Casino 33 - Leave me alone!!

[skiny]

I haven't owned a cell phone in many years. I quit carrying one because for some reason all my phone calls were delayed until I was two spots back from the cashier and I was carrying a quart of milk in one hand, a can of chili in the other and a bag of potato chips under my arm. But that's another story.

I notice some casino applications have the cell phone number marked as a required field rather than the home phone. I'm assuming this is because they're worried you'll be out on the highway somewhere when they call to verify your account and feel the best time for you to be rhyming off your date of birth and home address is the same time you're making a lane change in heavy traffic.

Personally I just put my home phone number in the required cell phone field and keep some wav files on my computer of car horns and such in case they get suspicious that my telephone might have a cord on it anchoring me to the living room wall.

[vinylweatherman]

Well, you obviously have it out for me.

This player either registered and forgot, or someone else used his email....

"Cold calling with a computer" is not what we do...

Well, in the initial issue, THIS was the explanation given to the complainant by your support as to why they kept receiving the "silent calls".

Tonight, there was a news item on these systems, and it described them EXACTLY as I had earlier, which explains also why "silent calls" are generated by the system.

The news item indicated that the current fine of £50,000 for generating excessive "silent calls" from using these systems was to INCREASE because there had been a steady INCREASE in complaints in the last year, and it was thought that £50,000 was not an effective deterrent. THIS is how SERIOUSLY the regulators treat this issue.
To ENSURE that such "silent" calls are not generated is simple, make certain that there is an operator your end available to take each call BEFORE the system dials out. The problem is that many companies cut costs by hiring too few operators to cope with situations where a larger than expected number of outward calls are picked up by the recipient, rather than left to "ring out". This could also be viewed as programming the system to dial out too quickly for the staffing levels to cope with.
"Cold Calling" is a term to describe a call that comes "out of the blue", and is aimed at selling a product or a service. The calls objected to fit this description, they are designed to sell a deposit bonus, or the idea of logging in to play a free chip (with the intent that the player might be more likely to deposit than had they not been enticed to log in with a free chip).

The other issue is with the frequency of the calls, and the seeming inability of sales staff to take "NO" for an answer, which results in further calls being received, which are perceived by the recipient as unwanted, since they have already said "NO".

Whilst this issue may be resolved for the original complainant, it has revealed what looks like a "hard sell" environment when it comes to enciting players to deposit. This is not something that we should be seeing in the GAMBLING business, where the emphasis should be on responsible gambling, and "problem" gamblers do NOT need the "hard sell", and there is even the risk that this will encourage others to play with more than they can afford because of the persistence of the calls.

If there is NO computerised system in use, I look forward to an alternative explanation as to how a non-computerised system can produce 4 silent calls to a single player, and then one connected one; and how it seemingly runs like clockwork on a 2 hour cycle going through the same set of numbers.