Best of the Best ADR overview?

[Jonasgamble]

Hi everyone,

Is there an overview showing which ADR provider is responsible for, or has been officially appointed by, each casino or operator?

I am currently trying to recover gambling losses on responsible gambling grounds, specifically because a self-exclusion request was not properly enforced. However, with many Curaçao-licensed casinos, I cannot find any information in their Terms and Conditions about an ADR provider or another independent dispute-resolution body.

I have also contacted companies such as Santeda B.V. to ask which ADR or complaints body is responsible, but my enquiries have not been answered.

It would therefore be very helpful to have a list showing:

which ADR provider is responsible for each casino or operator;
whether the provider has been officially appointed or recognised;
and how players can submit a complaint.

I would also be interested in the Casinomeister team’s experience with cases involving failed self-exclusion or other responsible gambling breaches. How do the relevant ADR providers generally approach such complaints? Are they considered genuinely independent and reasonably player-friendly, or do they tend to side with the operator?

Any information, links, or experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[maxd]

Hello,

Great topic BTW, good on you!

In brief I’d say “great questions, there are no good answers”.

The issue being that the casino-ADR relationship depends on several critical and overwhelmingly significant factors:

• Which jurisdiction? Think of each jurisdiction as a different place of business: what they do and how they do it is largely up to them. Expect radical differences going from one to another.
• I’m not aware of any jurisdiction that assigns a specific ADR. The typical scenario is “get one”. In heavily regulated and/or restrictive jurisdictions they’ll have an ADR certification program and the casino is free to choose from any ADR that has that certification.
• the complaint submission process is more or less standard: find the place to submit your complaint, provide the necessary details, submit your issue, and hope for the best.
• How an ADR handles something like Responsible Gambling (RG) failures depends entirely on the applicable jurisdiction:
  • A jurisdiction like the UKGC, applicable jurisdictions in Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc typically have a “Code of Conduct” type document for casinos and/or ADRs that — if done properly — lays out the rules and those rules guide the ADR in how to deal with RG violations, either explicitly or implicitly from the rules applicable to the casino.
  • In Malta, for example, things are a little more loosey-goosey because their code of conduct documents are full of catch-phrases like “the casino shall make their best effort” or “as soon as is reasonable” and “where possible”, and so forth: bum fluff for the foot shufflers.
  • Some jurisdictions are stuck in the middle, Estonia comes to mind. Their intentions and efforts are stellar, their ability to enforce all (or any) of that is — by their own admission — “not available at this time”.
  • Other jurisdictions have decided to save their digital bandwith for a rainy day and don’t bother with pesky things like “codes” and “procedures”: Costa Rica, Anjouan, Mwali, The Western Sahara, etc etc ad nauseum.

The bottom line is that publishing anything like the directory or guide that you’ve suggested would be a full time job with constantly changing data that would, more often than not, be out of date as soon as you printed it.

When we reach the “full saturation” point with jurisdictions — meaning every significant jurisdiction has its own local authority — something like this might be feasible, but I doubt it. We’re a long way from that point BTW, though edging closer every day.

As to Curaçao: doubtless my good friend @dunover will pop by to fling poo at the very mention of Curaçao — I think it’s the official “dunover invocation” word — but in their grand make-over to placate the Home Office in the Netherlands they’ve said that each operator must assign an ADR from the certified ADR list. Of course there is no such list, to date, and as far as I know there are one or two ADR services somewhere in “certification limbo”. Operators have recently resorted to saying things like “Escalate unresolved issues once further complaint handling mechanisms are made available under CGA guidelines”. That’s legalese for “sit on your hands until somebody does something meaningful and hope for the best”.