Fun experience booking Caesars yesterday

Situation: Need 3 nights at Caesars in April. Saw that I have an offer for 3 free nights (which I already get as a 7 Star), $50 in freeplay, and $20 in food. Obviously not huge money, but might as well do that instead of just 3 comped nights.

Cannot do it online. Just comes up with an error, even if "available".

Call up 800 number. First rep tells me that the offer isn't available, even though it's listed as being available from 1/4 through 4/29. I see this happen all the time. I guess it gets "sold out" even though the property isn't anywhere NEAR sold out.

I ask if her supervisor can override it, as they frequently do here. Spend 10-15 minutes on hold, she comes back saying he can't.

I ask to talk to the supervisor. Spend 10-15 minutes on hold. He comes on.

While I was on hold, I noticed the computer showed the offer was available for the first 2 of the nights I need, but not the 3rd. I ask the supervisor to simply book those 2 nights, and then tack on the 3rd night as a Seven Stars free room. (They do this all the time with no problem.)

He tries, it fails. Tells me that on his end, he can't see anything available for this offer, except for the Linq (lol).

Supervisor is very nice and trying to help, but still batting .000. He suggests that I just book 3 nights under my 7* benefit, and he will e-mail his managers (who only work Monday through Friday) to perhaps override the system and force the offer on my account. I agree, especially since we're not dealing with big money anyway.

So he books the 3 nights. Tells me, "Okay, it's booked." Gives me confirmation #.

I ask, "So it's Augustus Tower, right?"

He replies, "Umm... actually I had to put you in the Julius (Roman) Tower, because only the Julius and Forum are available right now. But later on I'm sure we can get you into an Augustus room."

I had never seen this before.

I ask, "So there's no Augustus rooms available, over 2 months in advance, for a normal weekend in April?"

He replies that there are "plenty of rooms" available in Augustus, but the computer simply won't let him book me in anything but Julius or Forum without me paying a rate. WTF?

I ask him to try to manually override it from the back end. That is, take my Julius booking and just change it. This works, and he tells me I'm now in Augustus. Great!

I go online to verify, and I see that I owe a "$318.08 deposit to be charged to your credit card", even though the reservation shows no credit card on file.

He keeps insisting the room was comped and that the $318.08 is just nonsense. He also says that, since I have no CC on file, I don't have to worry about being billed.

Since I have never seen it look this way before, I state that I am uncomfortable with the whole situation, and afraid I will be charged upon check-in. He keeps trying to tell me it won't, but obviously since we're dealing with CET, I never leave these type of things to chance. He tells me that it can't be fixed because he changed it on the back end. I still tell him we can't leave it this way.

He works on it briefly and says that he has fixed it. Indeed, now it shows me in Augustus with no deposit and the room is comped.

Still don't have the offer, but the 3 nights were more important. Hopefully I get the offer too. He promised to call me back on Monday about it. If I don't get the offer, no big deal.

But wow... what a mess. Never had such a hard time just booking an Augustus room before.

A couple of comments.

First there are blackout dates for free play offers. The website might say you have free play in April but the calendar will show the blocked dates. This is not unusual.

If you used or had a host this wouldn't have happened.

I know there are blackout dates, but that doesn't appear to be what happens here. These "Stay and you also get..." offers seem to have a very LOW limit for total redemptions. So once a small number of people book with them, it becomes invalid for all dates.

Yes, a host could have forced it through, but that would require me not being overcomped, so that's not an option. I have gotten a host do it occasionally despite my overcomped status, but for $50 in freeplay and $20 food, it's not worth hassling further.

I was surprised how badly I struggled with the 800 number for a regular Augustus booking, though. That was a first.

You still don't think your once over comped status has now made you undercomped? If you were still over comped you wouldn't be having such problems.