cashless machines

wires74 · Post by **wires74** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:39 pm

did u win anything to find out how they pay you and do you think there will be limit on what they will pay out ?

kidgloves · Post by **kidgloves** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 10:04 am

wires74 wrote:did u win anything to find out how they pay you and do you think there will be limit on what they will pay out ?

Well, I won £3 on the quizzer, £12 and £9 respectively on the fruits. I took the tickets to the bar one by one after each machine and after the third visit the barman did comment saying something like "back again ? It's your lucky night".
Now bearing in mind the small sums involved, and the fact that the value of the ticket has no relation to exactly what went into each machine - a less than aware barman will just assume you are winning x amount when he sees it on a ticket, I hate to think what might happen with the right machines in the place.
Lets take say, two Red Gaming fruit machines and a lucky £20 off say Ceasers Palace (video to follow when I can work out how to do it).
The two Reds may top out for £105 each at which point it's auto pay I assume you get the ticket right away. Do that to both units and you're waltzing up to the bar with redemptions for £230 all told. I for one would feel very embarrassed about that. It marks you for next time, there may be heat and an inability even of the pub to pay if it's been a slow day - although one would hope that they would have contingency for this. If a multi-game juice is properly floated then the safe behind the bar for these 3 machines should have a 'gaming machine pot' of around £750-£800 in it. I'd be willing to bet that they don't have anywhere near this amount, or even any of this amount as all my ticket pays came straight out of the cash tills on the bar.
I'd even be willing to have my stake printed out alongside the prize so people can actually do some maths and see it's not a constant profit every time with such wide margins. I suppose this would not help the pro quizzer though, as your margins I suspect would be higher payout to stake given the skill element.
God forbid a full blown emptier on ticket pay...would the machine even have a virtual i.o.u. and shut down at a certain point ? I'm sure they have put protective measures in if a machine goes below a certain percentage, and the bar staff would soon switch the thing off if being constantly met with £100+ tickets to payout if two or three players hit the same machine every day/couple of days.
I for one hope that this is a trial that fails in the one pub I have that does this.

wires74 · Post by **wires74** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 10:55 am

cheers gloves great post

grecian · Post by **grecian** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 10:18 pm

I've not seen any of these and hadn't heard about this idea before Cool mentioned it, but have to say it sounds pretty negative for the serious player. As kidgloves so eloquently puts it, there's some pretty obvious practical challenges, not least the need for pubs to have some fairly serious amounts of earmarked cash sitting around, and given that I can't really see what this is about other than making the casual player more likely to re-invest his £1 or £2 winnings, and enabling the pub or games company to better monitor the serious players and what exactly they are winning. For me the main worry would be pubs abusing their power here and refusing to pay out a high payout on the suspicion the player has used some form of trickery. Let's hope this trial fails, as kidgloves says.

fotherz · Post by **fotherz** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 11:12 pm

grecian wrote:I can't really see what this is about

I suspect it is a security measure. We all know about the problem of "toolers". Maybe this is the response?

Slammer · Post by **Slammer** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:28 pm

mr lugsy wrote:at least you'll have a hard copy of the proof that you are owed the money if they do want to get funny about a payment.
i agree that many more small wins will just get cycled back through ,not necessarilly a bad thing though,and that many little tickets won't get claimed.

The 'proof' is worthless.

Gambling is a gentlements agreement, not enforceable by law.

Don't get me started on this... It really is f**king stupid.

mr lugsy · Post by **mr lugsy** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:41 pm

surely the receipt counts a little bit in your favour? imagine the stink that'd get kicked up if the bookies started welching on winning tickets saying "sorry we're feeling a little ungentlemanlike today" or lottery terminal guy avoiding your gaze and pretending you're not there with your lucky ticket, or someone doing a scratchcard in front of a shopkeeper and being told that a refusal to pay-up is "the way the cookie crumbles".

Slammer · Post by **Slammer** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:39 pm

mr lugsy wrote:surely the receipt counts a little bit in your favour? imagine the stink that'd get kicked up if the bookies started welching on winning tickets saying "sorry we're feeling a little ungentlemanlike today" or lottery terminal guy avoiding your gaze and pretending you're not there with your lucky ticket, or someone doing a scratchcard in front of a shopkeeper and being told that a refusal to pay-up is "the way the cookie crumbles".

Bookies / Casinos pay out because of the stink / press that would be caused if they didnt which would ruin them...

... having said this, William Hill never paid me the full amount once.

They had a horse at an amazing price which I lumped on and then laid it off on the exchanges. They then sent me an email saying the price was a mistake and I would only get paid out at sommat or other (worse price than I could have got at any other bookmaker) or I could ask for my money back. Unfortunately, I wasn't in to read my emails. I argued that if they had bothered to ring me, I would have cancelled the bet, but they werent interested.

Needless to say, the horse won and I lost a few grand instead of make a few hundred and I was absolutely powerless except to take the law into my own hands with a few FOBTs but sadly this does not get me my money back or hit the right department.

Either way, William Hill are a bunch of thieves and I posted my story on numberous web sites so that people know not to trust them. I would have gone to the national press, but I didnt want the attention brought to the other bookmakers about me as arbitration at that time was worth 1000's a month.

cool · Post by **cool** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 11:35 pm

I remember a few years ago a punter achieved a monster win on the horses only to be told to get lost when he returned in triumph to collect his winnings. He had a copy of the bet issued by the bookmaker but as the cashier hadnt done their job and put the details on microfiche the bet was voided.He took the bookmakers to a complaints authority (similar to the police complaints authority) and they found in favour of the bookmaker surprise surprise! Interested to know if it was william hill.

dmac · Post by **dmac** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 8:43 am

cool · Post by **cool** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:03 am

Note. A new dispute has been reported in the paper this week when a bookie allowed a chap to place a £50 accumalator to reap £1.4m.No problem until the bookmaker is trying to wriggle out of it as the worker in the shop allowed the punter to place the bet after the matches had started! My prediction is the bookmaker will get off as they ALWAYS do.If anybody knows any different please place a post.

cool · Post by **cool** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 9:10 am

the cashless machines will provide a cash bonanza for dodgy publicans as it will provide lots of new ways for not paying out.
(1) run out of notes and the banks closed
(2) the machine was faulty as it was paying out too much.somebody switched it on therefore you get nothing
(3) The manager/owner is not here so we can not validate your claim
(4) the print off is a forgery (BEWARE GAMING COMPANIES AS THAT WILL BE THE NEXT THING THE SCAMMERS ATTEMPT AS UNTRAINED STAFF WILL PAYOUT FOR ANYTHING APPROACHING THE LOOK OF A RECEIPT)
(5) be able to give you the money tommorrow (when your 60 miles from home)
(6) just take the receipt and tell you to clear off
finally you will be told to take your complaint to the gaming company who will tell you they are not at liberty to talk to you so you go in circles.

Nil Satis · Post by **Nil Satis** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 1:18 pm

I've now seen one of these things in action so can explain a little more as to how they work. The machine in question was an Ind:e with the large screen (i.e. not an 'Indego') and the pub was a family eating style place in a pleasant market town, rather than a back street locals pub.

I didn't realise at first that the machine had been adapted to pay out tickets so it was something of a shock when collecting my major prize of the session and no coins started to appear. At first I had that sinking feeling that a payout error was kicking in but then this little ticket appeared from a slot below the coin tray. The ticket is printed on good quality paper rather than that cheap 'till roll' stuff and it has a lot of supporting detail on it - time, date, place, amount won in words and figures and so on. It also has a validation barcode. I played on to pick up a few bits and pieces from other games then collected the second ticket.

Collecting the cash from the bar couldn't have been easier. They scan the tickets with some sort of barcode device that presumably checks they are valid and then you get paid.

I can see one or two pros in this system - it should ensure you never get underpaid through a payout failure and a pocket full of £10s and £20s is nicer than one full of pound coins. There are however a lot of obvious cons - as others have noted, the main ones here being:

- you are reliant on the landlord to pay up happily
- you are reliant on there being sufficient spare cash kept behind the bar
- it might reveal to the pub and more importantly the machine company what games people are winning on (although nowadays I'd expect that the machine companies at least have a pretty good idea of this already)
- the ticket only displays winnings and not how much you've put in to achieve those winnings

Basically I think this will come down to a judgement call that you will have to make on a venue by venue basis. As we have discussed elsewhere on here, there is a world of difference between a nice safe suburban pub like the one I played in last night (where the manageress couldn't have been more pleasant when sorting out my money and seemed to believe quite happily that Monopoly had broken the habit of a lifetime and actually paid out a big prize

) and a rough inner city boozer like the ones cool described for us in Portsmouth.

On balance I hope this is an experiment that fails. The annoying thing is that if the ItBox or Gamesnet were trying this, in their current parlous state, it wouldn't make any difference - it would just be one more reason to leave them well alone!

BigEd · Post by **BigEd** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 8:17 pm

Nil Satis wrote:I've now seen one of these things in action so can explain a little more as to how they work. The machine in question was an Ind:e with the large screen (i.e. not an 'Indego') and the pub was a family eating style place in a pleasant market town, rather than a back street locals pub.

.....There are however a lot of obvious cons - as others have noted, the main ones here being:

- the ticket only displays winnings and not how much you've put in to achieve those winnings

But if your tickets said:

£1 in Heads Up Poker
£50 winnings

or

£6 in Bookworm
£80 winnings

How comfortable would you be to show those tickets to the barman?

wires74 · Post by **wires74** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 10:12 pm

how much was your win for nil ?