Official Casino Complaints Monthly Wrap-Up -- March 2021

maxd

Head of Complaints (PABs), Senior Forum Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jan 20, 2004
Location
Pictland
OK, we're starting a new thing here in Casinomeisterland -- a monthly commentary on casino complaints: general news, interesting happenings in the world of casino complaints, new casino Warnings, a little self-congratulating, that kind of thing. Here we go!

In terms of monies reclaimed for players through our Player Arbitration (PAB) complaint service this has been a very good month indeed. Over €150,000 (US$175,000 / £125,000) was paid out to players for ongoing cases that were resolved and closed. That's a pretty exceptional month for us and we loved it. That said, while we do a happy-dance we have to stay cool about it too, this ain't gonna happen every month.

Early on in the month we received some not so good news: BetFred and one other major casino informed us that they officially wouldn't speak to us about player complaints. This is an ongoing struggle with large casino groups and it basically boils down to them being big enough that an individual player complaint doesn't really concern them: they do whatever they are legally required to do and no more. Smaller casino groups, and especially the "mom and pop" casinos, are a whole different story and with them we usually don't have this problem. Player beware: if you sail with the big fish don't be surprised if you end up lost in their wake, their wake flips your boat and you are tossed into the sea to contemplate your disappearing options.

A happy footnote: Jelena, our Accounts Manager, helped us out with that other major casino and it turns out they're happy to deal with us on casino complaints. All it took was talking to the right people and Boom!, done deal. It's always nice to catch a break on these things because ultimately it means better service for the players. You'd think that would be obvious to the casino saying “No.” but one gets the distinct impression that in spite of all the "we care a lot" lip service we hear, what they really mean is "we care a lot about our shareholders" and players aren't shareholders so...

Given the bumpy ride early in the month we were prompted to post a little poll on the forums, "Has online gaming gone to the dogs?". The idea was to see if the displeasure we are hearing from players through our complaints process was a general trend across the industry, or not.

Wow! Almost 90% of respondents to the poll said that the online casino scene was "worse" or "much worse" than when they started playing. 8% said things were more or less the same and only 1.5% said the scene had improved. A few quotes from the forum readers’ comments illustrate the general feeling:
Deeplay: "... gone are the days of any kind of personal service what so ever. Today we the players are just a number - nothing more."​
dunover: "Hardly a single casino exists which has full understanding of the GDPR and this has frustrated common-sense and [has fettered] dispute resolution. It is used as an excuse, a shield, to insulate casinos from the inconvenience of their anti-player actions being challenged."​
Balky: "... what does online gambling look like today? Drastically lowered RTP, various country restrictions, SOW requests, tech issues, lagging problems, bonus and cashback offers going down the drain, deposit methods constantly changing etc, favorite slot games being taken out of the offer, just to name a few of the desastrous changes."​
colinsunderland: "Reps become unresponsive and nothing is done ... I could name loads of casinos who have reps on here who do things wrong, and have no interest to sort it out, as it will hurt the bottom line."​

So yeah, the discontent we hear from players is real: these are casino customers that are pissed off at the shabby service they are receiving across the industry. Is anyone listening? Is anyone paying attention to what players have to say? Yeah, we know, you “care a lot”.

Unrelated to this, but equally disturbing, is a trend among many casinos to remove their licensing info from their websites. To be fair, this isn't something particularly new but it seems to be happening more and more over the last six months or so. What is that about? Is the reputation of crappy licensing jurisdictions making it better for the casinos to show no licensing info at all? Are players generally so oblivious to licensing that there's no downside for casinos to say nothing about it? No matter how you look at it this can't be a good thing.

More on licensing: care to guess the most popular licensing body for new casinos these days? Well it's a tie actually. The two hot choices are Malta and -- you gotta love this! -- no license at all! Yup, more and more casinos are just winging it. They throw up a site, don't even bother trying to get licensed, and let the players start dumping the money into their accounts. A perfect page from the Churn and Burn manual of casino operations.

Casinomeister Warnings: nothing new this month, mind you not for lack of worthy candidates. Warnings take time and ... blah blah blah. New Warnings next month, we promise.

Anyhoo, time to get back to those complaints. If anyone has questions or comments please feel free to post here or email me at max.drayman@casinomeister.com
 
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@maxd I enjoyed reading this when it was posted back in spring..... don't remember seeing follow ups in subsequent months - or have i just missed them being the incompetent, and technology impaired muppet I am?
 
No, my fault. I was a little discouraged that the thread didn't get a lot of reads and I lost the steam I had for the idea.
I think I'll re-tool it a bit -- make it one thread for all monthly reports as opposed to a new thread for each month -- and press on.
Thanks for bringing it up. :thumbsup:
 
Thank you. I didn't comment on the original read, cos I found it very informative and complete, so didn't warrant a reply!

I like the idea of a monthly update on the same thread though.... that will make good reading in my humble opinion. Easy way to list the Good and Bad from casinos in a quick and easy to find place.
 

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