ECOGRA and Vegas poker casino don't pay.

[Ritasilva]

800 euro confiscated

Please, help with this one.

Here is my story. It is very simple but the casino and the Ecogra just don't want to understand it. Please, give me your
opinions and I will send it to Tex from Ecogra so ,may be, he will listen to you. He just don't want to undestand my point! Ecogra and casino
ignore my emails now.

In the beginning of February this year I signed up at Vegas Poker casino. I deposit 100 euro and get 150 euro bonus. The requirements for
this bonus are 4500 euro in bets (if you play on slots).
Then I go and play some roulette games. Please, pay attention that Roulette does count only 10% for the wagering requirements.

I make 750 euro in bets at roulette (this makes only 75 euro counted for wagering requirements). My balance at the casino reaches
1000 euro. At this moment I stop playing at this casino. The next time I log in to the casino is 20 of April 2008, 2 and a half months
later. This time I decide to finish wagering requirements on slots. I wager almost 4400 euro on different slots. I have a luck and my balance reaches
2132 euro. Very happy I withdraw 2132 euro from my casino account to my Neteller.
5 days after that I check my Neteller and see that Vegas Poker casino paid me 300 euro only. I contact the casino.
This is a reply:

Dear Rita,

Thank you for contacting us,

We inform you that unfortunately part of your winning has been
confiscated because you did not meet the terms and conditions; we report
the terms and conditions below:

Winnings resulting from the $/EUR/? 15 free are available for a one time
cash-out, $EUR?300 is the ceiling win available using the $/EUR/? 15
free credit.
Surplus winning credits will then be forfeited.

You can check that on our website.

------------------------


I check the gameplay and see that on 15 of April 15 euro bonus was added to my casino balance. That is the bonus the casino
is refering me to. First of all, this bonus was added to my casino balance by the casino itself without any request from my side.
Second, and this is the most important point here, the bonus was added at the moment that I still had 4375 euro to wager to satisfy
the requirements of the FIRST bonus that I received (and this was a 150% welcome bonus). I replied.

Dear Sirs, Madams

There is some mistake here. As I clearly remember I opened an account at Vegas Poker casino and deposited 100 euro immediately and claimed
the welcome match up bonus. The bonus was credited immediately too. The 15 euro bonus was credited later to my account. So the first bonus
received was 150% bonus and not 15 euro bonus. So how can it be that you apply the second bonus's rule to the first bonus granted???
----------

Then the casino got silent so I contacted Ecogra. Soon after that I finally got a reply from the casino.

And it only made this whole story more complicated for me. Actually, the casino aknowledged the mistake but only in part.
And that is what they claim:

Dear Rita,

Thank you for contacting our support.

We would like to apologise for the delay of answering your emails. We
investigated the case carefully as you received different promotions
under different Terms and Conditions; therefore it was difficult to
understand.

We checked your play history. You opened the account 04/02/2008, you
deposited EUR100 and got EUR150 promotion free, you won and reached the
Terms and Conditions, but you did not cash out. Then, you received EUR12
free Bonus and also won a little so all fine, by that time your balance
was a total of EUR1,039.

Then, on the 15/04/08 you got $15 free Gift promotion and the Terms and
Conditions for that promotion is as follow:
http://www.vegaspokercasino.com/news...1b_20w_f_g.asp...

Therefore, we processed to your Neteller account EUR1,039 (29th of April
2008) and EUR300 for the last promotion she received of EUR15 (processed
on the 22nd of April 2008) as per the T & C states is the maximum you
can cash out. The rest of the amount will be confiscated (a total of
EUR793).
---------------

the big problem with this claim is that the casino, intentionally or not , misinformed
Ecogra. They informed Ecogra that at the moment that they credited
their free 15 euro gift on 15 of April the wagering requirements for first welcome the bonus
were satisfied. And as I wrote above I made 99% of wagering requrements of the first bonus
on on 20 of April , e.g 5 days after they added that 15 euro "gift" to my account.
And this is the fact that casino will never deny!

I contacted Ecogra again. Then Tex Rees replied me with the casinos arguments:

You opened your account on 04/02/2008 and deposited €100 and received €150 promotional bonus.
You played and met the Terms and Conditions of the promotion, but did not cash out.
A €12 Bonus was awarded and built your balance up to €1,039.
On 15/04/08 you received a $15 free Gift promotion and the Terms and Conditions for that promotion are as follows:
http://www.vegaspokercasino.com/news...1b_20w_f_g.asp

The casino therefore processed €1,039 (your original balance) and €300 (the promotion’s ceiling) for the last promotion you received.
The rest of the balance (€793) is deemed surplus and forfeited in line with the Terms and Conditions.



It is very important to read and fully understand the Terms and Conditions of any promotion before you start to play.
---------------------

Here is what I wrote to Tex back:

Hello Tex Rees,
There is one BIG mistake in the information which the casino provided
to you. After I received the FIRST bonus (and that was 150% welcome
bonus), I played a little bit and raised my balance to 1039 euro. By
that time I DID NOT fulfill the terms and conditions of that bonus
even by 10%. The bonus balance was still 150 euro. And then I quit
playing. I continued playing only 2 month later in April. And that is
when I finished meeting wagering terms and conditions of the FIRST
bonus (I made almost 4500 euro bets on different slot machines) and it
was during this wagering that my balance was raised from 1039 euro to
2132 euro. So , the 15 euro bonus was added to my casino account at
the moment that I just began wagering the FIRST WELCOME bonus. And
also it was added by the casino automatically without any request from
my side.
I have no idea why the casino misinforms you and states that I have
met all the wagering requirements of the Welcome bonus at the moment
that they credited me with their 15 euro bonus. That is absolutely
untrue and the casino games logs can be checked for that purpose. So,
I suppose, it will be unfair if 793 euro will be confiscated from me
since that money was won by me as a part of wagering the first bonus
that I claimed and received at Vegas Poker casino. The second bonus
was added by casino in the middle of me wagering the first bonus.

Please, check the information that I provided with the casino.


Thank you

-------------

tex replied and promised to check this case one more time. I was sure that
he will get the point this time. But today I received one more email from Tex
indicating that he doesn't want to understand the simple facts that I presented!

Dear Rita,



We have investigated your query again and have made the following findings:



You said: “The 15 euro bonus was added in the middle of the process of wagering the first bonus”.
The €15 free was awarded on the 15th of April 2008 - more than one month after you stopped playing on the 16th of March 2008.
The original bonus was awarded in February.
Your start balance before the €15 bonus was 1,024.00 + $15 = 1,039.00


I include an audit from Microgaming of your activities – The bold information relates to the €15 free gift, but if you would like to see
the whole audit, please click in the next cell 2A (yellow block).



Bearing the above in mind, I must inform you that we find your dispute to be invalid.



Regards,

Tex


--------------

First, the file with game play was corrupted. Second, I finished playing the welcome bonus not on 16 of March
but on 20 of April!!!


My last reply was this:

Hello Tex,

First of all, the excel file which you attached is corrupted. It doesnt show any information. Second, if you really have the game
logs of my play take a look at it one more time. The wagering requirements for the welcome bonus are 4500 euro on slots.
At the moment that the casino added 15 euro bonus how much wagering of that 4500 euro was done? Just answer this question.
The 15 euro bonus was added at the moment that I still did not fulfill the requirements for the FIRST bonus. Do you understand this?
The first bonus requirements are not satisfied yet and at this moment the casino adds the other bonus (without any requests from my side).
Then I finish wagering of the first bonus and go up 1100 more euros...and casino says that I can only get 300 euro of it because of the rules of
the second bonus. But the first bonus terms should be considered first, isn't it ???

Please, send me the excel file with the game logs one more time

--------------------------------

They never replied. Moreover, until today I didn't get a full playlist of my play at the casino although I requested it
several times from the casino, from Ecogra and even from Microgaming. It seems they don't want somebody to see that list.

I have lost a hope to get a fair treatment from Ecogra. Please, ppl, help me with this awful story.
Just give me your opinions and I will send the link from this thread to Tex Rees from Ecogra!
I will also file a complaint with Casinomeister.

[maxd]

Well, it'll take some time to read through that and digest it but I can tell you one thing right off: it seems you've assumed that Tex is a man, which is not correct. Tex Rees is a woman.

[Ritasilva]

Well, it'll take some time to read through that and digest it but I can tell you one thing right off: it seems you've assumed that Tex is a man, which is not correct. Tex Rees is a woman.

To make this issue more simple here is what I offer, maxd. Please, request the full game logs of my play at Vegas Poker casino.
Then, you will review those logs and make a conclusion regarding 800 euro confiscated. At this moment casino didn't send me the requested logs.

[maxd]

We'll see. It's not clear just yet that that's the way go.

[maxd]

Ok, I've gone through this now and it seems to me that you either make it official and file a Pitch a Bitch, or you roll with it and leave it as it is.

This is a complicated case and you need to know that we'd be going to eCOGRA for insight and judgment on it. As you've said, they've examined the case and ruled against you once already so it may be difficult to get them to reverse that.

[Ritasilva]

Ok, I've gone through this now and it seems to me that you either make it official and file a Pitch a Bitch, or you roll with it and leave it as it is.

This is a complicated case and you need to know that we'd be going to eCOGRA for insight and judgment on it. As you've said, they've examined the case and ruled against you once already so it may be difficult to get them to reverse that.

Offcourse I will pitch a bitch right now. This case is crystal clear. 800 euro is a lot of money for me.

[vinylweatherman]

I think this is a nasty casino trick, the deliberately set this up by adding a small 15 euro "gift" to a large existing balance, however, this "gift" then tied the player to a mere 300 euro cashout. The rogue element here is that this cashout applied to winnings made from the whole 1000+ balance, not just the 15 free chip. Worse, they never bothered to tell the player, who probably didn't even notice the extra 15, let alone the restrictive terms and conditions.

eCogra are ruling based on the LETTER of the T & C, and in this respect are correct, but they are completely failing to take into account the way the casino put the player in this position in the first place.

Free chips with such restrictive rules should NEVER BE APPLIED TO AN EXISTING BALANCE, but ONLY to a ZERO balance.

The problem may be that the player deposited immediately, and this might be what the casino will claim went wrong, well, load of BS again, as previous threads have discussed that players want this "immediate gratification", and casinos defended not properly verifying players as this would prevent them depositing immediately, and this simply would not do. Vegas Poker suddenly turns this on it's head, and has a system where players are better off NOT depositing straight away, but waiting for this 15 free chip that can take 48 hours or more to appear, which is probably how this mess started in the first place.

Players who deposit straight away should be deemed to have declined the free chip, it should not be added once they have deposited and started to play.

It seems MiniVegas pull many stunts like this on players, it is entrapment - THEY create situations like this that lead to players breaking T & C, and then they use this to confiscate winnings, close accounts etc.

EZBonus was designed to prevent these kinds of issues altogether, and MiniVegas even uses it, but have added complications unique to their group by having bonuses outside of EZBonus that can run concurrently with bonuses that were granted through EZBonus. This can lead to EZBonus showing WR met, allowing a withdrawal, and winnings being confiscated.

It is VERY HARD to keep track of all these different kinds of bonuses and free chips, and this is a group only for experienced players who read all the T & C, and record balances so that they can notice any additional bonuses and free chips that get slipped into the account.

It is highly unusual outside of RTG for free chips after players have already deposited their own funds to have a max cashout, and for MG EZBonus casinos, it is unheard of, until now that is.

[Casinomeister]

I've alerted the casino rep to this thread in hopes that we can have more insight as to what happened here.

http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/...ip-lounge.html

[maxd]

Free chips with such restrictive rules should NEVER BE APPLIED TO AN EXISTING BALANCE, but ONLY to a ZERO balance.

No arguements there: if the player suffers for being given 'free' chips without their consent then they obviously aren't being done much of a favour.

[GrandMaster]

eCogra are ruling based on the LETTER of the T & C, and in this respect are correct, but they are completely failing to take into account the way the casino put the player in this position in the first place.

Ecogra requirement 113.R.4:
Terms and conditions applicable to promotional activities shall be clearly displayed and shall not be unreasonably altered subsequent to the wagering activity.

This should be enforced on the casino with equal vigour.