TR SNIPPET EASTSIDE CANNERY WEBPASS A DISAPPOINTMENT

For a while now I have been quite taken with Eastside Cannery, so when they started a Webpass program on their website that promised to offer a fine assortment of coupons just for points earned by checking in and playing some video games, I was thrilled.

Well…  The Thrill is gone.  At least for the Webpass program.

I recommend that you not participate in Webpass beyond perhaps getting a free buffet or a hat, and then only if you can plan on a trip to Eastside Cannery within seven days of leaving home and your printer.

 Here is how it all works.

Rewards change every  month.  Nothing can be relied on.   They post new Special Offers for points at some point in the first week of the month. The plan is that it will be posted on the first day. Don’t count on it.

Once you have earned enough points for a reward that is offered, you can go to the Special offers for that calendar month and see what has not been sold out.  You can redeem the offers with points….well….sometimes you can redeem them and other times you can’t.  And sometimes they will give you a free drink offer, but then withhold the offer for two free drinks. 

And sometimes you can get both the free buffet and a two for one and other times only the two for one. 
And sometimes …well…you get the picture.   
Just because the offer shows up in your Special offers list does not mean you can buy it.

So pick first what you want the most. 

Particularly difficult is that the rules of what you buy with points are not clear until after we spend out Webpoints.  Freeplay for example may require a huge amount of qualifying same day points but those details do not show up after we have spent the web points to get our "deal."   Transparency is totally absent.

After purchasing the deal, there are two sorts of paperwork mazes.  Let me deal with every offer other than freeplay first:

After you spend your Webpass points for whatever you picked, you have to print your redemption certificate (so you better still be home)  and present it to the Player’s Club within seven days of redeeming or buying it.

So, your timing must be very good.

When you turn in your printed certificate, another certificate is then created at the Player’s Club that you must sign in a couple places, and that one is the one you can use.

This second paper certificate is good for 30 days from the time you visited the Player’s Club with the printed redemption certificate.  So the way to redeem anything is to buy and print everything you can and then exchange the paper you printed for the voucher that is real.

I was in  Vegas in April and had some purchased and printed redeemed offers from home. 
By May new offers were posted, not on the first of May as is the promotion plan, but later in the month………whenever they get around to it.

By May I was in Vegas with no wifi.  I had to call my wife and have her redeem the offers I wanted.  That still left the printing.

The policy of the Player’s Club is NOT to print the certificates for people although they are able to print them and will do it as a special favor. So, when I first asked the answer was always “No !” from the clerks, even when I explained that the answer last week had been “Yes!” from the supervisor and that I had called my wife, and returned to the casino on that promise.

Only the bosses can print stuff, and then as a favor.  However two of the three times I was there, bosses were out doing other things and not available.  Since I have plenty of time in Vegas, this was not an issue for me.  Once I was told to come back in a half hour, and I got involved in seeing Claudine Castro’s show and did not come back.

On my next visit, I was told to come back in twenty minutes.  If you do that, when you come back, ask a clerk if Alex is there, as if he is one of your old buddies.  They said no, but they found him.

 Alex finally answered my questions and printed the voucher I needed for my free buffets.  He missed printing my freeplay, but I let that go.

Note that I have now spent plenty of accumulated Webpass points printing freeplays that I could not or would not use.  Those points were free, but they represented time on the Webpass games in the same way that MyVegas is free but represents time on the games there.

I asked Alex why this promotion made us and his office do over and over what could be done just once right on my electric Player’s Card and right when I redeemed the offer.  At that point of redemption  it seemed to me that all paperwork should be over and everything done electronically, just as it is with MyVegas where we only need our Player’s card number.  Neither he nor I should have to print and look at paper to then replace it with more paper.

He said that corporate decided these things, and they did not really understand how much work it meant for his office. 

Yeah, I thought, or how much work it meant for the customer as well.
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Freeplay is different.  Once the offer is redeemed and printed, it is good until the end of the calendar month and is not turned in for the freeplay until the play is completed.  For video poker players the offers are really not much at all.  I did better just playing for 250 points one day when there was a free buffet promotion and getting food rather than freeplay.

What this also means is that timing any offers and coupons around an expected visit is very hard.  My April freeplay ran out before I had time to go and gamble another day and much of my May freeplay could not be redeemed as I had in April, and whatever I did buy, I had to wait for special disposition from the bosses to get printed. 

All the freeplay offers I received were tied to pretty steep earned daily points.  And because everything needed to be redeemed and printed before I came, I had to overbuy offers because I did not know how much I would play or how many points I would earn.  So unless I just wanted the minimum of $5 freeplay, I had to waste Webpass points overbuying four of them with the idea of only using one.  This is very inefficient.

Once I redeemed in May one level of free play, that was all they would allow me. In the confusion that one did not get printed anyway so I just did not have any freeplay either time I played.

I don't think I am asking too much to expect to go to the desk, have the clerk look up the Webpass points and issue whatever is offered electronically right there.  Then I could go gamble and just use my Webpass points to get whatever amount of freeplay might fit what I had gambled rather than to have to guess before leaving home how many same day points I was going to earn that day, or print out 5 offers (using points) just to have one that fit my play.

Most absurd there is the room deal.  For 100,000 points I could have had a free night in January. 

By April, when I had played enough to have 100,000 points this free room bait had been switched from free into a special reduced rate, although neither the Player’s Club nor the front desk could tell me what the rate was exactly. 

I visited both. Each referred me to the other.  And in each case to get anything but a puzzled stare for my simple questions, I had to see a supervisor.  Can’t they train the daily clerks in WebPass procedures?  Can’t they look me up and see what I have coming.

On  my first visit one clerk did that and assured me I could book a free night in May, but when I got to the boss, I was told no it was just a discount and no one knew what that was for a long while. Good think I did not make plans on what I first heard.

The assistant manager at the Player’s Club called someone (marketing?) and told me the offer meant $15 off the rack rate.  

But on my last visit Alex showed me on line where the rates were quoted in a pop up box.  That was a new feature between visit one and two.  Here are the current "special rates" from that popup:

Discounted Room Rates

$39.95 Sun-Thurs. $59.59 Fri-Sat. Limit one per month. Expires in 7 days.

Are you sure you want to spend 100,000 webCREDITS to purchase this Reward?

webCREDITs are non-refundable

 

Unfortunately, I could not see how those reduced special rates listed were special at all or any different from the median calendar rates.  And I could actually get a better deal and for more than one night with my senior discount or just by deciding to book right on line and use just one standard website promotion like this current one:

 

Group Code: SUMMR13

·  Deluxe Room only

·  $39.95 plus tax Weekdays

·  $59.95 plus tax Weekends

·  $10 credit for Room Service-Must be charged to the room

·  Based upon availability, etc

·  5/1/13 - 8/31/13

This was the height of the ridiculous.  Webpass is inviting me to play and earn 100,000 points, no mean achievement, so I qualify for a “reduced rate” that is the same or less as the internet rate already, and higher than the senior rate or promotional rates right on the website where I need no play of any sort to qualify.  And the Webpass room offer was for one night only.  These standard promotions and senior discounts are for more than that.

So, basically, while I was jumping through the motions of checking the website daily and playing on line games and thinking I’d get a free night, I was just wasting my time. 

The January offers were just bait to get us started playing. 

Who knows what they might be next month. 

“These change all the time,” I was told at hotel reservations.

Well, so do my endorsements.  I’m rescinding this one.

I was booked for the Eastside Cannery for four nights in May partly because I trusted one of those nights could be free, based on the Webpass offer .  

When that was switched, I switched and booked at Sam’s town for a much better deal anyway. 

As some of you know who have read my prior posts, I was all set to start playing at the Eastside Cannery with the idea of making it a casino that might send me a few room offers and where I might play. 

The good video poker is there.  Free wifi.  A coin laundry. 

By the time I had three separate and all different experiences with trying to nail down the elusive details on this Webpass Promotion, I was frustrated and did not want to play there.

In the end, I did play one day because I managed to put my frustration behind me and focus on what I liked, the full pay video poker. 
I lost. 
Perhaps I’ll get some traditional free night offers from my play coupled with my losses.

But if the Webpass Promotion was meant to draw me in, the dysfunction in the process of it did just the opposite.  It alienated me. 

Alex, the boss  at the Player’s Club explained that the Eastside Cannery was a local’s casino and these promotions were designed to attract and reward  locals. 

Right, I get it!  It is like the bus rules that make tourists second class riders or the attitude on some of the poker tables( not Eastside by the way) where locals are just a bit annoyed to see tourists in their regular space and certainly not interested in including them in conversation.

Locals in the Eastside Poker room by the way are just the opposite, very welcoming and friendly and the brush Brian is really welcoming and accommodating, the best poker room brush I ever met.  And in the poker room, they know what they are doing, they know the rules and procedures.

But at the Player’s Club I am second class and they are sorry because all decisions are made by "corporate." 

So perhaps rather than being as dysfunctional as it at first appears, the maze of redemption is set up on purpose to be difficult for tourists, so as not to accommodate tourists easily just as the good senior bus passes  are sold in places tourists seldom go.

If you just want a free hat and a free buffet, and you can work the system, then try Webpass.  But don’t invest a lot of time in the playing.  These are cheap buffets, $9 for lunch and $12 for supper.  Figure the value of your time to earn them.  I got 2 lunch buffets at Bellagio worth $21 each for my play on MyVegas.  Even one buffet as is currently being offered would be valued at twice the value of a buffet at Eastside Cannery.  So for me it is better value to pay cash for the Eastside Cannery buffet and use my online play time to earn points in MyVegas.

Contrast MyVegas  redemption ease, where I actually left all my confirmation numbers home and they still took care of me.  My first visit to Excalibur to pick up tickets for the Bee Gees concert in April allowed me to also pick up my BoysIIMen concert ticket and my Bellagio ticket, both in May. One visit, no maze, no going to bosses, no waiting and I was set for the entire trip.

I suggest you spend your computer time on MyVegas.  As hard as it might be sometimes to snag what we want before others take all of the prizes, at least we know before we leave for Vegas what we have, and what we don’t.   And although offers change there as well,  when they are gone it says "Sold Out."  When they are offered there are some left.  There is always plenty of good value to spend MyVegas chips on.

And room freebies and discounts are actually deals, not just the same on line prices disguised as something special.

All that being said, the Eastside Cannery has good VP.  Those JOB with 90 in the straight flush line do exist at Eastside Cannery bringing the EV up to 100% along with full pay 10/7 Double Bonus and the rare 10/6 Double Double.  All are in a bank of new and very comfortable machines right next to Marilyn’s Lounge.  There was never a crowd there.

And Claudine Castro on Monday nights is the best Latin lounge show I have seen anywhere.  I saw it three times this past trip and danced once.

 

And if you do book a room at EC, there is free wifi in the room and a laundry on the premises. 
Without a room I could not get permission to use the free wifi to redeem my WebPass offers.  That seemed odd too.  However, I guess with the new expansion of wifi downtown, that problem may be somewhat alleviated by my next trip.  I could redeem while staying at the D.

What I need is a Vegas friend with a printer. 

I can print at home if I leave home for Vegas, but often I am leaving some other city, visiting family, and to be within the 7 day limit, I would need to print at my host's house or talk the Player's Club into another favor.

Well, at least I found out the slopes and angles for next trip.  And perhaps there is the possibility they will change again, this time in a way favorable to the customer.