Fortune Lounge Trying to Cheat Me (Thunderluck Casino, Bonus Issue)

[nick5l]

Hello.

I signed up at Thunderluck Casino a week or so ago, and got a 100% match bonus. I like video poker, so I read their terms, saw I couldn't play Jacks or Better, and only a certain amount of blackjack. So I played a little in the Classic Blackjack, and I played 50-play Aces and Faces, and when I nearly lost all my money there, I decided to head over to All American, where I managed to make it back.

Anyhow, I'd heard horror stories in the past about what happens when people try to withdraw early, so I emailed them to ask if I had met the wagering requirements so I could withdraw my money. Their reply:

"Hi (my name)

Thank you for your email.

You have wagered in total 8846.72. The requirements for Thunderluck is
8000. You have met wagering.

Hope you find the above in order.

Kind Regards
Hein

Casino Desk

Where The Player Comes First"​

So I withdrew. Much to my surprise, I received an email:

"Hi (my name),

We refer to your cashin of 487 on your Thunderluck account number tlr(my account number).

We'd like to inform you that the amount you have requested to withdrawl includes certain bonuses
which you have received from various promotional offers. All of our bonus allocations have wagering
requirements associated with them before they may be withdrawn.

In light of this we have credited the bonus amount back to your casino account,
as you needed to wager 8000 on any of the games that are not excluded from the wagering
requirements, before you may withdraw this amount. (Please note: A maximum of 20% of your wagering requirements
can be met on BlackJack for certain bonuses).

You only wagered 2062.72 correctly, and therefore the following bonuses have been re-credited
to your casino account as per our Terms and Conditions.
200 ThunderLuck Sign-up 100% match to $200

If there is a remainder left after re-crediting the bonus to your casino account, the
Cashin (excluding the bonus amount that was re-credited to your casino account) will be processed
accordingly and will be on its way to you.

Please note that should the wagering requirements for any bonus not be met in future, the bonus
will be forfeited by the casino and deducted from your next cash-in.

Should you require any additional clarity on your options, please do not hesitate to contact us.

For more information regarding the wagering requirements of promotional bonuses, please click on the link below:

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

Should you have any questions at all, please call us on one of the toll free numbers below or email
us at: support@fortunelounge.com

Thank you again for choosing to play at The Fortune Lounge Casino Group. We truly believe you'll
be happy here.

Best wishes and Best of luck,

Rianna
ECash Operations"​

As of yet, I haven't been able to get through to them via their phone number, nor have they responded to my emails. I do not intend to play further, as I follow their terms to a T. Anyone have any suggestions for what to do? This isn't quite up to Pitch a Bitch level yet, I'm just posting this here because I believe this has happened to several people recently at Fortune Lounge.

Oh, I also have a screenshot of their terms and commitments in case they try to change them in the future, which is seems they may be in the process of doing. (Likely banning Aces and Faces I'd guess.)

I'll keep you updated.

Thanks.

 

[UKDafoe]

Looks like they just got confused about something. Send them an email about it and see what they say. Their support is helpful and usually responds quickly. Plus, they didn't take any of your money; it'll probably just delay the payout a little bit.

 

[The Dude]

Looks like they just got confused about something. Send them an email about it and see what they say. Their support is helpful and usually responds quickly. Plus, they didn't take any of your money; it'll probably just delay the payout a little bit.

I've PMd their rep here, so we should hear something soon.

 

[fortunelounge]

nick5l: Please mail me your account details and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

You can mail me at vpops@fortunelounge.com

VP Operations
Fortune Lounge

 

[nick5l]

nick5l: Please mail me your account details and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

You can mail me at vpops@fortunelounge.com

VP Operations
Fortune Lounge

I have emailed you as requested. I have faith that this issue will be dealt with quickly and effectively. Thank you fortunelounge and Casinomeister!

 

[fortunelounge]

nick5l is quite correct to state that our Terms and Conditions did not mention that wagering on 50 Play Power Poker is excluded.

Although the decision was made to exclude 50 Play Power Poker from wagering a few days ago, the Terms and Conditions were only updated on our website this morning. Unfortunately this rule was erroneously applied by our e-cash staff before this update. Due to nick's posting, we have now rectified all other accounts affected by this error.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience to those players who were affected by this.

On the issue of the link between Thunderluck and the Fortune Lounge Group I wish to state that Thunderluck is not part of the Fortune Lounge Group. We have been contracted by Thunderluck to perform their back-office support and the reference to Fortune Lounge in the mail nick received is due to a Fortune Lounge template that was used. This is obviously a mistake and we apologize for the confusion it may have caused.

VP Operations
Fortune Lounge

 

[chuchu59]

Now that's efficiency.

 

[Simmo!]

Now that's efficiency.

Agreed.

 

[thelawnet]

Thunderluck is lying to me

Hi.... I have a problem with this casino.

I signed up for an account with these guys on 3rd of June.

At this time I checked the terms and conditions, which read as follows:

Certain games are excluded from those which are permitted to be played in order to meet the wagering requirements. This is done to prevent any "bonus abuse". The excluded games are:
Jacks or Better Power and Video Poker, Jacks or Better 10 Play Power Poker, Baccarat, Craps, Roulette and Sic Bo.
Blackjack play is also restricted - but not entirely excluded - for purposes of meeting the wagering requirements. As with other games exclusions, this is due to "bonus abuse" problems. Please note that only 20% of the above wagering obligations can be met by playing Blackjack, which is calculated as follows:

Accordingly I did my wagering on the 5th of June on Aces & Faces 50 Play Power Poker, which was not excluded.... I cashed out Sunday June 5th, and on June 7th, I received the following email:

We refer to your cashin of 275.97 on your Thunder Luck account number

... we have credited the bonus amount back to your casino account,
as you needed to wager 8000 on any of the games that are not excluded from the wagering
requirements, before you may withdraw this amount. (Please note: A maximum of 20% of your wagering requirements
can be met on BlackJack for certain bonuses).

You only wagered 1600 correctly, and therefore the following bonuses have been re-credited
to your casino account as per our Terms and Conditions.
200 ThunderLuck Sign-up 100% match to $200

Anyway, at this point I went to their website and checked their terms and conditions for promotions, and saved a copy, which *still* read as above. So given that AFTER I had cashed out the t&cs were still reading as they had when I deposited, it seemed pretty much cut and dried that the 6400 that I had wagered had been wagered correctly.

They ignored my email so I called them.

By this time the website had finally been updated to say that 50-play video poker does not meet the terms and conditions.

I told the CS that when I had played, deposited and cashed out the t&cs had been the same and allowed 50-play video poker. The CS told me that the terms and conditions had been updated but had not been posted on the website, but even though they hadn't been posted on the website I was still bound by them, and I was 'very lucky' that they didn't just take the 200 off me and had credited back to my account.

I was pretty flabberghasted that they believed it acceptable to try and bind people by terms and conditions that are not readable anywhere, but asked him to tell me when the terms and conditions had been changed for their purposes. He told me 'Monday'. I then pointed out, not withstanding the fact that it was ridiculous to say I was bound by conditions that had not been posted on the website at that point, I had cashed out on Sunday June 5th and therefore the question was irrelevant. He then said 'uh I will have to check this for you', as he clearly didn't have any grounds for refusing my cashout.

He promised a callback, which didn't materialize.

Similarly my next CS I called, also promised to call me, but didn't happen.

Finally, I called them and was guaranteed that they would call me 'by this time tomorrow'.

Again, didn't happen, they never called me.

So I emailed their floormanager@thunderluck.com

Hi, I am still waiting to hear from you about this. I have emailed once and called three times and have never received any resolution. I wagered 1600+ on blackjack (which is fine), as well as 6400 on 50-play Aces & Faces, which was also fine by the terms and conditions when I deposited, wagred and cashed out.

Subsequently the terms and conditions have been changed to exclude this game, but given that the wagering I did was 100% valid when I did it, I would appreciate it if you would send me my 200.

Can you please reply to this ASAP, as I have already attempted to get this sorted out four times.

Thanks

They replied saying

Thank you for your e-mail regarding this matter.

I have assessed your casino account and confirmed that you registered your
casino account on the 3rd of June.

You registered your casino account on the day that the wagering
requirements changed. According to the terms and condition of the casino
your wagering requirements only comes into affect from the time that your
bonus is credited.

Your bonus was credited to your casino account on the 4th and therefore
your bonus falls under the new terms and conditions.

This was untrue, as the terms and conditions were demonstrably not updated until the 7th at the earliest, and this also contradicts what their own CS told me that it was updated on Monday for their purposes, even if they didn't bother to inform their players about it.

Anyway, I emailed back:

Thank you for your reply. You sent me an email saying that I had not met the wagering requirements on the 7th of June. At this time I checked the Thunderluck website and saved a copy of the terms and conditions, which were at this time still not excluding 50-play power poker. Given that this was already several days after I had completed all wagering, it seems pretty clear to me that I did meet all posted terms and conditions.

I phoned your telephone support after not receiving a reply a few days later, and by this time the terms and conditions had been changed. The customer service representative I spoke to told me that the terms and conditions had changed on Monday (the 6th), but that the website had not been updated until a couple of days later, but even though the terms and conditions had not been posted on the website until after Monday I was still expect to somehow abide by terms and conditions that I could not actually read! When I pointed out that quite apart from the fact that is impossible and unreasonable to expect people to comply with terms and conditions that had not been updated on your site, I had completed the wagering on the Sunday anyway, so what happened on Monday was irrelevant. At this point the customer support person said that he would have to check it out and promised to call me back (which he did not do).

Given that I did wager 6,400 or more in accordance with your posted terms and conditions, I believe that I should receive my withdrawal.

They have now sent the useless reply as follows:

I have
checked and I can confirm that you have 8062 on ht account. From this you
wagered 6452 on 50 Play Power Poker Aces and Faces. This does not count
toward your wagering requirement.

Please note that the Terms and Conditions on the casino website does state
that any changes to wagering requirements made by the casino will become in
affect from the moment that the changes are made on the casino website.
This means that even though 50 Play Power poker was not excluded when you
started your wagering, it does become excluded once they have changed the
requirement.

This is clearly going nowhere, and I am very disappointed with this casino.

I was obligated to do a certain amount of wagering by the casino. I did this.

It is not reasonable having done that to FORCE me to do it again for no reason, and as a matter of principle I do not see why I should. It is quite possible if I did that my balance would increase (as well as decrease), but frankly because of the way they have behaved I don't want to wager anything more with this casino.

They are being very petty over a small amount of money, when it's clear I am in the right, and this poor customer service will not do them any favours in the long run.

 

[fortunelounge]

thelawnet: Please mail your account details to vpops@fortunelounge.com so I can investigate and get back to you.

VP Operations
Fortune Lounge

 

[fortunelounge]

thelawnet:

In my previous posting of 2 June, I mentioned that the Terms and Conditions had been updated that morning. I assumed that the Thunderluck Terms and Conditions were updated along with the brands of the Fortune Lounge Group. This did, in fact, not happen and Thunderluck was only updated on 8 June.

You are quite correct that the previous Terms and Conditions apply to your cash-in and I, again, have to apologize for this error.

You are kindly requested to cash in the amount again. Should you wish to have this cash -in processed immediately please contact our Call Center who will gladly flush it.

My sincere apologies for this.

VP Operations
Fortune Lounge

 

[clawback]

This kind of thing is very common @ FL happend to me the last time I played which put me right of them.
Found $10 in my account recently asked what the T&Cs were and fulfilled the requirements again I get the sorry you did not wager enough plus you need to wager this much more

Here we go again.

Eventually they actually agreed with me and asked me to try and cashin again.

Fingers crossed the cash gets back to me soon.

What was annoying is they had days to check my wagering but still got it wrong only after begging them to recheck the history did they concede.

Makes you wonder how they operate

 

[scrollock]

calling fortune lounge rep, these complaints about fortune lounge seem to be quite common. i understand that when T+C's are changed there will be confusion and the occasional mistake as every account would need to be checked for when it was opened and then the appropiate T+C's looked up.

however is it right, for your reps to say "we changed it a few days ago, but even though we havnt been bothered to update the site, you are still bound by them"

in fact i once had the opposite with your group,when you changed the bonus at royal vegas to a 200% sign up bonus, i opened an account with you, waited 24 hours and found i was paid the old bonus. i phoned up CS and was told "yes our website does display a 200% bonus, but we are not planning to bring that in for a few days, so you are to be credited the old bonus instead and bound by the old T+C's"

i will say the matter was sorted out within hours, but it seems that Fortune lounge CS, seem to think it is acceptable to tell people that what is displayed on the website is irrevalant and what they say goes rather than checking with management who have always solved these these problems swiftly and satisfactorily. so i guess this is a CS issue that the management at FL need to address, as the conditions displayed on a website at the time of joining is basically a contract between the player and the casino which needs to be adhered to by both parties

 

[thelawnet]

calling fortune lounge rep, these complaints about fortune lounge seem to be quite common. i understand that when T+C's are changed there will be confusion and the occasional mistake as every account would need to be checked for when it was opened and then the appropiate T+C's looked up.

however is it right, for your reps to say "we changed it a few days ago, but even though we havnt been bothered to update the site, you are still bound by them"

in fact i once had the opposite with your group,when you changed the bonus at royal vegas to a 200% sign up bonus, i opened an account with you, waited 24 hours and found i was paid the old bonus. i phoned up CS and was told "yes our website does display a 200% bonus, but we are not planning to bring that in for a few days, so you are to be credited the old bonus instead and bound by the old T+C's"

i will say the matter was sorted out within hours, but it seems that Fortune lounge CS, seem to think it is acceptable to tell people that what is displayed on the website is irrevalant and what they say goes rather than checking with management who have always solved these these problems swiftly and satisfactorily. so i guess this is a CS issue that the management at FL need to address, as the conditions displayed on a website at the time of joining is basically a contract between the player and the casino which needs to be adhered to by both parties

Agree 100%. The VP of Ops was very helpful, and got the situation resolved for me in a way that befits the size and reputation of this group.

HOWEVER, they have a customer service problem, whether by policy, or by individuals taking it on themselves, as:

1. the CS were telling me things that were unacceptable (e.g., the bonus was changed but the website wasn't updated yet, but you're still bound by it, and you're very lucky we don't take your money off you altogether).

2. 3 separate staff members promised to call me back, one making a guarantee to call me back 'by this time tomorrow'. None did.

3. No-one made any attempt to investigate my problem until I posted it on a public forum. This is particularly bad, as I was stonewalled basically 5 times by the casino until posting here and getting resolution within about 15 minutes. It implies that people not aware of the existence of high-profile websites such as this one would be SOL. This isn't really good enough, and stops these guys from being as good as they could be.

 

[paul02085]

I would say they are doing this intentionally. If so, they should be rogued. If not, they need to explain how they have such an incompetent, pathetic excuse for customer service.

Which is it? We are waiting to here your response. Should be interesting.

 

[scrollock]

Agree 100%. The VP of Ops was very helpful, and got the situation resolved for me in a way that befits the size and reputation of this group.

HOWEVER, they have a customer service problem, whether by policy, or by individuals taking it on themselves, as:

1. the CS were telling me things that were unacceptable (e.g., the bonus was changed but the website wasn't updated yet, but you're still bound by it, and you're very lucky we don't take your money off you altogether).

2. 3 separate staff members promised to call me back, one making a guarantee to call me back 'by this time tomorrow'. None did.

3. No-one made any attempt to investigate my problem until I posted it on a public forum. This is particularly bad, as I was stonewalled basically 5 times by the casino until posting here and getting resolution within about 15 minutes. It implies that people not aware of the existence of high-profile websites such as this one would be SOL. This isn't really good enough, and stops these guys from being as good as they could be.

if you deal with the CS staff on the phones/email, you wont get anywhere, if you send an email to the pitboss you will always have your email quickly answered and problem solved.


if the FL rep. is still reading this i would like to make a special mention for ryan on your staff,he always called everything correctly, for example when your CS on the the phone/net are quoting the "it doesnt matter what its says on the website" crap, ryan is the one who will put his neck on the line and contradict his co-workers and says its does and if you have any problems to contact him.

 

[scrollock]

I would say they are doing this intentionally. If so, they should be rogued. If not, they need to explain how they have such an incompetent, pathetic excuse for customer service.

Which is it? We are waiting to here your response. Should be interesting.

i dont think it is intentional, but it is a CS issue which FL need to reslove

 

[thelawnet]

if you deal with the CS staff on the phones/email, you wont get anywhere, if you send an email to the pitboss you will always have your email quickly answered and problem solved.

actually, I did email the pitboss. The regular support ignored my email. It was the pitboss that gave the reply you see posted here.

 

[fortunelounge]

Firstly I need to explain what happened here.

A decision was made to change the Terms and Conditions and both the Call Centre staff and the e-cash processing staff were informed of the change and the date.

While they were under the impression that the changes had been made and were applying the new wagering requirements (and were informing players thereof) it transpired that the changes had indeed not been made as we were informed.

Both were acting on the information and instruction they had received and it was certainly not intentional as paul02085 so ludicrously states in his acidic comments. We have never applied wagering requirement retroactively and we certainly don't intend doing so. We all agree that it is unacceptable business practice.

This issue was therefore caused by an internal communications error that we are currently addressing.

Whilst I agree that our service needs to be improved and that, not getting back to someone after a promise to do so, is totally unacceptable, we are one of only a few casino groups that have put adequate escalation processes in place for our players. Apart from mailing the pitboss, every site has a special link for unresolved issues and these get escalated to managerial level. Then you also have me representing the Group on this and several other forums.

Unacceptable service should not be tolerated, anywhere, and we are no exception. I therefore urge anyone who has an unresolved issue or who experiences sub-standard service to make use of these channels. I do not know what I do not know and I cannot fix what I do not know about. Coming into a forum, mentioning a number of previous bad experiences does not help the situation at all. If those had been brought to the attention of the right people at the time, it could have been prevented from happening again.

We apologize for the frustration this issue has caused and will ensure that this does not happen again.

VP Operations
Fortune Lounge

 

[paul02085]

Sorry for the "acidic" comments. Just wanted to get a real response instead of the usual bs we hear on this site alot.
Guess it worked

 

[The Dude]

Sorry for the "acidic" comments. Just wanted to get a real response instead of the usual bs we hear on this site alot.
Guess it worked

The only "bs" you're going to hear from a casino rep here is from "Dutch" whose now defunct casino is the grand finale to her stupid show.

Verbal "acidity" is unwelcome in this forum, and should not be used to elicit a response from a casino manager - especially one who represents a group of casinos listed here. Minus ten points for you.

 

[bagofmaggots]

I miss Dutch

The only "bs" you're going to hear from a casino rep here is from "Dutch" whose now defunct casino is the grand finale to her stupid show.QUOTE]

I miss "Dutch" she was entertaining