[ROGUE] HippoJo Casino - Five weeks and still waiting for payment

[dancinggoon]

Im still missing 1000euro from them...

[vinylweatherman]

If anyone else is thinking of starting up with RTG - forget it

If a group of well respected industry stalwarts from Australia can make such a mess and then stonewall any attempts at an explanation, how will the next new RTG casino expect to draw in those first players. Players who have seen this unfold will just wait for someone else to be first, and if everybody did that there would be no chance for the business.

The time for pretending this is all a "technical issue" are long gone, something has clearly gone wrong, and coming clean voluntarily will look a good deal better than having the truth dragged out bit by bit.

[ugaboga]

Originally Posted by vinylweatherman

If anyone else is thinking of starting up with RTG - forget it

If a group of well respected industry stalwarts from Australia can make such a mess and then stonewall any attempts at an explanation, how will the next new RTG casino expect to draw in those first players. Players who have seen this unfold will just wait for someone else to be first, and if everybody did that there would be no chance for the business.

The time for pretending this is all a "technical issue" are long gone, something has clearly gone wrong, and coming clean voluntarily will look a good deal better than having the truth dragged out bit by bit.

Yes and this group from Australia were very reputable indeed. They had worked on several projects for the Queensland government.

[lojo]

Do you suppose they didn't have proper exclusions in place and got hit by a bonus syndicate, or were just underfunded and some smashing wins came in..? speculation at best, but it boggles the mind to try to imagine (without thinking of chicanery as a reason) what could have gone wrong.

[ugaboga]

I really don't know who was financing the operation. I do however know of Four Monkeys, which I assume were handling customer service and other operation departments of the casino.

They indeed are a reputable outfit and have handled several government tenders as I said earlier. They were also at the forefront of Australia's first regulated online casino, which was launched by the Queensland state government.

Their website is - http://www.fourmonkeys.com.au/4m/index.html

Maybe the day to day operations management was outsourced to Four Monkeys, but as for the key people behind the operation... I'm just not sure. Maybe Bryan can elaborate.

In regards to why it all went downhill, I mean any online casino outfit which is just starting should expect to be in the red for at least the first 4-6 months. Unless everyone was playing $100 per spin and hitting the highest payline, I cannot believe they did not forecast correctly and didn't not have enough funds stashed away to cover players. You cannot start an online casino without decent cash reserves!!

[GrandMaster]

Originally Posted by ugaboga

Maybe the day to day operations management was outsourced to Four Monkeys,

Or there was a misunderstanding and it was outsourced to four monkeys instead.

[liquuid_fusion]

Originally Posted by lojo

Do you suppose they didn't have proper exclusions in place and got hit by a bonus syndicate, or were just underfunded and some smashing wins came in..? speculation at best, but it boggles the mind to try to imagine (without thinking of chicanery as a reason) what could have gone wrong.

They were probably underfunded considering it was a brand new casino and they were emailing out some rather large bonuses just before they stopped paying. Whoever was funding the casino might have pulled the plug once they realised how much it was costing them!

Four Monkeys has apparantly only been a registered company since Mid-2006.

[jetset]

I'm reaching the end of my patience with these folks, and will shortly disclose full details on the individuals involved, but for the information of those players who remain unpaid:

After numerous attempts I finally received a response from one of the management team at Trustbond (something of a misnomer as things have turned out).

In what I am interpreting as a stalling tactic she told me that Hippo Jo has experienced server problems which are being addressed. In my opinion this is BS, and does not in any case explain players' emails being ignored, slow-pays and part-pays...and continuing to accept deposits when players are not being paid.

She also advised that the main manager behind this, whose identity I will also disclose shortly, has been incommunicado for the past four weeks with a terminally ill father who has since passed away. This has been confirmed through another source but still does not explain the lack of integrity vis-a-vis players who have been trying to get paid for a lot longer than four weeks.

Since then - nothing - and no attempt was made to answer my direct questions as to the identity of the money behind Hippo Jo or opening a dialogue to get players paid.

I hope Bryan's queries with RTG produce a better result than I am currently achieving, although I am still plugging away at this.

In the meantime, if you have a case against Hippo Jo please ensure that you PAB so we have some idea of the scale of the problem here.

[lojo]

This is an instance where, because the principles are principled, a chunk of change with total managerial control, could go a long way... and it may happen if RTG grows a gonad and starts backing up their product.

Most of us can do math... how bad could it be? House edge minus overhead = eventual profit.

F*cking bonuses.

[ugaboga]

Originally Posted by jetset

In what I am interpreting as a stalling tactic she told me that Hippo Jo has experienced server problems which are being addressed. In my opinion this is BS, and does not in any case explain players' emails being ignored, slow-pays and part-pays...and continuing to accept deposits when players are not being paid.

How long as their site been down? I'd site one week plus, easily. Now what kind of IT staff do they have working of them? Hippos and monkeys?

No matter what the issue with their server was, even if it had blown up, it would take only a few hours to setup a new server with tape backups.

Even if an international sea cable was cut by an anchor, it would take 2 days max to resolve... Server problems, lame excuse...