Traditionally, arcades have had to rely on the psychology wrapped into the games themselves to drive profits. But Dave & Buster’s has turned their entire experience into a game that keeps customers spending; and their innovation all revolves around how customers pay for games. Dave & Buster’s has taken arcade payment to a whole new level with their card system. Here’s essentially how it works: You can’t play any games at all if you don’t have a card. Cards are sold at kiosks, and accept credit cards, which of course makes it easier to spend.
From a conversion standpoint, the kiosk interfaces are very well-designed. Customers are first presented with three dollar amounts that they can fill their cards with, and the minimum amount presented is a hefty $25 - which is a lot of video games. If you go refuse the recommended amounts, those recommended amounts are highlighted even further on the next screen, with even larger amounts presented as well. Since you’ve already been presented with $25 as the minimum on the previous screen, the $20 option doesn’t look that bad, even though you may have walked up to the machine thinking you’d spend $5.
Once you select a dollar amount, you’re instantly upsold. You’ve already committed to buying some chips, so what’s it hurt to buy a few more? (This is utilizing the technique.) It’s a better value, and if you press “no” you’ll miss out on your chance.
(This takes advantage of ).“ If you still refuse the up-sell offer, there is yet another smaller up-sell. Notice the powerful language. Contrasting with the bland 'No, Thanks” button. When you’re all done buying your card, you get a real, hefty piece of plastic, just like a credit card.
This removes you from the reality of the money you’re spending. When you go to play games, the values of a game play are very abstract. It turns out that 6.3 “chips” equals about $1.30 on a $10 chip purchase.
Also notice that if you play enough chips to get a “Gold” card (1200), you’ll get 10% off all of your games, which is one good reason to keep your card in your wallet - where it will stare at you for years. Another is that the prices of playing games are very unusual so as to leave odd but useless amounts remaining on the card (I now have.7 credits on my card), giving you reasonable cause to come back another time and recharge the card. Of course the lamest part of any arcade experience is the useless prizes you can redeem the tickets you win for. Not everybody likes stuffed crocodiles. But everybody loves music!
This machine will turn your tickets into music purchases, and burn them onto a CD - and you can even hook up your iPod. As you can see, Dave & Buster’s card payment system ropes their customers into a sophisticated framework that keeps them spending on games. The amazing thing is,.
It may not have been the greatest hack ever, but police say the malicious software sneaked onto restaurant chain Dave & Buster's corporate network was good enough to earn criminals hundreds of thousands of dollars. Three men have been charged with hacking into the network and then remotely installing 'packet sniffer' software on point-of-sale servers at 11 Dave & Buster's locations throughout the U.S. A packet sniffer logs information being sent over a network. In this case, the criminals used it to log credit- and payment-card data as it was sent from the branch locations to corporate headquarters.
The hacking took place from April to September 2007 and was lucrative, according to court filings. At Dave & Buster's Islandia, New York, location, for example, the hackers accessed details of about 5,000 payment cards.
The information was sold to other criminals who then used the card numbers to scam online merchants. The criminals were able to post at least US$600,000 in fraudulent transactions from 675 cards taken from this one store. Contacted by IDG News Service, the Islandia Dave & Buster's restaurant manager said he was unaware of any fraud being linked to his location.
Dave & Buster's corporate offices did not return a call seeking comment. Dave & Buster's operates about 50 restaurants in the U.S. The locations feature video games, billiards and arcade-style games.
The people charged are Maksym Yastremskiy, Aleksandr Suvorov and Albert Gonzalez. Yastremskiy and Suvorov are being held in Turkey and Germany, respectively, and face fraud and computer hacking charges. Yastremskiy 'was one of the biggest resellers of stolen credit card data targeted by the USSS United States Secret Service,' said Special Agent Matthew Lynch in a sworn statement filed in the case. Gonzalez, who was arrested in Miami within the past two weeks, wrote the packet sniffing software, Lynch said. He was charged with one count of wire fraud conspiracy.
The three men charged in this case were arrested over the past year, but the case was sealed until Monday. Unfortunately for the criminals, Gonzalez's code had some problems, according to Lynch. In April 2007 it bombed its first test, on a point-of-sale server at the Dave & Buster's in Arundel, Maryland. 'The packet sniffer malfunctioned. And no credit or debit card account information was captured, ' Lynch said. Even when the packet sniffer worked, the hackers were forced to keep returning to the Dave & Buster's network and restarting their malicious software, Lynch said. A bug in the packet sniffer caused it to shut down whenever the computer it was monitoring rebooted.
International cyber criminals often see poorly secured retail computer networks as an easy source for credit card information. Cyber thieves used similar techniques in the massive 2006 TJ Maxx data breach, stealing credit card numbers from the company's computer system and then using them for purchases at stores like Wal-Mart. Court filings suggest that more than 94 million accounts may have been affected in that case.
Welcome to the D&B Advantage Player subreddit. If you're a first-time visitor, please read the main sticky post before posting - it has a lot of good information (and covers why many things may not be talked about openly!) This subreddit is the place for anything related to the Dave & Buster's restaurant/arcade chain, with a focus on strategies for winning and profiting from their redemption games.
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All D&B-related posts are welcome! Startrek cards/sets can be turned in after the next set is available! Should another arcade/chain of arcades be profitable, discussion on them is welcome here as well. NOTE: This does mean that posts referencing advantage play at Main Event Entertainment are allowed here. However, keep in mind that MAIN EVENT DOES NOT APPLY GLOBAL SETTINGS - it is very likely even somewhat short amounts of significant AP on particularly games may invoke a nerf at YOUR store level.
Proceed with caution. Don't bitch at this sub if you decide to attack a game hard at your store and its JP is cut by 50-75% the next time you return. A link to my old AMA thread, where I covered a lot of basic info regarding what I do down at D&B and good ways to profit from them - Posting/General rules:. If something is wrong at your D&B location, please be constructive. 'My location sucks and I never want to go there again' - not helpful.
'Games X, Y, and Z are broken/not working right at my location and I believe they should be working in this manner, can anyone verify?' .
Use common sense in distributing info, especially outside of this subreddit - you don't want people to be swarming your main game to where you can't get what you're looking for out of it, or tilt the numbers too much away from D&B's favor. Posting Game Breaking Information is a reportable option and will be removed. Spreading of False Information that could end in a bad result is not allowed. Racism is also not allowed. Don't beat up a single game so hard D&B changes how it works.
As a general rule, if you're doing more than 100,000 on one game in a week, if you keep going the way you are now.you're gonna have a bad time. In nineteen ninety eight, the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table. Everything else should also be common sense - if you're selling the stuff you win, don't massively undercut other people to sell your stuff, you don't need to do that, it might affect the market longer-term if it continues. AP as much as you want when playing but still tip the waitstaff if you eat or drink there.
Links: If you can clear 25 out of the 30 challenges on this list, you can truly consider yourself a master advantage player. This is very well known especially within this subreddit. You can get a similar deal if you have a BJ's membership and buy their $50 D&B GC for $40, twice and get the $100 = 750 chips plus reward chips, without the hassles of coupons and are valid anytime including Wednesdays but not stackable with coupons as you can see from the right side bar.
$80 = 798 chips valid anytime with the BJ's gift card deal. $80 = 800 chips, with the use of coupons, limit one per customer/power card per day and not valid on Wednesdays. This doesn't include the extra 48 chips from every $100 loaded onto the same power card. Not kosher, to my understanding. The way it's been explained to me, the $20-for-$20 is ONLY supposed to be used on a transaction of exactly 200 chips, two '$20' (100 chip) charges done at one time with one of them being 'comped' by the coupon.
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The offer is made to be able to supercharge, but each supercharge must be paid for; if you supercharge both you don't get that comped on one of them either.so you either get 200 chips for $20 or 250 chips for $26, which is actually a slightly worse deal. Pretty much every D&B that is allowing $20-for-$20s to be used outside of this (your example, or $100 charge with $20 knocked off by coupon, etc.) is improper - though I think the majority of them were allowing the (($35+5)-$20) thing to get their supercharge numbers up Also I don't think you can use the military discount with the setup you've described even if it was kosher to do the 4x coupon/4-player pack, as you're not supposed to be able to use the military discount with any other coupon.
The only exemption to combining discounts seems to be being able to get an external discount on gift cards and military20'ing that. Carpboy had it. $50 for $40 through any wholesaler discount site carrying D&B gift cards. $1,600 spent gets $2,000 in gift cards (just using this figure to make the math easy - you'll see why below) $2,500 charge on your card, less the 20% military discount, = $2,000. 25 charges of 750 chips each = 18,750 chips; your actual spend is $2,000 so that's what your reward is based off of, 20. 48 = 960.
19,710 chips on $1,600 = 8.11 cents per chip. (The $2,000 figure was used above because you are both working with $50 increments and $40 increments; you're paying $40 but getting $50 in gift cards. You can do something like $800 to get $1,000 worth of gift cards, but when you go to charge, you'd be doing $1,250 - 20% = 1,000.but doing a $50 charge is not optimal. You either need to buy gift cards slightly over your spend and have a little left over, or work it so that your total, AFTER 20% discount, is also an even $100 value.) NOTE: I have verified that there is no issue using the military discount with gift cards, unlike standard coupons. TO MY KNOWLEDGE, there's nothing that says that the person presenting the military ID for discount has to be the same person the power card is registered to; I was told that the only limitation is that a person with a valid military ID may only do one discounted charge per day.
If this is not the case I will update this post with such information. (IF this is true, and there are no issues with military members doing discounted charges to help out an AP, then it would be a pretty good idea for those dropping a lot of money to seek out any military friends they may have, offer to buy them a dinner and a drink or two in exchange for their help. Don't get me wrong, 10 cents per chip is a GREAT deal on its own - but if 8.11 is on the table and is kosher to do so, take it.).
I speak from experience. I'm currently doing this. I haven't had anyone tell me it's not kosher but if it is against some rule I'll just stick with the gift cards only from then on. A friend in my AP group mentioned he's military, he offered to charge my card for me on the days he doesn't do it for himself; from what I understand there's nothing against the rules about it. We've done $1,200 and $1,300 charges respectively and had no issue other than the gift cards taking a while to process. I work in high-denom on that so that we only do it about once a month.
I used a method a while ago that had a substantial discount. But I no longer do it because it's way too much a hassle for me to do anymore. I buy bulk Giant Eagle gift cards at 5% discount using my Blue Cash Pref for another 6% discount. Then I use the Giant Eagle gift cards and purchase third party gift cards like Sears or Kmart (stores that sell Vanilla Reload cards), I also earn $0.1 of fuel credit for every $50 I spend on gift cards or anything else. Then I use the Kmart gift cards and purchase Vanilla Reload cards, (I also earn Kmart perks along the way). Lastly I use the Vanilla Reload cards to buy 20% discounted D&B gift cards through BJs.
So total, I get a 31% discount on D&B gift cards. However, that's all in the past. I can't deal with that anymore, way too annoying.
I just have to make due with my measly 25% discount that I usually get. It sounds like you're doing a lot of 'get $100+ for opening a credit card and spending $500-$1,000' offers. But how often do you take on a credit card, do the offer, and end up closing the card later? Has your credit score taken a hit if you end up doing this?
That's impressive as fuck though. Typically you can't buy Vanilla Reload with credit.that's an impressive chain to get around the restriction. A couple things worth noting - the Blue Cash Preferred card has a $75 annual fee, and the 6% cash back only works on the first $6,000 in purchases. While that is a pretty awesome $360, when you factor in it's trivial to find a credit card that gives 2% across the board without an annual fee (DoubleCash!) you're only netting an extra 4% - $240 - minus that $75 annual fee, taking you down to $165.and you may be losing out on more than you think if you use the Blue Cash Preferred for anything with a 1% category when there are better cards to play the rewards game with on non-bonus categories. Also.I'm not the heaviest D&B player out there - I'm up there, but by no means going through the most coin-in on this subreddit, let alone the people who lurk outside the community.
You're going to go through more than $6k/year and the further past 6k you're going, the less that initial 6% means. I've had a number of people who have asked me for advice on AP that have two local D&B locations within 20 minutes of them. Someone who implements my standard system at both their D&Bs, under close to ideal conditions, is clearing $400 spend a week, and we'll round that off to $20,000 a year; a 2% card gets $400, the Blue Cash Pref gets $360 on the first 6k and $140 on the next 14k, totaling $500, minus that pesky annual fee.only up by $25 at that point, and any other 2% vs. 1% spending done on the car probably wipes out the remaining profit difference. Aaaaand this sub's turned into CreditKarma. Ain't gonna lie, sometimes I get a bit carried away and my credit drops a bit too low for my liking.
Meaning that I'm gonna miss out and get rejected on some good sign-up offer credit cards. But usually, it's all good, I'm pretty good keeping track of my spending and credit bills. As for the Blue Cash Pref, yea I soon discovered that it was really annoying and not really worth it. (that's why I don't do this anymore). As for my nascent D&B business, I just use a plain ol' no hassle 2% cashback card. It's chump change, but there's no strings attached, much less headache. But since I spend just over $40k a year in D&B chips, that's still a good amount of savings to be had.
Anyways.I really got to do something about all my flyer miles piling up.
Dave And Busters Power Card Balance
So weak that half of the games you want to play aren't included. So unlimited video games really only means any game that DOES NOT give out tickets. Which is maybe three different genre of games (air-hockey/racing games/shooting games. Oh and guitar hero.
Check Dave And Busters Power Card Balance
But does anyone still actually play that?). Not to mention my card didn't work properly 95% of the time I was there (40 minutes) and asked for a refund that was promptly denied. I think out of the party I was with (about 10 people) and the some 10 other strangers walking around the games, more than half of our 'power cards' weren't working. Hmmmm I guess all 20 of us were trying to scam the business. I went for a friend's birthday last night and we had a party of 12.
She had asked about reservations but they only accept for 15 people or more and had told them it wouldn't be too busy on a Saturday anyways. (Yeah right!). They told us it would be a 2 hr wait for a table but we ended up getting one on 30 mins. Our server was very rude and didn't seem like she cares or even wanted to work there. I was going to surprise my friend with cake but she only told me after the 2nd time of me flagging her down that i needed to order something first and was a bit rude about it because the first time I asked her she said they'd figure something out.
Only 2 hours later service was finished because again I had to flag her down. She wasn't attentive to us at all. The games were pretty fun except I think the prizes need to be better personally. Pro core exercise equipment. Also only one automated kiosk was working otherwise you wait in a long line up if you don't wanna use a credit card. Definitely the management in general needs to be way more well organized.
Went there for dinner with my family to celebrate a birthday. Decided to eat within the games area rather than the dining area. Drinks are plentiful and creative and actually really good. Dinner was very tasty, actually to be honest was quite surprised by this. I had the Salmon fillet and can honestly say it was one of the best meals I've had this year.
It was hot, tasty, not over cooked and was a nice sized portion. My wife had the Fish and Chips and was quite pleased with her meal. Pricing is decent and not overly expensive, drinks can be on the pricey side though depending on what you are ordering. Orville looked after us nicely and made some great recommendations for drinks, nice guy. One thing to bear in mind when eating in the games area is that it's really loud (which is to be expected) and can make having a conversation somewhat challenging at times. We had a good time after dinner re-living our youth 'gaming' and will go back.
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