money back for players, interested?

[maxd]

So we had a thought today, having a ticker running throughout the year for the total we've recovered for players in the current year.
Something to show how players are benefiting from the complaints process in real(ish) time as opposed to just a year-end thing.

Interesting, or no? Let us know what you think in the Poll above.

Spoiler: Here's a hint:

115,000 Euros as of 24 Feb 2021.

 

[cncas2123]

Great idea, my only thought on it would it be better to do a rolling 12 month total as it may be a better indicator of the work thats going on?

 

[maxd]

Great idea, unfortunately our current record keeping system is completely wired to the calendar year.
That said, the tech guys love a good challenge -- actually I love to give them a good challenge but who's counting eh? -- so I'll float that out at our next staff round-up.
Thank you.

 

[Jono777]

Hell yeah!

Also would be interested to have a read (via a brief summary) of some of the more difficult or elaborate cases which crop up from time to time.

Appreciate no sensitive info can be shared but names have been changed to protect the innocent n all that....

 

[Davey86]

Hell yeah!

Also would be interested to have a read (via a brief summary) of some of the more difficult or elaborate cases which crop up from time to time.

Appreciate no sensitive info can be shared but names have been changed to protect the innocent n all that....

Excellent idea
Surely be a good read

 

[greylady]

So we had a thought today, having a ticker running throughout the year for the total we've recovered for players in the current year. Something to show people how effective the complaints process really is. Interesting, or no? Let us know what you think in the Poll above.

Spoiler: Here's a hint:

115,000 Euros as of 24 Feb 2021.

Would you be able to show a running monthly total of all the players submissions against a running monthly total of successes, would be interesting to compare?

i.e. 115,000 Euros as of 24 Feb 2021 but what was the total of the submissions as need both to really gain a proper picture.

 

[irish-ranger]

Hell yeah!

Also would be interested to have a read (via a brief summary) of some of the more difficult or elaborate cases which crop up from time to time.

Appreciate no sensitive info can be shared but names have been changed to protect the innocent n all that....

What he said it can be really interesting reading some of the complaints

 

[maxd]

Ok, some interesting points have been raised. I'll try to deal with them in turn:

Also would be interested to have a read (via a brief summary) of some of the more difficult or elaborate cases which crop up from time to time.
...

Yes indeed! And why didn't we think of that? Of course we have our case-by-case summaries already available on the new(ish) Summary pages:



Click on a month which will list all that month's cases, click on a specific case's "Read More" to get a Summary. BUT...

I fully understand that you're asking for something a little different, a "top of the pops" selection kind of thing. Excellent suggestion and something we'll look into ASAP. Thank you.

Would you be able to show a running monthly total of all the players submissions against a running monthly total of successes, would be interesting to compare?

i.e. 115,000 Euros as of 24 Feb 2021 but what was the total of the submissions as need both to really gain a proper picture.

I get what you're saying but the short answer is "not likely". There are a number of reasons including the time required to figure all that out, time required to update it on a running basis, adjustments required based on settlement terms etc. It gets messy and complex and we simply don't have the time to spend on all that. In an ideal world accounting features like that would be available but the truth is that a developer would have to create them and that ain't going to happen any time soon. The whole point with the "money so far" idea is that it's simple and easy to maintain: recovered X, add X to the total, done. It was never intended as a one glance report card on the ongoing PABs.

For instance, we recently settled two cases that totaled over 75,000€ but both cases actually started late in 2020. So it's too late to include them in 2020's year end total -- that ship has sailed -- and there is currently no way to include them as money recovered for 2021 (remember I mentioned that our PAB accounting is tied to the calendar year). The point being that this new thing would be a way to show the recovery successes without having to worry about timelines, settlement issues, etc.

 

[maxd]

Ok, well, clearly it's a popular idea. That's great! However, there is a bit of a snag.

The trouble is that if we start doing this then there's nothing stopping a certain competitor of ours from doing the same. If we report "we've returned 10,000 to players this month" they'll pop up and say "we've returned 1,000,000 to players since lunchtime yesterday!". So they'll have ripped off our idea -- again, it's a bit of a habit with them -- and made us look bad in the process.

So what to do? Don't do it because it'll just get ripped off and used against us? Or, proceed and forget about the other guy's bad habits?

TBH it's a problem we've been struggling with for some time and the solution hasn't yet presented itself.

 

[maxd]

PS. Many thanks to everyone who voted and posted. Very much appreciated and a challenge to us to make good and do something with this.

 

[colinsunderland]

When I first joined you used to have a full list of PAB's with a fairly detailed summary of what went on didn't you? It might still be there but I couldn't find it a while ago, not sure how often it was updated but that was interesting.
I also like Duncan's way of doing things, not saying you should do exactly the same, but publishing all exchanges with both the player and casino give a better idea of what actually happened. For example, if say All British got 10 PAB's in a month, that would put me off playing there for a while at least. However, if every case was along the lines of 'these b***rds stole my moneeezzzz I played for an hour and didn't win' then then I would just think 'idiot', and have no qualms about playing there'. A slightly more in depth summary of the case would be good I think, along with the actual date started and date closed (obviously when it is resolved).

 

[L&L-Jan]

No PABs for All British please, I'm busy enough, thanks!

 

[maxd]

When I first joined you used to have a full list of PAB's with a fairly detailed summary of what went on didn't you? ...

Good points, thank you. Sorry though, no PABs on the table for All British I'm afraid.

However, I might need to refresh your memory a bit. We've never published anything more detailed than what you can currently view here: Online Casino Complaints Summary 2021 - Casinomeister . You make an excellent point though about the start and end dates, that certainly would be useful, and informative.

As to the "Duncan's way" thing I hear you, and it's obviously a popular model for complaints these days, but it still ruffles our feathers enough that we haven't been willing to go that route. PABs have traditionally been private conversations between the involved parties and we've been loath to abandon that.

Could be that times have moved on though and we need to reconsider. It's certainly true that the old model was based on trust between us and the casino people and that trust has become increasingly harder to come by these days for many of the reasons I gave in my original post. Maybe a two-tiered thing might work, private for those that actually cooperate with the PAB process and public for those that are less forthcoming. Hard to say if that would actually work. Damn good point though and something we need to give some serious thought to.

 

[Jono777]

Ok, well, clearly it's a popular idea. That's great! However, there is a bit of a snag.

The trouble is that if we start doing this then there's nothing stopping a certain competitor of ours from doing the same. If we report "we've returned 10,000 to players this month" they'll pop up and say "we've returned 1,000,000 to players since lunchtime yesterday!". So they'll have ripped off our idea -- again, it's a bit of a habit with them -- and made us look bad in the process.

So what to do? Don't do it because it'll just get ripped off and used against us? Or, proceed and forget about the other guy's bad habits?

TBH it's a problem we've been struggling with for some time and the solution hasn't yet presented itself.

I would possibly hold back then, disappointing as this maybe, no point pouring fuel on an already existing fire.

 

[colinsunderland]

Good points, thank you. Sorry though, no PABs on the table for All British I'm afraid.

However, I might need to refresh your memory a bit. We've never published anything more detailed than what you can currently view here: Online Casino Complaints Summary 2021 - Casinomeister . You make an excellent point though about the start and end dates, that certainly would be useful, and informative.

As to the "Duncan's way" thing I hear you, and it's obviously a popular model for complaints these days, but it still ruffles our feathers enough that we haven't been willing to go that route. PABs have traditionally been private conversations between the involved parties and we've been loath to abandon that.

Could be that times have moved on though and we need to reconsider. It's certainly true that the old model was based on trust between us and the casino people and that trust has become increasingly harder to come by these days for many of the reasons I gave in my original post. Maybe a two-tiered thing might work, private for those that actually cooperate with the PAB process and public for those that are less forthcoming. Hard to say if that would actually work. Damn good point though and something we need to give some serious thought to.

Thanks for the comments, this is what I meant, did a bit of googling

Casino Complaints September 2016 - Casinomeister

Something like on there would be useful, for example the one below gives enough detail for a player to make their mind up if it was a valid complaint or not and if they should be wary about playing there because of it.

Player had a large balance, $100k+, that they wanted to WD. Confusion over the WD limits cause several WD requests to be cancelled and returned to the player’s account. Player says this caused them to lose $20k in “misplaced” WDs.

It turned out the player had been playing heavily during their WDs and had ended up playing away half of their balance. The casino proved this via play and WD records. Player was unavailable for comment.

I know you still do a summary, but they aren't as detailed as that, and when I was looking through earlier, it seems theres conflicting information on some of them, for example



States closed, yet the conclusion is that it is still in progress and the summary doesn't actually tell anything about what it's regarding. I had a problem with the same casino, possibly over the exact same thing (took deposit via Skrill, refused to payout via Skrill claiming it was illegal in my jurisdiction) but it's hard to tell if it was the same from whats there.

Something else that would be extremely useful would be a search by casino function. On the (increasingly) rare occasion I sign up somewhere new I go to Duncan's site and search for previous disputes to see if I'm likely to have any problems there. I would happily do it here instead if there was a search function. It also gives an idea of, if I did have a problem, how responsive they are to complaints.

Sorry, I know my posts possibly come across as negatives, but just trying to suggest ways of improvements

 

[maxd]

Yes, you did find one of our PAB reports from days gone by. But aside from a few items we thought less relevant in today's scene -- excluding the date which I've already mentioned might be a great addition -- our current reports are pretty much the same.

Re the Jonny Jackpot case, you have dug up one that wasn't finished off properly so yes, that's a slip-up. But you won't find many like it because I go through them all myself, one by one, usually at the end of the month, to make sure they're properly wrapped up. Thanks for the catch though.

[turns out there had been a glitch in our PAB process and there were a number of these that slipped through, we're working on cleaning that up.]

The Search suggestion is spot on though. We absolutely should have some way for people to search for and find previous cases for a specific casino.