Paddy Power - Shockingly bad customer support?

catapultaudio

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2013
Location
Leeds, UK
Hi all, I've recently had several extremely bad experiences with paddy power casino/poker customer support, whatever the particular issue has been the support staff have seemed unable to comprehend basic english! I have tried to explain my issues to these people as politely as possible and with as much relevant detail as possible, but often any questions I ask are met with what appears to be a copy/paste response, entirely unrelated to what I have actually asked, or an answer that deliberately sidesteps the issue or otherwise shows an unwillingness to deal with customer problems in a fair and constructive manner.

So I am now wondering if anybody else has experienced this and would like to share their views on the matter? Frankly I find the treatment I have had there in recent weeks completely unacceptable - a great shame considering they probably the best iPoker room in terms of withdrawal speed, which is what got me playing there regularly of late - but its looking very unlikely I will stick with them for much longer...
 
Same here, played there last year and CS was not a big help. I wasn`t able to take a bonus and I expalined my issue three times and then gave up. Have now some 1 Euro promotions:D:D.
 
We have all experienced this with different casinos and know how frustrating it may be. There is no magic pill. Just be calm, do not tell the rep he is clueless, try to rephrase your question. Also a good idea is providing them with an example.

Let's say you want to find out whether their bonus is cashable or not. If you just ask "is it cashable?" and the rep is not too bright you are likely to hear something like "of course you can cash out your winnings after you completed the wagering". And then if you use alternative terms for non-cashable bonus, such as "play bonus" or "sticky bonus" they may be clueless about those terms. Instead, try saying something along these lines:

"Assume I deposited $200 and received $100 bonus, for the total balance of $300. After completing my wagering the final balance is $1000. Will you send me the check for the entire $1000 or only for $900?".

May look like a long and awkward way to ask it but the likelihood of receiving a sane answer increases.
 
I absolutely do my best to remain calm, patient and polite when confronted with less than ideal customer support personnel, but cannot help becoming frustrated when confronted by absolute incompetance. Okay a first example, all iPoker rooms have been running a Goaaaal! promotion throughout the world cup, this is the description text from Paddy Poker:

"Deposit between 07/07/2017 to 13/07/2014 to gain free entry. €50 in cash and €50 in token prizes (issued within 24 hours of the tournament finishing) for each goal scored in the previous week!"

When last weeks tournament went live there was a substantial prize fund of over 2k, so I was clearly looking forward to a game with such a big guarantee with free entry. When I was unable to join the game I contacted support, and was informed that although I had made several deposits between the dates shown, I had not made one single deposit above €10 in value, therefore was not entitled to entry.

Obviously ten euros aint a significant sum and I would have no issue depositing that amount if I had been aware of this requirement - but, being unaware, all of my deposits had been £5 UKash vouchers that week, so I thought it was not unreasonable to ask where this requirement was stated - support told me there was a page on the promotions page of the paddy power website that stated this minimum deposit requirement, and sure enough I was able to find it in the small print in the promotions page in the poker area of their site. Okay, so I missed a stated term for the promotion - I accept a level of responsibility - but I asked the CS if they felt it was reasonable to only state this term on that page, with no indication whatsoever within the poker client. The CS would only repeat over and over that I had not met the stated terms and conditions - but my question was "Do you believe that your poker customers can reasonably be expected to see the terms and conditions page you have shown me, particularly as the description within the poker client does appear to be a complete description of the entry requirements for this tournament".

Whatever the case, no matter if I am right or wrong in believing it us unreasonable to expect poker players to seek out additional terms and conditions when there is no link or suggestion in the text that further terms and conditions apply, I find it wholly unacceptable that this CS person refused to acknowledge my query and respond to it in one way or another, instead just repeating over and over that I had not met the stated minimum requirements.

Opinions pleasE?
 
Obviously ten euros aint a significant sum and I would have no issue depositing that amount if I had been aware of this requirement - but, being unaware, all of my deposits had been £5 UKash vouchers that week, so I thought it was not unreasonable to ask where this requirement was stated - support told me there was a page on the promotions page of the paddy power website that stated this minimum deposit requirement, and sure enough I was able to find it in the small print in the promotions page in the poker area of their site. Okay, so I missed a stated term for the promotion - I accept a level of responsibility - but I asked the CS if they felt it was reasonable to only state this term on that page, with no indication whatsoever within the poker client. The CS would only repeat over and over that I had not met the stated terms and conditions - but my question was "Do you believe that your poker customers can reasonably be expected to see the terms and conditions page you have shown me, particularly as the description within the poker client does appear to be a complete description of the entry requirements for this tournament".

I do not want to be a devil's advocate here, and I totally understand you frustration but

1) Typically when someone misses an explicitly stated term, however obscure and unobvious it is, the situation is decided in casino's favor. Exceptions are rare.

2) Your address to the rep is missing a point, a goal, a conclusion you would find satisfactory. You are just saying that what they have done is not good, or not user-friendly, but you are not stating what you specifically want them to do in your case. Make an exception? Give you a smaller bonus as compromise?

Vague questions like "do you find it acceptable to..." go nowhere, they are beyond the chat rep's competence level. In the best case they would forward it to the relevant department, but you better suggest it explicitly, such as "please tell your manager that players find it hard to find the relevant information on the XYZ promo the way it is stated now"
 
I do not want to be a devil's advocate here, and I totally understand you frustration but

1) Typically when someone misses an explicitly stated term, however obscure and unobvious it is, the situation is decided in casino's favor. Exceptions are rare.

2) Your address to the rep is missing a point, a goal, a conclusion you would find satisfactory. You are just saying that what they have done is not good, or not user-friendly, but you are not stating what you specifically want them to do in your case. Make an exception? Give you a smaller bonus as compromise?

Vague questions like "do you find it acceptable to..." go nowhere, they are beyond the chat rep's competence level. In the best case they would forward it to the relevant department, but you better suggest it explicitly, such as "please tell your manager that players find it hard to find the relevant information on the XYZ promo the way it is stated now"

Yup, mostly agree with you here mate! When it became clear the CS could not understand the reason for my unhappiness, I requested a higher ups email address so I could explain to them the problem I had faced, the CS gave me an email address to contact and I spent some time explaining the situation in depth via email, and explained that as the tournament had already started I knew I could not be entered into it and did not expect compensation as such, but asked that they might take care to avoid such misunderstandings occuring again in the future. It turned out the CS had given me his OWN e-mail address and sent me a one-liner by reply stating that, as he had previously explained, I had not met the entry requirements.

In my opinion there is an important difference here between the average casino bonus complaint because the terms and conditions they refer to are not stated in any place that the average person is ever likely to see them - whereas when accepting a bonus you almost always have a link to the terms and conditions of that bonus. This is a tournament game with a set of requirements clearly stated in the description, and I would note, that other iPoker rooms such as coral do NOT have the minimum ten euro requirement, as I did end up playing the game there.

Fact is, if my queries had been answered directly, and/or the rep simply stated: "I agree this could have been handled better, I will request that the minimum entry requirements are added to the tournament description..." you know, or similar, just a reasonable response, I would of been happy.... I have more examples of the failings of this particular CS department but am going to hold back for now...
 
Oh and btw, I have been a member here for a long time now and know for sure the one thing meistermembers do not have sympathy for is those who fail to read the terms and conditions - and I always agree with this point of view .. but poker players, we fire up the client every day and play poker, we dont tend to visit the companies website unless there is some reason to do so - if we see a tournament in the lobby, with a listed set of entry requirements, we are going to meet those requirements as described and expect to be granted entry to the game. To be told we are not eligible because of some small print on the room owners website is, in my view, unacceptable - simply because it is not reasonable to expect players to check that website for additional terms and conditions unless it is stated that such terms and conditions exist, which it was not.

Hope I am making sense...
 
Not to go off on a tangent but I had a similar experience with them on a football bet. Put £10 on Liverpool to score in the last 10 minutes at 8/1. They scored and I was only paid out £25. When I questioned they said that the odds were incorrect at time of printing and used the, "live bet odds can be subject to change if misprinted." If it was 800/1, I would understand but 8/1 was not massively overpriced. The CS could not comprehend that this was taking it a bit far and wouldn't budge.

Apologies, I know it's not Casino related however their customer service was awful and they fell back on their T's& C's which were interpretted how they wanted to. Needless to say, I didn't bet with them again..
 
The problem with these casinos eg Paddy Power, Ladbrokes and William Hill is that they are more concerned with their sportsbook operations and fail to devote attention to the online casino part. This period, with the World Cup taking place is the worst as they have pooled most of their resources in the sports betting area. I do not have concrete figures but I guess some of these establishments may well be thinking of severing the online casino arm to concentrate on the sportsbook.
 
Okay, now I am really god damn angry, please can any other casinomeister members who play poker at Paddy Power help me out here, if you request online support from the menu option at the far right of the menu in the poker client it opens a browser window requesting your user details, when you reach the chat stage you get a javascript error every time you start typing a new line. I have tested this on multiple computers with the same result, and it seems to automatically open into IE regardless of the default browser set on your system, yet their support tell me nobody else has ever reported the problem.

How is this possible? I do not believe it for one moment but the support have now cut me off several times whilst I am trying to type a message to them but am unable to do so because of constantly having to close the javascript popups every time I type a few letters...

Also, over the past month I have been regularly making deposits using Ukash vouchers from the shop over the road - doing it this way means I do not have to pay Skril fees for uploading to my e-wallet, and on the times I have won I have withdrawn back to Skrill without problem, until today that they tell me they will only allow withdrawals to cheque or bank transfer if the deposit was made with UKash. I can't fathom why this has suddenly become an issue today and again, I have found it buried in the terms and conditions on the main site, but as they have allowed me to operate my account in this way for several weeks I find it extremely frustrating.

Why are these terms not indicated clearly when making a deposit via this method? Why is it any safer for them to send money back via cheque etc anyway? When I enquired about this they brought up the usual money laundering stuff and accused me of using my account as a temporary hold for Ukash vouchers and using their service to quickly convert it back to cash via Skrill - entirely unfair, I have actually lost almost every Ukash voucher I have bought playing cards there, I have NEVER requested a withdrawal without having first played through the value of the voucher at least once, so to say I am only making these deposits in order to withdraw them again via Skrill is obviously unfair and not true.

Look, I am not one to say that terms and conditions should not be respected and obviously in the case of Paddy Power, it is super important to consult their website for every possible eventuality before taking any action within their poker client, but they are laughing in my face when I suggest that their current implementation of highlighting important terms and conditions is failing miserably - I have played at Betfred and Coral for a long time before trying Paddys and found them to be operating a much tighter ship in these regards,am I expecting something unreasonable here? If I am presented with a list of terms and conditions when agreeing to something I am happy to read it and abide by it. If I am informed I have not met a required term or condition and then informed that I should have consulted a list of such terms in a place that I have absolutely no reason to consider consulting, I think it is unreasonable and unfair. But is it me being unreasonable here? That is what I need to know.
 
Also, over the past month I have been regularly making deposits using Ukash vouchers from the shop over the road - doing it this way means I do not have to pay Skril fees for uploading to my e-wallet, and on the times I have won I have withdrawn back to Skrill without problem, until today that they tell me they will only allow withdrawals to cheque or bank transfer if the deposit was made with UKash. I can't fathom why this has suddenly become an issue today and again, I have found it buried in the terms and conditions on the main site, but as they have allowed me to operate my account in this way for several weeks I find it extremely frustrating.

Did you make at least one deposit by Skrill there, ever? The "withdrawal same as deposit" term is imposed to prevent fraudsters from depositing by someone else's credit card (compromised ewallet, stolen voucher etc) and then withdrawing it into their own ewallet. Some casinos enforce it very strictly, others allow withdrawing via a different method if you had used it in the past.
 
Have you tried opening IE and disabling the error notifications?

Options>Advanced under browsing

Check these two
Disable Script Debugging (Internet Explorer)
Disable Script Debugging (Other).

and uncheck
Display a Notification about Every Script Error.

I'm not sure this will help, but it's worth a shot. If it's the error windows that are messing with your chat it might help, but if it's the actual code that's doing it it might not.
 

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