Caesars Entertainment Cleans Up Its Act on Keeping Change

By Scott Roeben, on September 04 2020
3 min read 35 comments
Las Vegas Las Vegas Casinos

Even before the national coin shortage, slot ticket redemption kiosks at casinos stopped giving change.

M Resort, Wynn Resort and Cosmopolitan ask customers to donate their change to various charities. If a customer declines, the redemption kiosk spits out a voucher to schlep to the cashier cage for change. Annoying, but great for charities.

Wynn TITO
Close cage (Wynn), no problem. Far cage (Linq), WTF.

Other big casino companies have halted giving change at their TITO (ticket-in, ticket-out) slip kiosks, too.

Station Casinos gives vouchers, as does MGM Resorts. No charity option, but at least you know where to pick up your change.

Casinos, by the way, don’t mind if you skip taking your ticket to the cage.

When a gambler fails to redeem their slot voucher, the casino keeps 25 percent of those unclaimed winnings. The other 75 percent goes to Nevada’s general fund. Players leave behind $10-12 million a year, so casinos get 25 percent of that (then pay 25 percent of that in taxes). Such “breakage” pretty much covers administrative costs.

Caesars Entertainment casino recently moved to the no change practice, but with a twist. When customers cashed out, they got a receipt. Unlike at other casinos, the receipt didn’t look like a slot ticket.

Also, the receipt said nothing about customers being able to get their change at the cage.

Here’s a receipt from a kiosk at Bally’s Las Vegas, submitted by eagle-eyed Twitter follower Jessica.

Bally's receipt
This receipt has more red flags than Tiananmen Square.

Jessica inserted a ticket for $41.10 and the machine paid $41.

When we heard about the situation at Bally’s, we thought it a little wonky and Tweeted about it.

Bally's receipt
Twitter is a powerful tool, and we’re just the tool to prove it.

The following day, we hit The Strip, checking out several Caesars Entertainment casinos and redeeming slot tickets to see what was what.

At Bally’s, Flamino and Linq, all the receipts had language at the bottom saying customers have the option to present the receipt at the cage for change from their “partially paid tickets.”

TITO ticket
Void dates vary.

We asked a cashier about the language on the tickets, and she said, “Yeah, that happened within the last hour.”

Why are we sharing this?

First, we wanted to give you a heads up most casino kiosks don’t give change anymore.

Second, we want to give props to Caesars Entertainment for jumping on this problem before it became a problem. Yes, keeping a customer’s money without letting them know how to get it back is a problem. Yes, even if it’s not a lot of money. Although the fix looks easy, we’re sure it takes some back-end technology hoop-jumping to execute a change that quickly across multiple casinos.

Third, we are sharing this situation so we can claim to be the most important and influential blog in Las Vegas and possibly the northern hemisphere, a champion of the people, a fighter of the good fight, your Sin City watchdog, your fiscal advocate, a crusader for all that’s fair and right in the world.

But mostly the heads up and props stuff.

If you see anything wonky out there, drop us a line or DM us on Twitter. We’ll get right on it, as long as it doesn’t require “effort” or “not being intoxicated.”

 

Want to explore more stories? Read about US gambling here:

 

You can also learn about online gambling in Canada here: