Last night I tried to redeem my Caesars Rewards celebration dinner Diamond benefit. But, as I’ve learned the hard way, the Caesars Rewards celebration dinner is a joke.
So, for those of you not familiar with Caesars Reward (formerly Total Rewards), Diamond members get a free $100 Celebration Dinner every year as a published benefit. In fact, here it is on their website!
Now, you’ll notice there is a little “2” in superscript denoting a disclosure, and when you scroll down to that section, all it says is that restrictions apply and I need to see the Rewards Center for details. That’s it.
Fast-forward to Sunday morning when I arrived in Vegas. After checking into my hotel (Nobu, review coming in the future), I head over the Reward Desk. There, I get my card and nothing is stated about my benefits, though I don’t ask either.
Celebration Dinner
Come Monday, I headed over to Old Homestead Steakhouse to redeem my Diamond Celebration Dinner. I’ll go over the meal in a future post, but overall things went well. That is until I had to pay.
I asked my server to redeem the benefit, which she was happy to do. But then the manager came over and said my card wasn’t working and told me to see the Rewards Desk. So, I did, and there, a manager was called over to see what could be done.
To their credit, both the rep and the manager were nice about everything, but they told me they couldn’t do anything. No cash, no credit, nothing. They said that while the Celebration Dinner appears in my account, it isn’t loaded to my card. In fact, they said that once your card is issued, it takes 7-10 days for the benefit to load to the card. Yeah ??♂️.
I’m not going to be here for that many days. So, essentially, the benefit is useless to me unless I come back this year, which I won’t.
The Caesars Rewards Celebration Dinner is a Joke, Final Thoughts
From a business standpoint, it’s smart for them to put that 7-10 day limitation on the dinner. That way, you have to return to use it, and they can benefit from it. But, they should be more transparent about it if that’s the case. After all, it’s a benefit they tout on their website! Either way, though, I’m not a fan of Caesars Rewards. It’s a program that I think is neat in theory, but in practice? It’s a bit of a mess. I’ll likely stick with Mlife as my Las Vegas program of choice. Plus, MGM partners with Hyatt ?.
Update: Caesars Made Things Right
See my resolution post to find out what went wrong and how they fixed things.