Collecting players cards from casinos can be a bit similar to collecting matchbooks in a different era – basically every casino has one, and since most casinos aren’t necessarily linked to each other, the end result can be a pile of cards over time, if you even bother to keep them around.
That leads us to a fun question about them:
How long do casinos keep a card for playing slots active? I haven’t been down since 2018 and would like to know if it would be safe to destroy these cards. I would like to know if all casinos have the same time limit.
Pat
Similar to other house rules about how various things work in the casino, this is often managed on a casino by casino basis. Some casinos are more aggressive at pruning their databases than others, which means there’s times when you’re receiving offers from casinos years after your last visit, while others stop reaching out after a couple of months.
There’s generally two levels to this: An inactivity threshold, and a complete wiping of a player from the casino database. Inactivity is generally a point where a casino will wipe things like comp dollars (meaning players should always understand expiration policies and use points if they’re not sure they’ll be back before that point).
But that doesn’t mean the card itself isn’t still usable – you’re still in the system, and if you show up and play the card will credit your account, just like before. You’d also be flipped back to active at that point, and your new play reviewed or any offers.
So then the question is when (if at all) casinos purge you all together. Again, that depends on the casino. Some of the bigger companies won’t ever remove you, whereas smaller casinos may do clean-ups. A visit to a casino one FTS team member visited a couple of years ago after a lengthy absence led to them re-registering them because they had been too long between visits.
The reality though is once you’re inactive, destroying a players card is probably more than OK to do, because the comps on the card will have expired, offers no longer being sent, and the only value at that point would be for someone else to earn points on your behalf, which if you’re not going wouldn’t have value anyway.
Players who go regularly will likely want to guard their cards a bit more closely to avoid someone attempting to redeem their perks like free play or earned comp dollars, but aside from that it’s a pretty low risk scenario to put your players card through the shredder if you don’t expect to return anytime soon. And if you do, you can always get a free replacement card.
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