For some Oxford Casino customers, lucky break was a $15M email mistake
File photo / William Hall
Oxford Casino Hotel is located off Route 26 in Oxford.
For more than 60,000 patrons of Oxford Casino Hotel, the lucky break might have seemed too good to be true. Because it was.
Earlier this month, each of the regular players received an email saying they had won a promotional drawing for $250 of free play at the casino's nearly 1,000 slot machines. The prizes amounted to more than $15 million in no-cost spins on the machines, allowing the recipients to keep any winnings.
Problem was, the email had been intended for only five lucky winners.
Oxford Casino has been busy dealing with fallout from the mistake. Within an hour of the original Jan. 10 email, the casino sent another, retracting the prize awards and explaining that the promotional message had been transmitted in error. An explanation was also sent to the Maine Gambling Control Unit, a branch of the Department of Public Safety that oversees gaming in the state.
The Gambling Control Unit received "numerous phone calls" and 183 formal written complaints in response to the incident, according to a notice posted on the unit's website.
The free-play promotion and other marketing activities in Maine's gambling industry are tightly regulated by the state. Under a filing submitted to the GCU in 2021, Oxford Casino was allowed to award a $250 prize to a maximum of five randomly selected players per week.
The Gambling Control Unit in its Jan. 18 notice dismissed the complaints, saying the promotion had been sent accidentally to the list of 60,000 — and crediting Oxford Casino for its follow-up.
The casino did not respond immediately to questions from Mainebiz, but has said the improper promotion was the result of human error.
Still, not every player is happy with the outcome.
“I think they should honor their commitment and give everyone the free slot play,” Luis Felipe told Fox-23 Maine in Portland. “It would be a good gesture and win for them because people would likely take advantage of it and come and spend even more money with them.”
Oxford Casino opened in 2012 off Route 26 in Oxford, with about a dozen table games and 500 slot machines. The casino later expanded and added a hotel, and today is a major employer providing hundreds of jobs in the area.
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