Resolved deucebag vs Videoslots

deucebag

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So I received an email a month ago about a reload bonus at Videoslots.com, a Microgaming casino. I made a deposit of 200 and recieved a bonus of 100. Being an Experienced Casinomeister member :D, I know the importance of reading the terms and conditions every time. So I did, and nothing had changed since last time I played there. I took note of the fact that they still had a stupid bet size restriction of max 10% of deposited amount:


VideoslotsbonusabusetermsDec.jpg



I made sure I stayed within the rules throughout the excessive wagering requirment (and beyond). I had some good hits, and requested a withdrawal of about €3900.

A few days later, I was notified that my withdrawal had been denied:


According to our terms and conditions you are not allowed to bet more than 10% of the bonus amount recieved. At several occassions you bet 16-18% during the bonus qualification.

All winnings are cancelled and the deposited amount has been refunded to your account.


At first I think they've made a mistake, but I check the terms again, and they have rather obvioulsy tacked on another sentence in the relevant paragraph:


VideoslotsbonusabusetermsJan.jpg



The time stamp at the top of the terms page had not been changed though. It remains 2011-06-22:


Videoslotstermsupdatedate.jpg



This leads me to suspect they have not made a mistake, but are deliberately trying to steal my money and changed the terms hoping I had not read them (many players probably don't).

I send a polite email with a link to the cached page, which showed the terms as they were several days after my deposit.

They're still set on keeping my money though, but now quote a different portion of the terms:


“…the Casino reserves the right to withhold cash ins and/or confiscating all winning from a customer when a wager of a single bet consist of the majority of the total available balance and the bonus balance contributing to a significant portion of that balance”


My largest bets were 18, and my starting balance was 300. You don't need a degree in mathematics to calculate that 18 is not the majority of 300.

I point this out to them, but they will no longer respond.

Videoslots.com displays the Ecogra Safe & Fair seal, and I contact Ecogra hoping they can help out with the problem. It turns out that Videoslots.com is not Ecogra approved, they are falsely displaying the Safe & Fair Seal. Ecogra said they would follow up and ask them to remove the seal.

It appears that Videoslots.com is not as quick as one would expect from their quick and easy changes in terms and conditions. They still display the "Safe & Fair" seal.

Videoslots.com is owned by Panda Media Ltd., 17 B Zammit Clapp, St. Julians, STJ 1440, Malta. From what I understand, this is also where they operate from. Strangely, they're not licensed in Malta, but in Curacao. Panda Media also operates Diamondbet, which has a sportsbook from Everymatrix, and casino and poker from Microgaming.

The CEO of the company is a Swede by the name Alexander Stevendahl. Perhaps not his real name; crooks tend not to use their real names.
 
ouch, that's bad, but it's certainly a bigger problem. although not as bad as this one.
the ecogra list is pretty damn short so there's lots of casinos out there who don't have it, including gowild. I have seen enough affiliates out there claim they are ecogra accredited. But at least they didn't claim it on their own site.
anyhow, good luck with your problem.
 
Seems like casinos try to use this max bet bullshit more and more the latest months. I hope microgaming will work hard to keep their good reputation. Things can change quickly in this business.

Ask yourself why casinos don't implement a max bet in the software set to the maximum allowed and also on allowed games only.

Hope it get solved for OP. I think you will get paid in the end.
 
Apart from the blatantly obvious reworded predatory bonus terms here i`m very interested in MGS`s response to a casino using their software and lying about being approved by Ecogra, even though this is not a mandatory condition to use their software, it surely must breach the T&C`s of being granted a licence?, have you informed MGS about this matter?.

Good luck in getting your legit winnings ;).
 
If you can prove without a doubt that the terms were changed AFTER you deposited, then you should PAB as they need to cough up.

The only way they might have you by the bollocks is if your bets ever exceeded 10% of your AVAILABLE balance which is what the last term stipulates. If you were betting $18 when your balance was lower than $180 then you're in strife.

Good reminder for everyone to stick with accredited casinos too.
 
The only way they might have you by the bollocks is if your bets ever exceeded 10% of your AVAILABLE balance which is what the last term stipulates. If you were betting $18 when your balance was lower than $180 then you're in strife.

Same goes if I bet 2 cents when my balance was 3 cents. :rolleyes: They have me by the bollocks alright, but that's because they're a bunch of crooks and have my money, not because they have any right whatsovever.
 
Re "Terms & Conditions".

It's clear that less than reputable operators are pretty much keeping money they don't want to pay out - then hiding behind ambiguous or outright wrong clauses that were either there originally, or they just decide to add in when it suits. The internet is good like that, you just update it and happy days.

At least as it's Microgaming you can go back into your Playcheck and get the EXACT details - if they've not locked your account of course :rolleyes:

It's worrying that so many of these instances are cropping up in such a short space of time...

There's no way all these players are making mistakes - they are getting done over by dodgy operators. Simple as that.
 
It seems obvious that by adding the second term they have made a MAJOR tightening of the restriction, and it does seem to be something done in haste, suggesting they ARE reacting to a large win or two within the terms as they stood, and have added this term after auditing the play from these wins so that they can argue they are voided.

Not changing the date of update may be careless, but may also have been a deliberate attempt to trick players into believing that term was always there, and that they just missed it.

Email support and ask them when this term was added. They will follow the party line and claim it has always been there, and was added on the date specified for last update. If they do this in writing, you have evidence of deliberate intent to screw players, and added to the deliberate misuse of the eCogra seal, this should be enough to PAB and have them considered for entry into the pit, even though they may well stick to their guns and not pay.

They are taking HUGE risks in order to avoid paying what seems to be a legitimate win of 3600, a tiny amount for a Microgaming casino, and out of all proportion to the risks involved in getting found out.

It seems to suggest Microgaming themselves have relaxed their requirements on who can have a license, which damages the credibilty of the whole brand, not just one casino. Faking eCogra accreditation is FRAUD, and it should be treated as such by Microgaming, and their licensing authority.
 
Same goes if I bet 2 cents when my balance was 3 cents. :rolleyes: They have me by the bollocks alright, but that's because they're a bunch of crooks and have my money, not because they have any right whatsovever.

Yes, I agree it is disgraceful.

I assume from this statement that you were in that position i.e. bet more than 10% of your available balance?

It's a crap term, but if you did do that you did actually break the term and they can take your winnings. As I said, I don't agree with the term itself, but if you took the bonus then you accepted it and you have to follow them.

I do hope you get paid.
 
Yes, I agree it is disgraceful.

I assume from this statement that you were in that position i.e. bet more than 10% of your available balance?

It's a crap term, but if you did do that you did actually break the term and they can take your winnings. As I said, I don't agree with the term itself, but if you took the bonus then you accepted it and you have to follow them.

I do hope you get paid.

It's a crap term that appears to have been added AFTER the player won, and deceptively so since the date of last update was NOT changed to reflect the TRUE date this term was brought in. It also seems very specifically designed to void this one player's win, as clearly he didn't break the original term, and as he took a reload bonus, this new term specifically applies this new restriction to reload bonuses, yet curiously NOT to the SUB. This means an existing player ONLY is held to such a draconian tightening, wheras a "bonus hunter" is only held to the original 10% of bonus max bet rule.

All that happened was that he had a "suspiciously high" win of 3700 from a relatively small deposit of 200. His max bet was 18, so OK by the original term, so they added a new term that made the max bet 10 instead of 20, and retrospectively applied it. It makes one wonder that if his max bet had been 8, they would have made the new term 5% of bonus instead of 10%, as the aim is to avoid paying out 3700 from a 200 deposit.
 
It makes one wonder that if his max bet had been 8, they would have made the new term 5% of bonus instead of 10%, as the aim is to avoid paying out 3700 from a 200 deposit.

Exactly... That's what is going on here and across other complaints. They are making it up as they go along to avoid paying out. Cash flow/Bad Management whatever - that's the deal. 1 in 10 or less will find a place like this to complain about it... Frightening to think how many people get ripped off in this way and nobody ever finds out.
 
It's a crap term that appears to have been added AFTER the player won, and deceptively so since the date of last update was NOT changed to reflect the TRUE date this term was brought in. It also seems very specifically designed to void this one player's win, as clearly he didn't break the original term, and as he took a reload bonus, this new term specifically applies this new restriction to reload bonuses, yet curiously NOT to the SUB. This means an existing player ONLY is held to such a draconian tightening, wheras a "bonus hunter" is only held to the original 10% of bonus max bet rule.

All that happened was that he had a "suspiciously high" win of 3700 from a relatively small deposit of 200. His max bet was 18, so OK by the original term, so they added a new term that made the max bet 10 instead of 20, and retrospectively applied it. It makes one wonder that if his max bet had been 8, they would have made the new term 5% of bonus instead of 10%, as the aim is to avoid paying out 3700 from a 200 deposit.

The only term added afterwards was the 10% of the bonus rule.

The other rule below was already there and they are using this rule to deny winnings:

the Casino reserves the right to withhold cash ins and/or confiscating all winning from a customer when a wager of a single bet consist of the majority of the total available balance and the bonus balance contributing to a significant portion of that balance”

It's not any better, but it gives them more leeway.

Also, how do you know they added the term afterwards? The wayback machine doesn't have anything. Did you take a screenshot? Is it possible you may have missed the term? Unfortunately it is your word against theirs so it doesn't look good for you.
 
So I received an email a month ago about a reload bonus at Videoslots.com, a Microgaming casino. I made a deposit of 200 and recieved a bonus of 100. Being an Experienced Casinomeister member :D, I know the importance of reading the terms and conditions every time. So I did, and nothing had changed since last time I played there. I took note of the fact that they still had a stupid bet size restriction of max 10% of deposited amount:


VideoslotsbonusabusetermsDec.jpg


The deposited amount was 200. That figure can't change once the deposit has been made. So the highest bet size allowed is 20.

This is not disputed by the casino.

They are infact trying to rely on the 10% bonus term which according to the OP was added later. It's the second term they are claiming he broke, not the first.

This looks like a new low for teh industry.
 
The only term added afterwards was the 10% of the bonus rule.

The other rule below was already there and they are using this rule to deny winnings:

the Casino reserves the right to withhold cash ins and/or confiscating all winning from a customer when a wager of a single bet consist of the majority of the total available balance and the bonus balance contributing to a significant portion of that balance”

It's not any better, but it gives them more leeway.

Also, how do you know they added the term afterwards? The wayback machine doesn't have anything. Did you take a screenshot? Is it possible you may have missed the term? Unfortunately it is your word against theirs so it doesn't look good for you.

The OP supplied a screenshot of the terms page without this term, and then with. I am assuming he is being honest about the timings.

The "majority of balance" term isn't even on the page, even though the casino are now using this to further justify confisactation of winnings. If present, why was this term NOT with the other 4, or is it there NOW:rolleyes:


The wayback machine supplies dated snapshots, not a continuous history, but this can often be enough. All that is needed is a snapshot taken after the player deposited showing the term was not present, and a later snapshot of it's first archived appearance. This at least gives us an interval during which the term was added.

A snapshot of an archived page with the SAME date of last update, but without this new term, is also evidence of rogue practice as it indicates trickery on the part of the casino, in effect an attempt to alter history to argue the term was "always there".

They know they can get away with it because of lack of regulation, but they want to appear legitimate in their actions in order to prevent them from being blacklisted on the internet for rogue behaviour. There are two issues at stake, one is confiscating these winnings, the other is allowing them to get away with it through trickery, rather than honesty.

Had they put an honest date of update on the site when they amended this term, it would be a matter of finding out whether the player played before or after this date. Now it looks like the casino is trying to pull the wool, and has something to hide over this whole affair.
 
The date of last update is now yesterday, but the bonus terms are unaltered from the state of having the additional 10% of bonus term.

It looks like they slipped this one in VERY recently indeed, but when the OP looked, they had yet to complete the change by adding the new "last updated on" date.

The WR is indeed HUGE.

On the bonus in question, 200 for 100, the WR on slots would have been 35x300. A standard MGS casino would set it at 30x100 on slots, a significant difference. There are also a few non MGS slots present, but the majority of games is MGS. The first Video Slot is the 300 Shields, clearly NOT a Microgaming product.

This suggests they use the new multi-supplier platform (Quickfire?), but have taken mostly Microgaming games.

They are licensed in Malta, a suitable venue for pulling any kind of trickery on players.

I suspect they DID use the 10% of bonus term, and only shifted to the more vague "substantial part of bonus" rule when doubt emerged about whether the 10% of bonus term was actually present when the OP won.


Despite having edited the website yesterday, they are STILL falsely displaying the eCogra "safe and fair" seal. It would appear they are ignoring eCogra's request to remove it. The ONLY certificate they have from eCogra is an audited payout report, which appears if you click on the seal. I think they have had to muck around with the code in order to show the wrong seal to players, as I am sure that if eCogra supplied a block of HTML to insert the payout verification into the site, it would have produced the correct seal.

It's the same with affiliates, they can get a block of HTML to insert a banner and it's tracking link into their site. If they want to show the wrong banner, they have to mess with this HTML, rather than use it as supplied. Therefore, it has to be a deliberate act when this kind of thing happens.
 
Yes, I agree it is disgraceful.

I assume from this statement that you were in that position i.e. bet more than 10% of your available balance?

It's a crap term, but if you did do that you did actually break the term and they can take your winnings. As I said, I don't agree with the term itself, but if you took the bonus then you accepted it and you have to follow them.

I do hope you get paid.

I haven't checked whether I ever bet 50% or more of the balance I had in the account at the time, because I don't think it's reasonable to interpret the rule to mean that (it would not be a valid, legally enforcable term), and I don't think Videoslots.com intended it to mean that untill they went over their terms looking for an excuse. Why did they go through the trouble of changing the terms and use the revised terms as an excuse intially? It was only after I showed them my proof that they had changed the terms that they came up with the second excuse.

All that happened was that he had a "suspiciously high" win of 3700 from a relatively small deposit of 200. His max bet was 18, so OK by the original term, so they added a new term that made the max bet 10 instead of 20, and retrospectively applied it. It makes one wonder that if his max bet had been 8, they would have made the new term 5% of bonus instead of 10%, as the aim is to avoid paying out 3700 from a 200 deposit.

It's seems obvious to me that they are dead-set on not paying and will grasp at any excuse.

Exactly... That's what is going on here and across other complaints. They are making it up as they go along to avoid paying out. Cash flow/Bad Management whatever - that's the deal. 1 in 10 or less will find a place like this to complain about it... Frightening to think how many people get ripped off in this way and nobody ever finds out.

The funny thing is that this bonus was pretty bad. 90xbonus and only 50%. With such bad bonuses it shouldn't be necessary to have such extremely restrictive terms as max bet of 10% of bonus or deposit. The bonus is way below average, but the terms are stricter than average. I suspect this casino is another case of an underfunded Mickey Mouse operation that doesn't understand a thing about running a casino.

Also, how do you know they added the term afterwards? The wayback machine doesn't have anything. Did you take a screenshot? Is it possible you may have missed the term? Unfortunately it is your word against theirs so it doesn't look good for you.

I have a screenshot yes, and I emailed them a link to the google cache page (which I also have saved). The google cache page showed the terms as they were a few days aftermy deposit. (Google cache (and other search engine caches) will show the pages as they were when the search engine last crawled the page, which is anywhere from a few hours to days or weeks ago.)
 
I haven't checked whether I ever bet 50% or more of the balance I had in the account at the time, because I don't think it's reasonable to interpret the rule to mean that (it would not be a valid, legally enforcable term), and I don't think Videoslots.com intended it to mean that untill they went over their terms looking for an excuse. Why did they go through the trouble of changing the terms and use the revised terms as an excuse intially? It was only after I showed them my proof that they had changed the terms that they came up with the second excuse.



It's seems obvious to me that they are dead-set on not paying and will grasp at any excuse.



The funny thing is that this bonus was pretty bad. 90xbonus and only 50%. With such bad bonuses it shouldn't be necessary to have such extremely restrictive terms as max bet of 10% of bonus or deposit. The bonus is way below average, but the terms are stricter than average. I suspect this casino is another case of an underfunded Mickey Mouse operation that doesn't understand a thing about running a casino.



I have a screenshot yes, and I emailed them a link to the google cache page (which I also have saved). The google cache page showed the terms as they were a few days aftermy deposit. (Google cache (and other search engine caches) will show the pages as they were when the search engine last crawled the page, which is anywhere from a few hours to days or weeks ago.)

...but you took it anyway.

You must have had some doubts about their integrity as you took the screenshot as though you expected something to go wrong.

It's a Microgaming Flash casino, and all MGS casinos have the option to play with Flash. There had to be others offering a similar bonus with only 30xB as WR, and a more relaxed 25% to 30% of bonus max bet.

Perhaps you felt the risk was minimal since it was Microgaming, and they don't give a license to "just anyone".

It seems that MGS are no longer quite so careful, and that the lower class operations are now able to get hold of MGS licenses. This is not the first time trust in MGS has turned out to have been misplaced. We had Golden Lounge pulling similar stunts, and Nedplay taking ages to pay players. It DID turn out that in both cases the casinos were more or less bust, and 32Red took them over. Villento and Minivegas were giving players the runaround, and they then got swallowed up by Casino Rewards.

It is therefore possible that this casino does not have deep pockets, and that saving on a 3700 payout IS significant for them.

It is still the wrong way to go about it. It looks like they decided not to pay, and then went through the terms looking for a reason. The approach should be to pay up unless there is a clear reason not to.

The danger for other players is that if they simply get lucky, they will end up not getting paid through another addition of a term, or different interpretation of the terms already present.

The fact that they seek to mislead players by displaying the full "safe and fair" seal from eCogra is further evidence that they are doing business in a dishonest manner, and ignoring eCogra's request to remove it now they have been caught out is doing them no favours.

eCogra meant remove it NOW, not "when I can be arsed to". They edited the site yesterday, so there was an opportunity to remove this seal with little additional effort. The seal displayed tells players that they can take a complaint to eCogra, and that the site is operated to the eGap standards. Neither is true of videoslots (dot) com.
 
...but you took it anyway.

You must have had some doubts about their integrity as you took the screenshot as though you expected something to go wrong.

It's a Microgaming Flash casino, and all MGS casinos have the option to play with Flash. There had to be others offering a similar bonus with only 30xB as WR, and a more relaxed 25% to 30% of bonus max bet.

Perhaps you felt the risk was minimal since it was Microgaming, and they don't give a license to "just anyone".

Just to clarify, I didn't take screenshots until after they canceled my withdrawal, and they are of various caches.

I did not expect problems because I'd had several withdrawals at this place before, plus they were Ecogra accredited (or so I thought).
 
Just to clarify, I didn't take screenshots until after they canceled my withdrawal, and they are of various caches.

I did not expect problems because I'd had several withdrawals at this place before, plus they were Ecogra accredited (or so I thought).

Maybe you pissed them off with this, so they decided to try it on when faced with paying you yet another chunk.

If these came from caches, do you have evidence of the dates they were captured, and thus able to prove that the new term was added after you played, even though they first used this term as a reason to confiscate your winnings.

They DO seem to have changed their story after you sent them evidence suggesting this term was only added after you played. If the other term was good enough to deny your withdrawal, why the need to even add this extra term, let alone do so in a rather clumsy manner.

If you defeat this new excuse, I can see them rolling out "spirit of the bonus" rather than agreeing to pay.
 
If these came from caches, do you have evidence of the dates they were captured,

Yes, these caches have dates. Google (or Bing, Yahoo etc) anything and click on "cache" instead of the main link in the search results and you will get the cache page with date and time at the top. This is what I have saved showing the terms before the change, yet dated 3-4 days after my deposit.
 
Yes, these caches have dates. Google (or Bing, Yahoo etc) anything and click on "cache" instead of the main link in the search results and you will get the cache page with date and time at the top. This is what I have saved showing the terms before the change, yet dated 3-4 days after my deposit.

Is this when they shifted to a new excuse for non payment, a term that does not show in your screenshot, but that exists further up. Surely this term is trumped by the 10% of deposit, since in order to make a substantial bet that would fall foul of this term, it would have to be significantly more than 10% of the deposit. 18 is 9% of the deposit, and although 18% of the bonus, this term was not present. Even this is nowhere near enough to form a substantial part of both deposit and bonus, although "substantial" can mean anything they want it to, and in this case they have decided that 18 credits is "substantial" enough on a 200 deposit and 100 bonus to invoke this term having failed to pass off the 10% of bonus term as having always been there.

Whatever you had bet, they would probably have found a way for it to violate one of the vague terms, as the problem was not the size of the bet, but the size of the win.

This is not something I ever expected to see at a Microgaming casino, but it shows just how far things have worsened since 2004 when I started. I used to trust casinos for nothing other than the fact they were Microgaming, and this worked very well. With RTG and Playtech, they had to have some form of accreditation on a site I trusted before I would even look at the offers and terms, let alone play there. I once mistakenly trusted a site I shouldn't have, but luckily found out that they were heavily promoting the rogues before it was too late. Their "No 1 pick" was Crystal Palace, and half the rest were already in the Meister's rogue pit when I eventually found this site, and had something to compare the other one against.

I am sure there are sites that list this videoslots bunch as a casino to be trusted, and relying on the fact that being Microgaming, players would believe it is, and that the eCogra seal is real, and the casino is one of the elite few that pass the eCogra inspection.
 

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