I think that all the members of this group should agree that whenever we are playing in a casino, and a situation arises that we need assistance from a casino employee, our needs should be addressed promptly. At Boyd Gaming properties in general, service seems to be slipping badly, but today I want to focus on one of their nine properties in the LV area in particular, Sam's Town. This has been my "home" Boyd casino for many, many years, before B-Connected, before Prime Rewards, and in fact before slot club period, as tourists before we moved here. A number of the employees at Sam's Town have told me that around 10 years ago, around 140 CSR's(customer service representatives) were working across three shifts, day, swing, and graveyard.. If you were to inquire as to the total number today, you will hear that the sum of these designated customer helpers is 36 or 38, depending on who you ask. Taking the low number of 36, you might conjecture that an average of 12 for each of the shifts is not too bad. Here is the truth. On Boyd Gaming's website you can find the Sam's Town Fact Sheet, that clearly states that the size of the gaming floor is 133,000 square feet. This likely does not count the 400 or 500 sq. ft. that is a new non smoking corner in the location formerly occupied by Bogart's Leather, the now gone luggage store. Also, what is not stated is that this gaming floor is spread out over two stories, not one. I have been told recently, again by a Sam's employee that I will NOT name, that on the day shift, which here is 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., it is not uncommon to have one or two lead CSR's and two or three regular ones to service all players on two floors. This is beyond ridiculous. I would usually say here, "What the hell were they thinking", when upper manglement thought this would work, but it should be obvious that thinking was not even remotely involved in this decision. The highly qualified work horse CSR's bust their ass all day long and delays are definitely not their fault but it is the fault of the cheap tightwad management in place at this operation. For those that are not aware of how it operates here, when a player turns on the change light, the candle atop the machine lights and sends a signal to dispatch. A real person at a CSR station gets on the radio to broadcast to the team the bank location where service is needed. The CSR who responds to dispatch will put the call on their list, but you might be three or four down on the list, after those in front of you. I'll give a recent personal example. The wife and I were done playing and I went to the TWO remaining FPDW machines in the building to run some mailer free play through. (I guess Sam's felt two were better than the 10 they had, so they removed 8, never mind that Boulder Station just down the road has 14 of them in their casino) I do the free play on the deuces game on a separate ticket, as my wife likes to track this apart from regular play to easily total what we keep over time. Ran it through, hit cash out button, and up pops the message stating "printer not responding". I had seen this pop up several times for a few weeks prior to this incident, so after being informed, why would the techs not repair or replace the printer? Answer is likely money related. As I wandered in close proximity to the machine looking for help, one of the sweetheart cocktail servers that I have known for years stops to jokingly ask me if I was lost, while laughing. I pointed to the light and told her that I was trying to spot one of the few CSR's to help, as we had dinner reservations at a restaurant not at Sam's. She said that, before she made her announcing rounds, she would scour the back end of the building and be right back. Meanwhile, I stuck close to the machine while my wife stalked from the buffet all the way back to the slot club. Both of them had no success. Finally, one of the harried CSR's showed up, and after a grueling 15 or 20 seconds of her work, the good news is I had my ticket. The bad news is that this ordeal lasted 23 minutes from start to finish. So, my bottom line advice to you is that if prompt customer service is important to you, you may want to consider another place to play. One of my favorite old sayings has always been "this is an accident waiting to happen", but I can't use that one in this context, as the new and improved Sam's Town is an accident that has already occurred. If you are reading this and you are an out of town tourist and are considering Sam's Town as an off strip locals type destination, be forewarned that this AIN'T your daddy's Sam's Town no more.
Nudge
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Posted by: "nudge51" <nudge51@cox.net>
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