My GoWild ordeal

[FourTeller]

About two months back, I signed up at GoWild Casino through another site offering a free no deposit bonus. Went to claim it through live chat and all seemed to be proceeding as normal - barring the overenthusiastic rep with her 'dears' and exclamation marks and smilies - until she stated that I had to provide verification documents in order to be credited the bonus. Mind you, this is not exactly a staggering offer to begin with but an amount of less than US $20 with standard site wagering requirements.

Immediately smelling a rat, I asked the chat rep named Gia (it stuck but not for good reasons) if I was specifically being singled out for some reason but she denied it and basically claimed it was routine procedure Quite irritated at this point, I signed off and essentially decided to hell with this casino - there are so many other sites out there where I do not have to jump through hoops just to receive a modest freebie that I may not even complete the WR on, let alone get to withdraw.

Several days later, however, I relented as I was in the mood to play at MG but was not having much luck with those I already frequented - plus I was short of funds Part of me still resented what I cosidered a completely unnecessary imposition but I grudgingly sent my passport and bank account scans. Shortly afterwards, I decided to log into GoWild and play a free tourny or two while I waited for a response and the bonus to be credited - only to find that it had been locked without any prior warning whatsoever.

It is from this point onwards that things truly went downhill A quick live chat confirmed what I was already convinced of: 'dear' Gia lied earlier about why I was being asked for ID documents. Apparently I was under suspicion of attempted fraud by opening multiple accounts, yet the chat rep couldn't specify the exact offence - trying to claim the no deposit bonus twice and being signed up to a sister site (of which she could only name one i.e. GoWild Poker) were both mentioned.

Repeated emails (at least four) to GoWild support and other addresses on their website all bounced back over a three day period. So much for sending verification scans when they don't even have a working email address Another live chat wasn't much help but I eventually got a contact with a slightly different domain and finally, a week after my first message, I got a brief reply confirming my documents had been received forwarded to the finance department.

Another week passed with no word of my GoWild account status so, seeking an update, I went to live chat for the fourth time in this sorry saga... And who should I find but the one who started it all Actually, this time around I couldn't find much fault with Gia but, as far as I was concerned, the downward spiral started from our first interaction and the damage was irreversible. Anyway, she just repeated what the last email stated and told me to return in the morning when the finance team would be in.

Let me state that by this point I was no longer interested in the bonus that had originally led me to sign up at this casino. In fact, I did not see myself ever depositing under any circumstances. My main goal now was to disprove the multi-accounting accusation against me and to uncover the basis for it in the first place because I have only ever deliberately and knowingly signed up at GoWild the one occasion. So I returned to live chat for the last time and this is how it went:

info: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
info: You are now chatting with 'Claire'
Claire: Hi Xxxx, welcome to GoWild
Xxxx: When will I ever find out if my documents have been verified and my account reinstated?
Claire: Xxxx, please allow me couple of moments to check everything for you
Claire: Xxxx, I have spoke to my finance department now on behalf of your matter and I'm sorry to tell you your account has not been approved for play
Claire: At our terms and conditions web page you have a part where it is stated next: 11.1 GoWild has the right to terminate Services or suspend your account if it believes you are in breach of these Terms of Service.
Xxxx: What terms have I suposedly breached?
Claire: Terms & Conditions link
Claire: Our system has detected that multiple accounts are being used from the same address
Claire: If you would like to know more details, I would like you to contact our finance department via e-mail
Claire: finance@gowildcasino.com
Xxxx: I've had so much trouble with email previously
Xxxx: Plus if the decision had already been made, why wasn't I informed?
Xxxx: Why don't you instruct them to email me right now with the full reasoning and supposed proof against me?
Xxxx: Because I still maintain I have never before opened a GoWild account
Xxxx: I have signed up and played at many casinos and poker rooms over the years and never once have I been barred
Claire: I will speak on behalf of you with them and tell them to contact you via e-mail ASAP
Xxxx: Wouldnt that have been common sense though?
Xxxx: After all the hassle I've already been through?
Xxxx: Why would you people just keep me deliberately hanging each and every time?
Claire: I'm very sorry you feel that way Xxxx
Claire: The best I can for you is to speak to them in your name
Xxxx: Fine, I'll hope to hear from someone by email but the only messages I've ever gotten are the original registration email and one confirming my documents were finally received after they had been bouncing for a week
Xxxx: I just don't understand how a casino I'd read many good things about could treat me so shabbily
Claire: Hope this will resolve in your advantage
Xxxx: Even if I was indeed a cheat and a fraud as suspected, why would you never even send an email explaining the situation?
info: Your chat transcript will be sent to xxxxxx@xxxxxx.com at the end of your chat.

The chat ended abruptly because I simply couldn't take any more.

Over the course of this whole mess I experienced a wide range of emotions: anticipation at the opportunity to play and maybe win; disbelief at being unable to; skepticism of the chat rep; resignation at finally complying with a dubious demand; annoyance at being locked out; anger at finding out why; doubt over whether I could unknowingly be guilty; determination to prove I was not; frustration at being unable to send my docs; bewilderment over the lack of response...

Ending with apathy. When I concluded the final chat session, I decided that I had had enough of GoWild and it was not worth the effort and time I had spent for approximately three weeks. After all, I had not spent a single cent there or even played any games, free or otherwise, so had no outstanding financial stake there. It wasn't worth it to try and contact them again when they were barely ever bothered to contact me. Even posting about the whole experience took a backseat to other matters.

However, I saw a thread by someone seemingly puzzled as to why this casino is not highly esteemed by Casinomeister and was finally prompted to respond. While mine is not the most horrific or woeful casino-related story ever told, it undoubtedly ranks as the worst customer service experience I have ever had - bar none. Seriously, I have had much better encounters at a couple of rogue casinos (yes, I knew what I was getting into) that are totally despised here. Finally, I have yet to receive that email from GoWild's finance department - or anyone else - explaining why my account was and remains closed... But I'm certainly not holding my breath until its estimated arrival time of never.

[Cant_Get_Right]

This place isn't right! There has been problems with this place for a while.

[Mavin1]

About two months back, I signed up at GoWild Casino through another site offering a free no deposit bonus. Went to claim it through live chat and all seemed to be proceeding as normal - barring the overenthusiastic rep with her 'dears' and exclamation marks and smilies - until she stated that I had to provide verification documents in order to be credited the bonus. Mind you, this is not exactly a staggering offer to begin with but an amount of less than US $20 with standard site wagering requirements.

It is my opinion if a casino requires documents in order to receive a free chip to test them out, this is a big turn off. They do not need anything from a player unless the player after testing decides to continue and deposit with a casino, so you the player are not obligated to give them anything, if they insist, then you are also not obligated to deal with them.

Also there have been several casinos that I have discovered as having more than one account with through live or phone chats, I simply asked if they could delete the old account as I forgot about it and didn't use it anyways and they always have, gladly. I have not been blocked or locked for this reason.

There are many good casinos that don't make a wade through so much garbage just to try them out. Just as there are many good casinos that are more than happy to work with their players to help get things in order.

These are just some of the good things a reputable casino will do for it's clients.

[kakata]

There are many good casinos that don't make a wade through so much garbage just to try them out. Just as there are many good casinos that are more than happy to work with their players to help get things in order.


many?are you sure?

[thebizb]

I've never had a problem here before, i receive my requested withdraws about 24hrs after requesting and when i sent my docs to be verified it took them 30 mins to do it. Sucks though what you've gone through.. i'd move on if it ever happened to me.

[chayton]

Not that I'm a huge fan of GoWild or anything - I do have an account but I don't play there very often. But if any casino is offering a free chip to new players and they have reason to believe that someone from the same computer/address already received and played the free chip, I can see the point they're making. Most casinos would give the chip, then hit the player for ID and/or lock the account when they try to cash out.

To the OP - IMO the point you should be most concerned about is the lockout/player fraud accusation. You wasted some time and got frustrated, but you're not out any money, you didn't play for hours to meet WR and THEN get your account locked, so really what did you lose? You didn't get a free chip, big whoop - GoWild has a max cashout on free chips anyhow.

But being accused of player fraud is serious business, and it's something you should try very hard to clear up or it may come back and bite you somewhere down the line. There have been rumors - albiet hotly denied - of a casino blacklist, and if those rumors have any basis in fact, you may find casino security breathing down your neck no matter where you play. Not that there actually *IS* a blacklist. But maybe there is.

[Mavin1]

There are many good casinos that don't make a wade through so much garbage just to try them out. Just as there are many good casinos that are more than happy to work with their players to help get things in order.


many?are you sure?

Depends on ones definition of many, could mean a couple, a few or several to some, many to others.
My personal disclaimer....

[FourTeller]

It is my opinion if a casino requires documents in order to receive a free chip to test them out, this is a big turn off. They do not need anything from a player unless the player after testing decides to continue and deposit with a casino, so you the player are not obligated to give them anything, if they insist, then you are also not obligated to deal with them.

This is exactly how I felt upon the verification issue first being brought up under these specific circumstances. I could understand them being particularly diligent about investigating customers beforehand if the free chip was of a higher value or had very low/no WR but that was no really the case here. What started out as a quest for some cheap entertainment instead turned into a chore, rather defeating the purpose of me being enticed to play there on the house and perhaps enjoying it enough to become a depositor. Plus I don't like sending sensitive personal data unless and until it is absolutely necessary.

There are many good casinos that don't make a wade through so much garbage just to try them out. Just as there are many good casinos that are more than happy to work with their players to help get things in order.

Exactly, which is why I ultimately decided my focus was better off directed elsewhere.

[FourTeller]

...if any casino is offering a free chip to new players and they have reason to believe that someone from the same computer/address already received and played the free chip, I can see the point they're making. Most casinos would give the chip, then hit the player for ID and/or lock the account when they try to cash out.

Yes and with good rationale because until the withdrawal stage, a free chip is essentially a win-win proposition for both parties. The casino has hooked a new customer into trying out their product/services and the player gets the chance to win some free money without spending any of their own, or at least a few minutes/hours of entertainment in pursuit of that goal. In my case, I never even got around to opening up a single game so, unike the vast majority of users with a beef against a particular establishment, I didn't even get to sample what GoWild was offering.

To the OP - IMO the point you should be most concerned about is the lockout/player fraud accusation. You wasted some time and got frustrated, but you're not out any money, you didn't play for hours to meet WR and THEN get your account locked, so really what did you lose? You didn't get a free chip, big whoop - GoWild has a max cashout on free chips anyhow.

But being accused of player fraud is serious business, and it's something you should try very hard to clear up or it may come back and bite you somewhere down the line. There have been rumors - albiet hotly denied - of a casino blacklist, and if those rumors have any basis in fact, you may find casino security breathing down your neck no matter where you play. Not that there actually *IS* a blacklist. But maybe there is.

This is precisely why I pursued the matter for almost three weeks, but what am I supposed to do when the charges being levelled against me are poorly defined and GoWild never even attempts to address me directly about them? Notice that for the entirety of this saga I only ever dealt firsthand with live chat reps, who are basically IMO at the very bottom of the customer service ladder. Naturally the responses I got from them were usually conflicting and vague at best. The person or people who could give me clear answers were not clearly identified and never reachable from my end.

Email, which is my preferred means of dealing with casinos, proved to be a stumbling block in this case as most of my messages were returned as undeliverable. Clearly there was a technical problem with their system lasting at least 3-4 days (saw in another thread that someone went through the same thing) and, quite frankly, that is inexcusable for an organization in this type of business. Even then, when I finally did get a response and it was clear the GoWild finance/security people knew of my issue and the fact that I eagerly awaited a response, none was forthcoming.

Understand that I have been in the online game for many years now (since 2005) and have dealt with numerous poker rooms and casino over that time. The vast majority of them I've had no problems with but, inevitably, there has been the occasional dispute involving bonus or withdrawal issues. In fact, I had one incident early on involving a similar accusation - except I had already reached the cashout stage and actually got an email with some specifics about the situation, which was eventually resolved in my favour (but I never returned to the site in question).

Basically, I have signed up and played at many places before, during and after this GoWild mess and can honestly state that this is an isolated and unique case based on how it was dealt with or, more accurately, not. Whatever information they have in their 'system' implicating me in multiaccounting has not prevented me from registering and playing - with bonuses - at a few other Microgaming casinos since then. Over the years I have always been careful about following protocol, reading tedious T&Cs etc. and - while I may have exploited the odd loophole when bonus whoring* - have never intentionally broken any gaming site rules.


*An increasingly difficult and less profitable venture nowadays to the point where I hardly consider myself still in the practice. However, while I have been a bonus whore and proud of it, I have never been an abuser i.e. done multiple signups, made prohibited bets to clear WR, used bots or gnomes etc. Whatever most casinos (including those on here) or the odd poker room (less of an issue) try to claim, playing a bonus profitably while following the stated general terms and promotional rules does not automatically make one an 'abuser'.

[Floyd GoWild]

Hi Everyone,

Before my response allow me to express that I was shocked by the title of this thread and really thought that something went terribly wrong but as far as I went into the case; reading the thread comprehensively, investigating every person that had a touch to this issue and reviewing the talked account, I found that the people here at GoWild did their job correctly and I will explain why I think so:


Fourteller opened an account at GoWild casino and was welcomed instantly by one of our representatives, GoWild security team have found that an account was already opened from the exact same place and on the exact same day (I will not get into the exact details for privacy and security). These accounts were opened from a country that barely send any players to GoWild, it was very suspicious to see 2 accounts from the same place opened at the same day trying to claim our free welcome bonus. As a part of our security detection routine, the mentioned account was locked and never opened again.

We believe ourselves to be fair and open minded, so we asked for documents (this is our normal procedure in such cases of duplicate info in more than 1 account and obviously for legit accounts, bonuses are issued instantly and without any requests whatsoever!!) in order to examine whether it is possible to approve this account after all. Yet we have received no documents up until two weeks later and once we have, we took our right to keep this account locked, which is also our obligation.

In regards to the accusation that our Emails are not working: The email responses that were sent to us by Fourteller were showing, without a doubt, that the message was not delivered to GoWild at all (the email provider response was pasted in one of the chats with our representatives). The accusation should be pointed to the Email service provider and not addressed aggressively over the Casino live chat towards the representatives (who are amazing and polite, it is not wrong to be polite when you give service!), after checking the information gathered including the documents that were finally sent to us, our security team decided not to reopen the account. this is a procedure that we are obligated to pursuit moreover, our system is efficient and we put efforts and money in it to prevent the situation of a winner cant get paid (again, by law) for all sorts of security and sometimes even fraud reasons. Ours and every other online casino's terms of use clearly states that only one account per house hold is allowed to be opened.

Thank you all for making it a healthy debate;

here are my comments:

FourTeller -
I personally resent your attitude towards the online representatives and the way you describe them on the thread, the fact that you are a bit angry regardless if it is justified or not, doesn't change the fact that when someone do his/her job they do it right and give 100% good service as you received throughout all your chats with the GoWild representatives. I can understand your feelings and I am always open to the possibility that even when things looks 100% right, in rare cases it could be wrong, yet you are stressing the truth in such demagogic way that you make it seem like this is not the case,
Here are some examples to what I mean:
"arring the overenthusiastic rep with her 'dears' and exclamation marks and smilies" - "his is not exactly a staggering offer to begin with" - "Immediately smelling a rat" - "dear' Gia lied earlier" - "not worth the effort and time I had spent for approximately three weeks" - " I have had much better encounters at a couple of rogue casinos" - "Repeated emails (at least four) to GoWild support and other addresses on their website all bounced back" etc...

Now, the most amazing thing is that this thread was opened yesterday when your account was opened at 2/13/2010 11:18:26 PM - over two month ago, yet you seem to be very much into details remember exactly what you did, how you felt and what happened even though you mention throughout the post how insignificant all that was and still is and how GoWild is the worst place to go, I dont say it is not possible, I just say all the pieces of this puzzle doesn't fit together.

other than this, GoWild has no sister casinos and during all communications no one ever mentioned the word fraud except yourself.

To conclude, I think that during the two month you have waited you could send me a PM or a complaint Email to GoWild and try to see if there is a solution for you, the fact that you didn't just makes me feel that this post is insincere and used to serve a certain agenda, I apologize if I am wrong.

Cant Get_Right - can you please explain or give examples for your argument?

Mavin1 - I agree that the free bonus shouldn't be attached to sending a document or registering a credit card..etc.. and in fact at GoWild, legit accounts (which are the majority or new accounts opened) are getting their bonus right away! cases such as this (violation of terms) will never receive a bonus as they cannot deposit or be paid.

thebizb - What you describe is how things normally go at GoWild, usually the good experiences are not being mentioned and thank you for sharing yours.

chayton - We have never mentioned the word fraud and the violation of our terms is clear, yet not considered to be a crime and all we did is keeping the account closed, FourTeller would not be able to use it for depositing or withdrawing.



Once again thank you all, as always I am available for you at all times

Yours,

Floyd W.
GoWild Gaming