Stratosphere: Two failures, one success

In March, 2009, I posted this letter that I had written to management at the Stratosphere, complaining about how they had failed to keep track of my hours of play, and on that basis refused to comp a meal. An excerpt:

When I ask, for the first time in 17 trips to the poker room, for a lousy
meal comp, and am effectively told that I haven’t earned it, that I’m not a
sufficiently valued customer for you (that’s the corporate “you”) to have
bothered taking note of my presence, I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive to
find that an affront.

I never received any sort of response.

Today I learned that they have not bothered fixing the problem.

During football season, I usually hang out at Mandalay Bay for Sunday poker. I had an impulse to do something different today. I have long wanted to try a cute little retro place inside the Stratosphere called Roxy's Diner, and today seemed like a fine time, with poker to follow after lunch.

I presented my player's card at the poker room desk and asked them to check how much food comp credit I had accumulated, at the usual rate of $1/hour of play. The answer? He couldn't find me in the system--at all. He asked me whether I had ever played there before, meaning, obviously, that he didn't recognize me. (This is one of the hazards of trying to remain inconspicuous and not call attention to myself--I tend to succeed.)

In addition to the 17 times I had played there prior to that March, 2009, blog post, I have played there seven more times subsequently, for a total of 21.8 hours. Comp credits expire if not used within a year, but five of those sessions, adding up to 16.4 hours, have been within the past year. Four of those sessions and 13.3 of those hours were just in the month of October (2010), when I was finally starting to warm up to the place again.

I have diligently checked in and out every single time. But as far as the Stratosphere poker room is concerned, I've never been there. Somehow they have managed to utterly lose all evidence of my 24 sessions playing in their room, and, at the same time, don't recognize my face or name.

The shift manager behind the desk admitted as how their computer system for this stuff is "totally messed up." Yes, I know that. I have known it for nearly two years. I just had this crazy idea that you MIGHT HAVE BOTHERED FIXING IT BY NOW! (That's my San Kinison impression.)

The only redeeming point in this was that the guy apparently found me credible in my claim that I had played there several times, and gave me a $15 comp ticket on faith alone. I do appreciate that gesture, but I would appreciate it a hell of a lot more if they would straighten up what might be the most miserably useless, screwed-up, unreliable poker-room comp system in the city.


Comp ticket in hand, I mosied the very short distance to Roxy's and was quickly seated. I indulged my urge for a chili cheese dog. It was excellent--and HUGE.

But just as delightful, I found, was the entertainment. Predictably, and in keeping with the diner's theme, they have an Elvis-heavy rotation of oldies playing overhead. That, though, is punctuated, two or three times an hour, by one of several of their waitresses grabbing a microphone and singing live as she wanders through the restaurant, wearing a poodle skirt. One of them even keeps a hula hoop going while she sings, which I would think isn't easy.








None of them is going to win American Idol, but they all had perfectly decent voices, and offered what seemed to me to be genuine enthusiasm for the project. I appreciated their effort and charm.


Sufficiently sated, I went back to the poker room. They had one no-limit table going. I was first on the waiting list. I sat down with my magazine and read. And read. And read. I waited about 45 minutes. It's really, really unusual to have no seat in a game open up in that much time. (My rule of thumb is that a typical game will rotate one player about every 15 minutes, so if there are three tables going, wait time will probably average only about five minutes.) I looked over the players, and got no sense that any of them was getting ready to leave anytime soon, so I gave up.

As it turns out, I maybe should have stuck with the usual Mandalay plan. Sahara had no game. Imperial Palace had no game. O'Shea's had no game. I got a seat at the Flamingo, but it was a table of non-gambling rocks, at which I managed to squeeze out a big $5 profit in an hour and 15 minutes before deciding that there was no prospect for improvement. I ended up at Harrah's, where I played badly and took a small loss before I decided that my heart really wasn't in playing today, and headed for home.