Strange case

[rainmaker]

My case of the day

This is about Betsafe.com. Great casino, but they messed up my account last year.

I played some at Betsafe last year. Deposited $5-6000 or something. Closed my account because I wanted to use a different casino. I don't like to use many different casinos at the same time (max 2-3 active accounts). Anyway, I wanted to re-open my account later that year. They told me "no". They said that I had excluded myself from gambling at their casino. I have never asked for self-exclusion at their casino, so that was obviously wrong. I did not use any energy to argue. Shame on them anyway.

But I suddently received a SMS and a mail from them yesterday (this case is a bit old so I had forgotten the whole thing). "we are very sorry, it has obviously been a mistake regarding your account and our self-exclusion program please contact us". I did contact them and they apologized for the inconvenience, re-opened my account and gave me about $200.

I thought it was a bit funny that they contacted me after so many months and finally told me that they had messed up the whole thing.

[jstrike]

Hard to say what's going on there, but just to take a guess based on how my own coding works -- I have a general ban system. Bans on players are stored in a database with a player ID, a written explanation, an explanation for the player, and a timestamp when the ban will end. If there's no timestamp then the ban is considered permanent. The only time we would use a timestamp is if the player self-excluded for a temporary period of time. But this database holds all kinds of bans, not just self-exclusions. It also holds bans imposed by casino staff and automatic bans triggered by the software if it detects a hacking attempt.

One thing the ban table does not include is closed accounts that ar not the result of bans; but I could imagine someone designing their database that way and being sorry about it later. When we close an account where no ban is requested, we do not totally delete the player from the database. We simply disable the account. The reason for this is that for complete historical records, we need to be able to keep a record of every player at every table -- which would be meaningless if more than one "blank" player were in the record. ("blank folded, blank raised, etc, isn't very useful if you need to get hand histories). But we don't want or need to show that the player was banned. So when we disable an account without banning, we simply un-verify and change the password. My guess would be that their system works somewhat similarly to this, i.e. they never delete accounts and that all types of bans are stored in a single database table, whether they're self-exclusion bans or not...but that their software was probably adding an unnecessary ban when they disabled an account...or that they used to have some policy where any account closure was considered a self-exclusion. They probably put it together after awhile that this wasn't supposed to be happening, and then went back in their email and found other cases where they told players they were self-excluded when they really weren't.

Just a theory...

[refre]

Great casino really, I cut down on my play with them though after they stopped doing weekend withdrawals.

If they sort that out, and introduce a proper loyalty program, they will be one of the best casinos out there.

Freddy

[petro]

If they said sorry with a $200 chip to me I would be most forgiving.

[rainmaker]

Good reply jstrike, as always

In my case, I think there has been a manuel error. The CS has probably excluded me instead of "just" deactivate my account. An honest mistake.

I agree refre. I actually closed my account because I thought they had a very bad loyalty program. This was also the reason I gave to them for closing my account, so a bit strange that they thought it was self-exclusion. But anyway, they are one of the best casinos available.

Yes, $200 was a nice gesture petro