shajder

I know this has been discussed many times, but I lost a (relatively) small amount of money the other night and it really p*ssed me off. So I wanted to moan about it!!

Went in to a Weatherspoons in my new town and had a go on Devil of a Deal. £10 in, 25p a go and only 2 holds - WTF?! 40 presses of the start button and only 2 holds? What sort of fun is anyone going to get out of that? I also went on a couple of others....Murphys Millions I think (?) and one of the million DoND machines. F*ck all from both of them with £5 in each. Got on the Murphys board once, offered me £3 then ? and lose. DoND did exactly the same. I ended up spending £25 in less than no time on the machines. Not a lot I know, but this was quick and I was fuming afterwards.

I really REALLY hate the fruit machines these days. I've also noticed that less machines are having a 25p or 30p a go option. It's usually 50p minimum. Even if you do get a 25p/30p option, you only get 1 winline, so you are never going to win anything.

Why have they made them like this? I f*cking hate them.

Obviously the answer is to avoid them, which I usually do, but you think that you might get something decent one day and should be able to have a little fun or entertainment without having to spend a fortune. £10 would have got you loads of entertainment out of the old machines that were 20p/25p a go, e.g. Andy Capp, Viva Las Vegas and fairly newer ones like Vamp It Up, Hellraiser, etc.

Same issue with the quiz machines. You expect to get a bit of entertainment time out of them, but for some reason, they never pay out and can kill you quickly. I've never known anyone to win a quiz machine 'jackpot'. You start answering the questions without much trouble (I'm not a numpty!) and then they come up with something like "What year did my mum lose her left shoe in Skegness?" FFS! I'm not expecting to win loads of money, but it just seems that they are just as bad as fruit machines. You might put £10 and choose Deal or no Deal. You might need 30000 points to get through to the win game, but suddenly, even after pumping in loads of money, you find yourself having to win 60000 points to get there. How does that work?

I really hope that the industry collapses and they remove all machines. Won't happen, but it would serve companies like Bell Fruit, Barcrest, Red, etc, right for being thieving scum. It's also not against anyone else here that own arcades, etc, but they are making a killing.

Anyways - that's my rant over.....for now.

Anyone else got any recent cases of machines taking the p*ss?!

Hi guys,
just wanted to let you know about a couple of things a noticed in an arcade recently and wanted to get some thoughts from whoever wants to reply!

Basically I was in a couple of arcades in Southend and on many occasions, the fruities would pay out a 10p or 20p piece instead of £1 (mostly on the £5 jackpot machines).

Obviously when I raised this with the staff, that gave me the usual "Blah blah blah.........any wins over £3 must be witnessed....blah blah blah" and didn't pay up. Just wondering if anyone else has come across this? It only ever seemed to be on the first or second pound paying out, so I'm wondering if this is a dirty trick played by the arcades?!

They know that the majority of people won't ask for them to check a bank of £3 or more paying out because of the number of times the bank goes over that £3 mark is quite frequent. It becomes a pain in the a*se.

I don't think that they can control when it happens as it comes from the tubes, but I'm wondering if they slip a few rogue coins in the tubes to make an extra buck?!

On another point, I was playing a Bar X machine, which was £10 for the X's and £25 for the Bars. I nudged 2 Bars and it held. I then let it spin expecting £25, but it came in with 3 X's instead. Is this what the machine does sometimes, or is there a bit of trickery here as well?

Problem is, if you suspect something underhand going on, who can you complain to? It's not like you can go to Citizens Advice!!!!!