First of all, this promotion is not in the past, it's still up and running starting yesterday and ending some time Sunday. Anyway, it's annoying this happened, yet it's not a scam per se.
First of all, your whole approach is kind of off. Chasing a level up with guaranteed losses is such a low value action, that's exactly what the site wants. And when a casino wants you to do it, it's bad for you and good for them.
Even when you get the bonus finally they just pay you with your losses. It's always much smarter to achieve a level up organically. 1.2x is also such a bad promotion itself as well, in their ANN thread I even wrote nobody (even super low levels) would be even remotely interested in such a bad promotion, obviously I was wrong.
By the way, the money you lost up until the point when you realized it didn't work would have been lost no matter what, I mean you basically wagered to lose anyway, so there is no refund necessary. The only thing that's missing in your account is 20k in VIP progress, and that's really the only thing.
I get where you’re coming from, but I have to disagree with a few things.
Yes, chasing level-ups blindly is usually -EV, and I normally wouldn’t do it. But in this case, because of the 1.2x VIP progression, the math actually made it +EV for me — or at least neutral — especially using low-risk dice where losses are minimal (around $1 per $100 wagered).
With the boost, I only needed to wager around $85k instead of $100k to level up, which made the expected cost of leveling much lower than usual. That’s the only reason I did it. Without the bonus, it’s obviously not worth it — which is exactly the problem here: I only chased it because the bonus was supposed to be active.
So no, the money I lost wasn't inevitable. It was directly tied to the extra $20k I had to wager once I realized the promo wasn’t working. That’s why I’m not asking for a refund — I’m just asking to be credited the 20k in VIP progress I was promised so that the outcome reflects what was advertised when I started wagering.
Also, whether or not the promo is “good” is subjective. A lot of people probably ignore it — fair — but for me, the value was there as long as it worked. The issue isn’t whether it was worth it in theory, it’s that Stake broke their end of the deal while I was playing under the assumption it was working.
That’s the core of the complaint.