten too smart to fall for the tricks that are supposed to manipulate them into spending their money on high margin items supposedly "on offer". However, if they stop running the promotions, the naïve customers who DO fall for the tricks also leave to go elsewhere, because they believe the offers at face value, and when they are gone, they believe that they are getting ripped off by massively higher prices, when in fact they are not because many of the offers were an illusion.
If the CEO of Tesco can get it so wrong (he resigned shortly after this), we shouldn't be too surprised that casinos can get it wrong either. They will just have to repent at leisure like the ex CEO of Tesco, and hopefully learn not to act in such haste the next time around.
Casinos got it wrong years ago when they invented the concept of huge bonuses for new players, and crumbs from the table for their loyal regulars. The bonuses were supposed to be an illusion, designed to get players in so that they end up spending far more than the cost of the initial marketing (the bonus). Smart players destroyed this idea, but the naïve players who still fall for it will not come along if the casinos ditch this lure for something else. They are now in the same position as Tesco, the offer schedule is all they have, but so many customers now know how to outsmart it that they lose money on them, yet if they drop them, the naïve customers will be driven away, leaving them with neither the smart customers nor the naïve ones.
At least now there are a small number of casinos experimenting with alternatives to the big bonus for recruiting and retaining players, and they do appear to be having some success. It could be the way forward, and it would also leave less value around for the fraudsters because "hit & run" would no longer be an option for making money.
