Revel Casino (AC) offers slot loss rebate up to 100k in July, revokes offer to many players after big action.

[PHATTYMATTIE]

The struggling Revel casino in Atlantic City, just out of a bankruptcy, has just pulled one of the most boneheaded and probably illegal scams I've ever seen. Revel offered (and is still offering) a promotion to rebate 100% of slot losses in July up to 100k via free play for 20 weeks (at 5% per week) starting in August.

Per Revel's website 7/9 "See Revel Card Desk for details. Must be 21 or older. Revel Card required. Minimum cumulative loss of $100 by July 31, 2013. Loss refunds are capped at $100,000. Only slot, video poker and electronic table game play is eligible. Losses are refunded over 20 weeks beginning August 5, 2013 in the form of Free Slot Play."

Presumably, they offered this promotion to try to gain some market share among slot players in AC, but obviously did not understand the ramifications of this promotion. What this essentially amounts to is a huge freeroll to someone in the AC area with a big bankroll who can take advantage of it by trying to go for a big score and getting any losses back (~95% after playthrough). If you lost 100k at Revel in July, you were supposed to be given 5k weekly freeplay for 20 weeks.

To prepare for the promotion, Revel had already removed a bank of $25/credit JOB poker machines just days before the promotion started - but what they did next was much worse.

It has been reported that upwards of 40 players (possibly more) have had the promotion revoked to them after playing in July - many of whom had already accumulated losses of 10k or more. Some players were told they were banned for being on a list of advantage players, while several others were banned with no reason given other than booking heavy action on their slots. In fact, many of the players had their entire players card banned for the month of July and are unable to access comp dollars and promos. One player reported that he was being forced to pay out of pocket for what should have been comped rooms and meals on the credit card he was required to use to check in and was stuck with a $400+ nightly bill. The kicker is that these players are no longer able to use their Revel card, but are not banned from the casino for doing anything wrong and are still free to play there without a card.

There is a 75+ page on the wizard of vegas detailing much of this with some first hand accounts from the players: http://wizardofvegas.com/forum/off-t...od-to-be-true/

Really sickening to see the greed by Revel and treating their (soon to be ex) customers in such poor fashion. I highly doubt it is legal to offer this promotion, then pull it after the players had already booked substantial action with the assumption of a loss rebate. Revel's legal team better get ready for a storm of lawsuits and bad publicity after this mess of a promotion.

[Sandwich]

http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...ial-bankruptcy
I posted about this in the Revel fail thread in Flying Stupidity, but agree the way the Revel is handling this particular promotiondeserves it's own thread.

[Dan Druff]

This is absolutely terrible, and I will discuss it on the next radio.

Colonel Fabersham may even place a call there during the show.

[garrett]

The stupid seems to just never end with this place. What did they expect when they are a casino, and offer this kind of promotion, advantage players to not go out of their way to show up. Seems bone headed they didn't cover that with a small asterisk or something given this type of promotion.

I also wonder if part of all their fail is because they just aren't part of a bigger Casino conglomerate with much more industry experience. Everything they have done up to this point has just been plain stupid.

[BeerAndPoker]

The Revel Poker Room is heavily rumored if not confirmed to be closing within two weeks. I know nothing about this place but from what I've heard it's a dump and won't be missed.

[garrett]

It is closing, and in a way never even really got going. The room itself is practically hidden, along a myriad of different ways you can take to get there, none of them really easy to find. So obviously the casual/gambler type would never find their way to this room. It's so remote, only a poker player would go out of their way to find it, which is obviously terrible. They also just didn't focus on it at all it was sort of just there. I went a few times and was mad because I spent the money and time to go there, then trek all the way up to the remote location, only to find a literally empty room, like 11am mid-summer and dead 0 games running. This was mostly last summer, not long after it had opened. The writing was on the wall then.

The general consensus from most people was, place sucks. The location, the offerings, the lack of players etc. It is probably a good thing for the Atlantic City market in a way that they just fold it up. Their is already enough poker rooms and not enough players. It seems they are re-prioritizing their focus, which in time probably will benefit them. And sort of does make sense considering the debauchery of the room itself.

I wouldn't be surprised if in some years they re-introduce a poker room, once they have a better handle on everything else they have been doing wrong. I would guess 3-5 years.