On my way back home this summer, I passed through Amsterdam. As always if I had some extra money I would go to the Casino to play a couple of hands of blackjack. This time however I was really shocked at the scam they are now running. I entered and played with 70€. In my last hand I bet 40€ and pushed. I am not the fastest when it comes to math, however I added up and found that I pushed with the dealer with an 18. The dealer still took my chips. I exclaimed “What are you doing? That is a push!” The dealer told me that a push is a lose here. I was so shocked and wanted to complain.
On my way back to Montreal, I visited and told the manager I wanted to complain. He gave me the whole “yes it’s your right schpeel”. I could tell he was not being genuine. He gave me a mailing address (not an email) to write my complaint to. First off I could not read it, so I just went on the Amsterdam Airport website (which does not even work properly) and emailed them until my complaint was forwarded to the right people. I received this as a reply:
Thanks for giving your information about your visit at our Casino.
We try to inform our customers about the rules in our casino by signs and from the dealers
themselves.
What a pity that your experience with our rules is not the kind we like to see. The specified
BJ rule in our airport casino is official approved by the Dutch gaming commission. All over the
world casinos deal BJ with various rules.
We as Holland Casino purpose to give our players a good feeling when they visit one of our
Casino’s. We are sorry that your experience is different.
We have to tell you that we’ll not remove this rule, but once again we will give instructions
to our dealers and tell them to give our customers the extra information about our rules by
personal information and refer to the signs at the tables.
At least we can’t refund your € 80,00 because gambling is still a persons own responsibility.
With kind regards,
Holland Casino Schiphol Airport
P. Braamzeel
Shiftleader
Now I know that gambling is everyone’s own fault, but what was written in the email is absolute bullshit (pardon my French). They are just trying to justify their ongoing scam, not once was it mentioned to me by the dealer that a push is a lose, and the sign that they claim to have, was on the other side of the table facing outward and was in size 16 font I’m guessing. As they claim different Casinos throughout the world have different rules, which is true, but never have I seen a push as a loose. They clearly want to take advantage of the high volume of people going through the Airport, which is vile in my opinion. It was made clear to me when they said it was the only Casino in Holland with this rule. So this is the reason I’m writing this post is to expose them to the world. Also I’m emailing the link of this post directly to them so they know that they are being exposed.
PS. Below is a blurry picture I got of their front desk with two gaming awards for 2008 and 2009. I really don’t believe those should be there.
