Bitch and Moan Gala Casino - Nobody home?

[ternur]

I'm getting frustrated with Gala Casino. Emails are being ignored and live support is either clueless or doesn't care.

Opened my account last week and asked from chat if I could have my account info verified prior depositing. Got this answer: "No worries, we'll ask for documents if they're needed."

Of course the documents were needed. So I emailed the documents to Gala's verification team. This was done Aug 23rd. Over the weekend I emailed them asking about the status of the verification and got no replies. Then I proceeded to live chat, which was useless. All I got was "please allow 48hrs for the verification process". The 48hrs passed and nothing.

The next step was trying to ask again via live chat. Waited for 15 minutes and nobody answered.

Now for the fun part. The T&C state:

4.4 If the verification process has not been completed satisfactorily within 72 hours of you depositing funds, or of funds from any other source being credited to your account, we may:

freeze Your account; and/or
prevent You from placing any further bets until these verification checks are completed satisfactorily.

At this time, my account is temporarily locked and I'm unable to login (which I would need to in order to use live chat it seems). Emailing them seems futile.

Edit: Just received a reply to my email tonight:

Thank you for your message.

Please accept my apologies for the delay in verifying your account. This is due to the extended bank holiday weekend.

I have forwarded your details across to the relevant department for their consideration and they will be in contact with you in due course.

I apologise for any inconvenience caused and if I can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact either myself or the Customer Services team.

Not a happy camper. If Gala needs further information, it would be appreciated if they asked for it. At least they should have a courtesy to promptly answer when a customer asks a question from them.

Using a 'holiday excuse' is a little insulting as well. The casino is open for business 24/7. Even Gala's own T&C state that their normal "working" hours are Monday to Saturday - 9.00am to 11.00pm (UK Time) and Sunday - 10.00am to 10.00pm (UK Time) (T&C 11.). At a very minimum, I'd expect their 72hr verification process to reflect the possible amendments of their "working" hours.

I'm not new to online casinos. Gala CS does not seem very professionally organized atm.

For what it's worth, I did PM alexbuzz Monday night and got a fast reply from him. However, things have not progressed at all.

 

[wanda5]

I'm getting frustrated with Gala Casino. Emails are being ignored and live support is either clueless or doesn't care.

Opened my account last week and asked from chat if I could have my account info verified prior depositing. Got this answer: "No worries, we'll ask for documents if they're needed."

Of course the documents were needed. So I emailed the documents to Gala's verification team. This was done Aug 23rd. Over the weekend I emailed them asking about the status of the verification and got no replies. Then I proceeded to live chat, which was useless. All I got was "please allow 48hrs for the verification process". The 48hrs passed and nothing.

The next step was trying to ask again via live chat. Waited for 15 minutes and nobody answered.

Now for the fun part. The T&C state:



At this time, my account is temporarily locked and I'm unable to login (which I would need to in order to use live chat it seems). Emailing them seems futile.

Edit: Just received a reply to my email tonight:



Not a happy camper. If Gala needs further information, it would be appreciated if they asked for it. At least they should have a courtesy to promptly answer when a customer asks a question from them.

Using a 'holiday excuse' is a little insulting as well. The casino is open for business 24/7. Even Gala's own T&C state that their normal "working" hours are Monday to Saturday - 9.00am to 11.00pm (UK Time) and Sunday - 10.00am to 10.00pm (UK Time) (T&C 11.). At a very minimum, I'd expect their 72hr verification process to reflect the possible amendments of their "working" hours.

I'm not new to online casinos. Gala CS does not seem very professionally organized atm.

For what it's worth, I did PM alexbuzz Monday night and got a fast reply from him. However, things have not progressed at all.

I keep seeing threads like this and it really makes me sad that people are treated like "how dare you try to cash out your winnings?!" for simply trying to collect their winnings. Its hard enough to even have a cash out but to be put through hell...I'm sorry you are going through this and I hope you get what is owed to you...funny how sweet they are taking our deposits.

 

[CiaraGala]

Hi There,

I apologise for the lack of response you seem to be getting from the Customer Service team, I will report this to the head of Customer Services and get back to you as soon as I get a response. Can you please pm me your user-name.

Many Thanks
Ciara

I'm getting frustrated with Gala Casino. Emails are being ignored and live support is either clueless or doesn't care.

Opened my account last week and asked from chat if I could have my account info verified prior depositing. Got this answer: "No worries, we'll ask for documents if they're needed."

Of course the documents were needed. So I emailed the documents to Gala's verification team. This was done Aug 23rd. Over the weekend I emailed them asking about the status of the verification and got no replies. Then I proceeded to live chat, which was useless. All I got was "please allow 48hrs for the verification process". The 48hrs passed and nothing.

The next step was trying to ask again via live chat. Waited for 15 minutes and nobody answered.

Now for the fun part. The T&C state:



At this time, my account is temporarily locked and I'm unable to login (which I would need to in order to use live chat it seems). Emailing them seems futile.

Edit: Just received a reply to my email tonight:



Not a happy camper. If Gala needs further information, it would be appreciated if they asked for it. At least they should have a courtesy to promptly answer when a customer asks a question from them.

Using a 'holiday excuse' is a little insulting as well. The casino is open for business 24/7. Even Gala's own T&C state that their normal "working" hours are Monday to Saturday - 9.00am to 11.00pm (UK Time) and Sunday - 10.00am to 10.00pm (UK Time) (T&C 11.). At a very minimum, I'd expect their 72hr verification process to reflect the possible amendments of their "working" hours.

I'm not new to online casinos. Gala CS does not seem very professionally organized atm.

For what it's worth, I did PM alexbuzz Monday night and got a fast reply from him. However, things have not progressed at all.

 

[ternur]

PM sent.

Update: The verification team replied to me yesterday and informed that my account is now unfrozen. The identity check took 6 days.

But the withdrawal still requires a second address verification document (I only emailed one the first time). To be fair, the email asking for verification documents did ask for two documents for address verification, but I some how missed it. Emailed them another two documents to be on the safe side. Hopefully this doesn't take another 6 days to finish ...

I'm still pissed that the CS is slow and not really of any help. But I do apprecite the help and responsiveness of alexbuzz and CiaraGala, thanks guys.

 

[CiaraGala]

Your account is activated now I believe, again please accept my apologies for the delays.

Ciara

PM sent.

Update: The verification team replied to me yesterday and informed that my account is now unfrozen. The identity check took 6 days.

But the withdrawal still requires a second address verification document (I only emailed one the first time). To be fair, the email asking for verification documents did ask for two documents for address verification, but I some how missed it. Emailed them another two documents to be on the safe side. Hopefully this doesn't take another 6 days to finish ...

I'm still pissed that the CS is slow and not really of any help. But I do apprecite the help and responsiveness of alexbuzz and CiaraGala, thanks guys.

 

[PNEFOREVER2]

This doesn't bode well for me then,having made a small cashout yesterday,I emailed them with a couple of things as well as explaining that I may have trouble being verified having no photographic evidence of who I am.

No reply as of yet.

 

[PNEFOREVER2]

Just had my withdrawal 'declined',but upon chat with cs (they do work nights then? Attempted twice to speak with them yesterday evening and waited 20mins each try and ended up cancelling the chat) found it was due to my reversal late last night,but my withdrawal of the same amount not much later should be sent sometime today.


He explained he see's things different on his side than I do on mine-woudn't it have been simpler to list the 'declined' as 'reversed' instead to save both of us some time?


I have a sneaking suspicion after all this, come tomorrow I will receive an email requesting my documents for verification.


Their email support doesn't seem to be much cop either-must be 36 hours and no reply to the email I sent them yesterday,probably a pathetic thing to whine about-maybe I'm just too used to being replied to in a timely manner when inquiring at 32Red.


It sort of annoys me that in a world where 32Red do things so brilliantly cs-wise,there's no "lets try and do things better" (if at all possible) attitude from anywhere -a bit of competition even if it's a different platform for people where MG doesn't work for them.They reply within a few hours normally when I have a query,everybody seems so far behind and its irritating that no casino thinks-lets give them a run for their money and see if they're worth that award/those awards they get every year.

Just a thought.

 

[daywalker]

Gala CS email response is dreadful, it always has been.

 

[ternur]

Still waiting for my withdrawal. It has been 8 days now.

Another 48hrs gone after sending in the (final) documents to verification team. Do they even work during weekends? Alex, Ciara?

 

[dougbet1]

I got a £900 withdrawal paid within 36 hours (24 hours pending). They did tell me that accounts staff don't work weekends but I think they do in the rest of the Gala group, so who knows. No I.D. required, although i'm UK based and on the electoral roll.

Not to hijack the thread but if Galacasino are going to have a 24 hour pending period they really need to offer a flush service or like Bet365 remove the option to be able to reverse.

Their responsible gambling page also leaves a lot to be desired.

Live chat were mixed in terms of knowledge, although all tried to be helpful with varying degrees of success.

 

[ternur]

I personally dislike the idea of sending documents over email to verify someone's identity or address.

There are better solutions available, similar to automatically checking UK players' data. In Finland, for example, online banking user ID's are used for user identification. The bank knows their customer and his/hers identity has been verified personally. Therefore, online banking user ID's are used even by government when identifying customers online.

I have not yet seen any online casino (expect RAY in Finland) to use this method. It's fast, secure and more reliable than emailing scanned documents somewhere and risking exposing your personal, private information to third parties. Email is insecure and I have little faith in casinos to have the integrity and/or know-how to safeguard this information (exceptions do exist). Some operators do offer a secure upload function for document delivery, but even this is too rare IMO.

 

[luckytrivial]

verification process

I'm getting frustrated with Gala Casino. Emails are being ignored and live support is either clueless or doesn't care.

Now its 6 days and 3 emails since I sent my verification papers, and I havent heard a word from them. I contacted live chat yesterday, she could verify that they got my documents but still it says "waiting" on my withdraw-status. I'm getting a bit worried now.

 

[luckytrivial]

finally I got email

Dear Ms H,

We are pleased to confirm we have successfully verified your Gala Casino account details.

Withdr still "waiting" but I guess it will happen monday.

 

[ternur]

Resolved - at last

Finally. Received an email from Gala verification team on monday that my account was fully verified and the withdrawal was released.

True to their poor service, the email said:

We are pleased to confirm we have successfully verified your Gala Bingo account details.

Never played bingo with Gala. Maybe I'm just overly acrimonious, but the process over all left me very annoyed. The verification team is a part of the casino CS and it took them 10 days to do their work. Maybe they are under staffed. Or maybe they just don't care. In any case, they make Gala look unprofessional.

 

[wobble33]

know what you guys mean here went on live chat, after 20 mins finally someone turned up! then when i asked a question, he disapeared went back on chat, 30 mins later still no one on live chat. thank god for places like 32red

 

[CiaraGala]

know what you guys mean here went on live chat, after 20 mins finally someone turned up! then when i asked a question, he disapeared went back on chat, 30 mins later still no one on live chat. thank god for places like 32red

Hi there
Can you please inbox me your username and I will look into this for you
Ciara

 

[wobble33]

Hi there
Can you please inbox me your username and I will look into this for you
Ciara

its ok, i phoned gala and the problem was resolved

 

[alexbuzz]

We've got a new strategy for managing chats going into effect this week; should improve things ENORMOUSLY. I'll post when it's official.

Thanks for the input guys, helping us to get it right.

Cheers
Alex

 

[ternur]

Gala seems to be non-responsive again. Offer send by email (actually 2 of them), neither worked. No response to emails, nobody available in live chat.

What great way to treat your customers, great job Gala. I'll probably uninstall other casinos and just play in your casino. I just love the fact that nobody bothers me with customer service. "Customer service will contact you in due course" autoreply is also great. Especially since the replies rarely come, or just take too long.

Keep up the good work.

 

[HIGHIQ]

phone them

have u ever tried to call them, i sometimes do that when they not respond to the live chat.. that most time will work too

 

[GalaCasino]

GalaCasino Ops rep - please let me help

Hi,

Please can you get in touch with me via private message here on CM and provide me with your username and details/copies of the email(s) you sent?

I have regular meetings with the CS department about exactly this subject and we have taken measures to ensure this does not happen, so I really would like to get to the bottom of this.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused, let me try and rectify this for you asap.

Kind Regards,

Simon - Gala Casino