Complaint Review: SKY Casino at Occidental Caribe

This is just another warning from another uninformed traveller on vacation.

We stayed at the Occidental Caribe for 1 week. Every day, they had Sky Casino (on-site casino) staff roaming the grounds offering "free play' money for that evening. We went the 2nd night, and upon entering, were given a $10 free play chip and taken to this "Progressive Jackpot Bingo Ball' game.

In short, the idea is to get to 100 points by pulling out numbered balls from a hopper with a scooper stick. The numbers corresponded to a prize board ranging from Points to symbols to "DOUBLE', and others. Jackpot was always 40X the bet, so started off at $10 for $400. 

The 'dealer' gave the impression this was a promotion-type game from the casino, and seemed to us like you'd win no matter what and the idea was to get the chips to play the other real casino games. 

At the start, we got a ton of points really fast. Either by picking balls with high points, or "side prizes' like the '3 for 1' prize (your bet stayed, plus were given additional 3 follow up bets).

So we're at like 80 points, and grab a ball who's prize is one of the "DOUBLE"s. This makes your next bet amount double, but also doubles the jackpot. so $20 to win $800.

So now, the free money has run out, we're close to 100 points, and start pulling CASH out. $20 bet....pick a ball..... DOUBLE!

Again, bet needs to double, but so does jackpot. And it's $40 to win $1600..

And stupid us, continued on for a while, not catching on to some important facts:

- We never see the numbers on the balls! the dealer reads it, but doesn't show you

- The DOUBLE happened quite often that the Bet/Jackpot got absurdly high. Like too high that the casino could ever pay out ($400K +)

- After running out of cash, they said we could just put up a credit card (but "don't worry, we wont run it. We'll just take what is owed out of the Jackpot when you win')

So, got carried away. got up to 96 points, but the bets were $1000+ to win $400,000+! And had racked up $10K in Casino Credit (!!!).

It was only then, that then wanted some payments from the card. They tried to run it through, but declined (thank you fraud department). They had me call the Credit Card company even, but they weren't going to allow the amount. I tried explaining that there was no way for me to Cash Advance for that much. They kept running various amounts until my Maximum was found (~$500 CAD). And then tried a 2nd for the same, but it declined.

They explained that I was to meet them the next day, they would take me off-site to stores that are owned by the same people and they would run 'fake' purchases at their stores to make up for the funds.

Overnight, GOOGLE. Find out all about this and a similar scam. Call Card companies and shut off credit. Met them the next day and said I couldn't pay anything more, they had already scammed me for the Cash + 1 transaction, and wouldn't get any more. I wasn't going to leave the resort, and really, there was no point, the cards were off.

They seemed to want to meet again, and we spent the rest of our vacation worrying whether they were going to try and collect somehow, or worse.

SCAM ALERT, SKY CASINO is STEALING from tourists and OCCIDENTAL CARIBE will do nothing to help their guests out. AVOID!