The odds of winning big in gambling are slim enough as they are. Now it turns out that even when you win, the house can decide that you actually didn't.
Here is a story that actually happened. A man from Wasaga Beach, ON went to play the slots at Georgian Downs and settled on a machine called "Buccaneer." After numerous failed attempts, he managed to hit the jackpot and the machine went crazy with bells and whistles. According to the machine, he won $42.9 million. But when he went to collect, the staffers told him the machine had malfunctioned (without providing evidence as such) and they would not be paying him. They then stated that the maximum the machine could pay was $9,000.
Their compensation to the man? A free dinner for four at one of the casino's buffet restaurants. Lame at best.
Maybe the corporation did make a machine error. It is up to them to fix it before somebody plays and gets the impression that they have won big. Bottom line is that the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG) needs to pay up and pay up big. The man is right to sue and he should at least been offered what the machine would have paid otherwise for a jackpot win.
The house rakes in so much money from gamblers. They can afford to pay up when they make a mistake like this and they should. Who knows how much revenue has been lost due to the negative PR this has caused? If the OLG was smart, they would pay up and show the gambling public that what the machine reads is what they will get in the end. After all, isn't that how it's supposed to work?
Instead, now everytime someone will play a slot machine and see the machine go berzerk, they will wonder if they had really won.
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