While in Las Vegas for a couple of conferences this week, I had a chance to play for the new strikes at Slots-A-Fun, Silverton and Barbary Coast. All except for Barbary Coast were a pleasant experience.

At Barbary Coast, I was going for the $200 plus two complete sets of the new $10 strikes. When I got my 27th or 28th strike, an old one popped out of the machine, from a hopper I watched them fill. I immediately told the slot attendant, who assured me it would not be a problem to use that in exchange for the $200. After getting 30 strikes in total, I went to the cage and was told that I could not trade in the old strike (could only redeem it for $10), since the sign on the machine says they only take the currently displayed strikes for the exchange. They confirmed this w/the slot director, who then told me directly that if he made an exception for me, he'd have to do it for every person who came up to the cage with 30 or 40 old strikes. It didn't matter that they shouldn't have had the old one in the machine (he said it was two years old and "it was unlikely to have been in the machine") nor that the attendant said it was okay. I felt as if they didn't believe me when I claimed it came out of their machine.

So I went back to the machine and spent an unusual $60 to get just one more, and once again, it was an old one. The attendant confirmed it came out of the hopper, since it was jammed and she had to open the machine to get it. When the supervisor checked, he found two more old strikes still in the freshly filled hopper. At this point, the Slot Director agreed to exchange my now two old strikes for new ones...but I had spent $60 unnecessarily. The Slot Director left to
check the security tapes, and they asked to make a copy of my drivers license...again implying that the old strikes might have gotten in the machine in some way other than their loading mistake. I was later told that the security tapes showed everything was okay.

Have others had this experience with Barbary Coast? I told the slot supervisor I appreciated the fact that they still had strike machines, but that it seems like if they mistakenly loaded some old strikes in the hopper, they should allow them to be used for the $200 trade. Their inflexibility and distrust of the customer seems to generate unnecessary customer ill will. They did give me a coupon for a comp dinner after finding more old strikes in the machine, but I couldn't use it because there was a 1 - 1.5 hour wait at the restaurant. Seems like little compensation for an extra $60 spent because of their mistake.

I'm sensitive to over-complaining for fear of losing more strike machines, but geez....