As mentioned above, the details of the mistakes made by GC in this process are listed below, along with how GC intends to rectify each instance:
1. The terms and conditions were unclear, and most of the players who were later deemed to be ineligible to receive the promotion should never have been offered it in the first place.
GC believes that the exclusion of players known only to make use of promotional offers without ever risking their own funds is entirely justifiable and necessary in order to ensure that honest gamblers can continue to receive generous rewards for their ongoing play at the casino.
However, it is unfair to apply this rule after players have been offered the promotion on an individual basis.
Further, the casino’s general terms and conditions at the time that the promotion was offered were unclear as to the application of this rule, while the terms and conditions stated in the promotion offer email did not make any mention of the applicability of any terms and conditions other than those stated in the offer email.
GC accepts that it could have avoided the resulting uproar entirely had proper effort been made to exclude ineligible players in advance of the promotion offer being mailed out.
GC usually does filter its promotion offers in order to include only genuine players (other than for sign-on bonuses, where generic terms and conditions apply), and will ensure that such a lapse in filtering does not happen again.
To rectify this situation, GC has credited all of the previously excluded accounts with the bonuses previously refused, along with a further 10% of the bonus amount in order to make up for the poor handling of this matter.
The wagering requirements published with this promotion will apply before any cash-outs will be allowed. This means that the minimum amount to be wagered will be three times the sum of the purchase plus the bonus (excluding the additional 10% of the bonus amount). For example, if a player purchased $1,000 and should have received a bonus of $100, such a player will now find $110 in their account, and will be required to wager 3 x ($1,000 + $100) = $3,300 before cashing in. Any wagers made since the time of the original $1,000 purchase will count towards this requirement, providing that the wagers were placed on eligible games.
2. The promotion was poorly designed.
A promotion of this nature should have required a minimum wagering level (on eligible games) before any bonus could be granted. Such a requirement would have removed any incentive for promotion hunters to exploit the bonus with minimum risk to their own funds, while still giving genuine players value for money.
Future promotions will be better designed to minimize any incentive for promotion abuse, while still ensuring that genuine players obtain value for money from the promotion.
3. The “shared industry database” currently being used to exclude known promotion abusers is not part of a transparent process in which players have the ability to seek the removal of their names if they have been unfairly added to the database.
A central database of known promotion abusers is something that all genuine players should welcome, as reducing the possibility of promotion abuse allows casinos to offer more generous bonuses to their genuine players.
However, as with all such databases, it is necessary for players to be able to query their inclusion in the database, and also to have opportunity to seek their removal if their inclusion is without good reason or if they have made genuine effort to make good on the reason why they were included in the first place.
GC intends to work with other online casinos to establish a transparent and fair mechanism for operating such a database. In particular, such operation must include the participation of an independent party, acceptable to both players and the casinos, who would act as the independent arbiter in disputes arising in respect of whether or not a player should be included in the database.
As would be expected, securing the co-operation of various parties (along with finding an acceptable independent arbiter) will take some time, but hopefully this will prove to be a workable solution to this problem. The Gaming Club will keep players and this forum updated on its progress in this regard.
