Vegas Palms Bonus Nightmare

dandan

Seven day suspension for being a PITA
PABinit
Joined
Oct 3, 2011
Location
bris-vegas
Played at Vegas Palms... first 2 deposits totalling $250 no problem... received 100% welcome bonus plus some free spins on Mad Hatters (which I declined after a few spins... for pennies so a waste of time so I selected to end the free spins option). They offered a free bonus of $50 which I played down to 2 cents left.

The 3rd deposit was where the probs started. I put in $300 (had about $1 left in the bonus balance). But instead of my cash balance showing $300 it showed $144.25 in cash and $155.77 in bonus. WTF? So I wrote (politely of course) asking what was going on... via chat (couldn't tell me what had happened) so then via email. It was mentioned that sometimes this can happen if there is a bet still in play... or possible bonus abuse.
Checked all the games I had played (only about 8 slots at the time) and found no games in play. Also checked to make sure that the free spins had indeed been cancelled.
Two days later and after much writing back and forth a solution still had not been found. I asked if would be ok to play and what would happen if I won anything. I was told that it would be ok to play and that they were 'still on the case' as it were. So I played. Had I had the money to play elsewhere I would have but it had been a tough day and I wanted to unwind some.
And of course, I didn't get anywhere. Most unusual to play my fav slots and out of the 8 not one of them hit the free spins round (this after total deposits of $550). But hey I accept that you can't always win but did find this a bit odd.
So I played it down to exactly $1.77 left in the bonus balance.

Thinking this was a one off glitch I put in another $200 more than a week later and opted in for the 40% bonus which would have given me $280 to play with. Checked my balance and lo... there it was again but worse this time... showed $6 in my cash balance and $275.77 in my bonus balance. OMG again?? So I wrote again this time not happy. Was told again it may be a bet in play issue and that they were looking at it. What urked me was that they requested I give them some time to find the problem/solution. How much time did they need? They had had more than a week to sort it out and I received no contact from them about it. Perhaps because I had played it all the first time the prob occured and so why bother looking for a solution?

Since I had gotten nowhere with them and they hadn't given me the courtesy of letting me know of why this had happened in the first place I decided to wipe my hands of them and play out what I had in there, most of it being 'bonus'. Guess what? A few of my slots made it to the free spins but the wins were pitiful and it didn't take long for it all to go.
The next day there was a mail from them telling me that the issue was uncompleted free spins on Mad Hatters. I had made sure several times that I had cancelled the option to play these free spins. So again WTF?

So aside from having a whinge what I'd like to know is this... are the odds the same when playing with cash and with bonus funds? Are the odds in the casinos favour when playing with their funds? Since I was playing with only $6 cash and $275 in bonus is the system in their favour as it would appear that I was playing with their money and not my own?

I feel as though I have been ripped off and not given a fair chance. Or did I lose it fair and square? I can accept that but I certainly won't play there again after this fiasco.

Cheers
 
Hi Dandan, and welcome to Casinomeister! There will be lots of members that will post here and answer a lot of your questions and/or give their opinions. In the meantime, you might want to read the forum rules, especially about complaints, and wander around the forum and read some of the threads. You will get a feel for a lot of things gambling related.

One important thing I noticed. You mentioned having 2 cents, a dollar, and then 1.77 left in your bonus account when you made another deposit. That alone will screw up your play through requirements. You must always zero out your account balance when you are going to redeposit or you will have a carry over on your last bonus play through.


My opinion on legit casinos (Casinomeister's accredited cassinos) is that they play the same, whether it is your money, their money (no deposit bonus)or a combination of both. Variance and luck play a big part of slots and even poker. The play through (what you have to wager to cash out when using a bonus) sure can help or hurt you when trying for a cash out.

Good luck with figuring things out. :thumbsup:
 
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Thanks much for the welcome!

But how do you play out 2 cents? Any other casino I've played at yep the bonus balance is still there but has never affected the amount showing in the cash balance.

And I wonder too... you say it should make no difference whether the play is based on cash or bonus (or both)... but really... would a casino allow winning when it's their money? (At least the system was showing it to be so.... my cash deposits converted to bonus). And I wonder too what would have happened had I won anything and tried to withdraw. The system would have jumped up and down saying that I hadn't completed the play-thru requirements.

And I also stress why wasn't this simple error found straight away. I was told by the VIP desk that they couldn't access my game play and that it had to be sent to the technical department. Yet I played at another casino where something similar happened and the chat operator told me straight away I had a hand in poker to play out... sorted easily.

Yet not this mob. Despite repeated polite mails I never did receive a response from them as to what went wrong the first time around.
 
Well, luckily enough there are plenty of other good casinos you can give your tender to. It is no use trying to speculate, and if their customer service and tech department can't figure it out, I'd say move on. If it isn't fun, it isn't worth it.
 
What the OP is experiencing is something that seems to be happening at a LOT of MG casinos lately and it's a glitch from the software side. Say if you deposit $100 and get a $50 bonus, your balance will show $100 in your cash balance and $50 in your bonus funds...then you win say $200, your cash balance should then show $300 and your balance still show $50.

Your bonus balance should not be getting higher - if you start with $2 bonus balance still in your account and make a fresh deposit, you still should only have wagering left on that $2 unless you take another bonus. Right?

I just went through this with my BD bonus from Red Flush. (BTW thanks to the Red Flush rep for trying to sort it for me)
 
Exactly... won't play there again. Too much money and time invested for no reward and poor service!

And yeh chayton... why should having uncompleted spins in one of their free spin slots affect the bonus amount anway? And as said, I made doubly sure I declined them. Why should my cash be converted (nearly 100% of it the last deposit) into bonus balance because of it? All over a slot that is what... a few (free) cents a game?
 
It kinda reminds me of All Star Slots before they became RTG, remember they had that weird bonus thing - you'd start wagering and you'd play your own money first - if you got ahead before getting into the bonus funds it was all good but if you dipped into the bonus funds then any winnings were also put into the bonus balance. So your bonus balance (and associated WR) just kept getting bigger.

@ the OP - I play at Royal Vegas which is also part of Fortune Lounge, and they're a fairly good group. They sent me a mail awhile back about how now if you want to make a withdrawal while you have a bonus active, you can do it by forfeiting the rest of the bonus without having to meet WR on whatever's left. I don't know if ALL FL casinos offer this same thing, but either way I'd contact the Fortune Lounge rep here and tell them what happened and have them look into it. It's an issue with MG that's been happening at all sorts of casinos, and CS chat and sometimes even support via email can't see what's wrong so they just ASSUME it's an unfinished game.

The original chat person I talked to at my issue with Red Flush told me it had to do with a tourney I won in JULY! It wasn't until I got the rep here involved that someone actually looked a little closer.
 
Zeroing out can be done using the video slots. Adventure Palace (for example), can be set to 1 line, 1 coin, at 0.01 - you can play out a remaining 0.01 bonus balance this way. In the past, balances less than 1.00 in the bonus balance were ignored, but this no longer seems the case. The unused free spins in Mad Hatters should not have caused this problem if they were cancelled, but it is also possible to "play later" which means they are not actually cancelled, and thus may still affect the bonus tracking.
The best thing is to properly zero out to be certain that the next deposit will not be messed up, and to log off after zeroing out to create an end of session, with the next deposit being made after logging back in. This will not stop these problems completely, but will minimise them.

Any unfinished game in the system will cause the bonus system to record a non-zero balance, even though the lobby balance is zero. This will cause WR to carry over from previous bonuses until the unfinished game has been completed.

A recent update now means that upon login, the player will get a "slider" message about any unfinished game found in the system, with the advice to complete them before making further deposits and bonus claims.

There is also a recent thread about a software glitch that can cause this - related to multi-player games which can affect players who have not even played the games. MGS are aware of this, and will hopefully fix it soon.
 
Thanks for that vinyl... most helpful. It caused a lot of grief especially when I know I had cancelled the free spins. Perhaps it kept adding a new round on each new deposit?

Anyways, still am not impressed with how long it took for them to find the problem... and the fact that the problem occured twice before they got back to me with an answer.
 

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