Thorpe Park investigates accusation games were 'rigged to be more difficult'

 
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Staff|Agency3 July 2013

An amusement park has been accused of rigging games to reduce the chances of winning.

According to an undercover investigation at Thorpe Park in Surrey, staff were encouraged to make a certain amount of money before handing out prizes.

Stall holders where said to have given customers a different type of ball to the one they were originally shown and allegedly wax was used to make it harder to knock blocks over.

The staff are employed by HB Leisure Ltd, which also manages stalls at Alton Towers, Legoland and Chessington World of Adventures.

An HB Leisure senior manager was caught on camera admitting that employees were "increasing the difficulty level" for some customers.

The investigation was carried out by new BBC One consumer show Your Money Their Tricks.

A spokeswoman for Thorpe Park said: "We would never condone any activity on the park which was proven to mislead or in any way disadvantage our guests."

She added: "Given these games are operated by third party suppliers - as the programme makes clear - as soon as we were made aware of the allegations... we contacted them and began our own extensive investigation.

"This investigation is ongoing but if we find any evidence of malpractice we will take swift and appropriate action against both any individuals concerned and the supplier company."

Your Money Their Tricks will be broadcast tonight on BBC One at 8pm.

Alex Sparks, managing director of HB Leisure, denied that its games were unfair and criticised the investigation for presenting "rare and now remedied incidences" as regular practice.

He said: "We utterly refute any suggestions that any of our games are not fair and we had provided detailed information, explanations and evidence to the programme, in advance, to prove this.

"But the BBC decided to ignore much of this information and has therefore presented a biased and incorrect view of the games.

"It is totally untrue to say that games are manipulated to make people lose. The programme itself states that there are times when we make the games easier but presents this as a bad thing, which we - and we believe, our customers - can only see as a benefit."

Mr Sparks said that HB Leisure had given out more than 100,000 prizes at Thorpe Park, which "in retail value is 50-60% of the money spent by the customers who play the games".

He insisted that the company had provided "detailed responses" to all the claims made by the BBC.

"We found that in almost all instances the programme had fundamentally misunderstood how the games worked and so we were able to explain and answer their queries in great detail," he said.

"The rare instances where staff behaviour or games fell below standard were immediately checked and remedied."

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