Players' Rights and the use of unfair T&Cs by gambling operators

maxd

Head of Complaints (PABs), Senior Forum Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Jan 20, 2004
Location
Saltirelandia
Spotted on Twitter this morning:
Paul Fairhead ‏@BoycottBetfred
Today on BBCR4 at 12.15 - Consumer programme You And Yours covering the use of unfair T&Cs by gambling operators. Highly recommend a listen.
 
Bryan sent this out to the forum faithful:
Hiya maxd!

There is a program that starts in less than an hour - 12:15 on BBC 4 Radio - that concerns gamblers of online casinos and their rights when it comes to unfair terms and conditions.

It should be well worth a listen to even if you are not in the UK. Many rules transfer from one jurisdiction to another once a precedence is set.

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The player is here:
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There is a current thread about this here:
https://www.casinomeister.com/forum...air-t-cs-by-gambling-operators.74588/?t=74588

Cheers!

Bryan
 
Already signed up to sister site and had duplicate accounts?

He was paid this morning so thats a good thing,

Same old story's
 
The Guardian has been championing this guy's case for a while, also that Paul Fairhead guy on Twitter. Good to hear he got paid.

Damn short piece on the radio show though, few minutes and boom, done.
 
That was rather brief lol.

I agree with much of what was said. The terms that operators present in this context can be misleading. However, speaking as a body performing the same role as IBAS, with regard to legal rights the UKGC have very clear requirements that ADRs inform complainants that their legal rights are not in any way diminished by submitting a complaint.

That this is contradicted by operator terms is an issue that should be addressed, but I don't think this is the issue creating most problems at the present moment. That's reserved for groups not making clear where self-exclusions apply at point of sign-up. Simply enforcing that would dramatically diminish the number of complaints generated. If they then started forcing operators to enforce max bet/game restrictions automatically complaints would drop to a fraction of their current levels.

TP
 
I did mention the other day the ADR/IBAS's conclusion isn't legally binding. It never can be as only an Ombudsman or court can have those powers, government QUANGOs and their subsidiaries don't have those powers and can't ever have unless backed by a specific act of Parliament.

I like the way those terms quoted in the programme stated (because the betting sites know damn well that however crap their terms are IBAS will agree mostly) that the dispute cannot be taken to court after the IBAS/ADR ruling. As I said to Max recently that's complete misleading tosh and designed to make you believe you are relieved thereafter of your statutory rights...

P.S thePOGG - how many times have I said that on here? The license holders do NOT usually exercise due diligence and spot duplicate accounts at the point of sign up as the ridiculous UKGC-endorsed system makes it pay them not to with effectively no-lose deposit. WIN? then FU, have your deposits back. LOSE? well we'll keep 'em....
 
how many times have I said that on here? The license holders do NOT usually exercise due diligence and spot duplicate accounts at the point of sign up as the ridiculous UKGC-endorsed system makes it pay them not to with effectively no-lose deposit. WIN? then FU, have your deposits back. LOSE? well we'll keep 'em....

Yep, couldn't agree more. How this is even allowed to happen is just wrong.
 
Good program, but way too brief. I would have liked to have heard something from Befred, but as expected, they can't be bothered.

And those terms sounded rather ominous and pompous being read aloud. I think a lot of this is a Playtech carry-over. I believe that many of those terms originated from Playtech. I could be wrong, but a couple off Google searches and delving into the WayBack machine could clarify that. Playtech is infamous for having blustery terms and conditions.

I'm glad that IBAS has more or less gone on record that they will disregard terms and conditions that are either unfair or breach the consumers' rights act.
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I think this is very important. This is something I'm sure will be considered within our arbitration service. And it should also be made very clear that draconian terms stating that players have no recourse after arbitration are absolute nonsense - as stated by one of the guests on the show. It was someone from Justice for Punters I think:
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Well it was short but sweet, At least its getting heard, Hopefully does not take another 20 years to get on watchdog,

Just hope that theses casino groups start putting things in place, As it will not belong before there is lots of small claims, T.V programs that are showing this type of behaviour, At the minute people are at a lost end, There must be 10's of thousands of players that have been stiffed with the S.E, singed up to sister sites etc, & are at a dead end.

The more programs that are shown than thats when the complaints will start rolling in, As it will show what people can do and how to do it, This is when the casino's will get a bollocking and will have to listen up, Alot of theses casino's coming on to the market are doing things right, Chance hill / all British just to mention a few, But still they are running of a bigger back end where most rules are set.

Of topic abit, here is on you want to watch, george galloway's movie, (THE KILLING$ OF TONY BLAIR) It has just hit a few small screen in London but will be out in a few weeks, This will give you an insight of our corrupt government and our old M.P Tony Blair xxx.theblairdoc.com/
 
I'm afraid I'm a fence sitter on this issue. I just don't see it as all that significant. It's a technical problem and absolutely should be addressed, but most players will say that they don't read all the terms anyway and as ADRs are required to make the statutory rights of player very clear I have significant doubts that this is really confusing players on a large scale basis.

I do think it's an issue that should be addressed - these terms ARE intended to make the player feel as if they have next to no rights - I just think there's far more significant issues that could have received this type of attention that would have been of far greater benefit to the general gambling population.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With regard to your point Dunover, the UKGC are never going to enforce pre-registration checks. It's not going to happen. I understand why many players feel that this is done cynically to let operators only catch things at the point where it benefits them not to pay, but the truth is there's a FAR more significant incentive for operators not to do this.

Simply put, pre-registration is not only a huge time sink, it's massively off-putting to players. I'll break this into the 2 factors:

1) You're talking about likely over doubling the number of accounts that would need verification as every single player now needs to be investigated before they're allowed to play. That figure's a guess and it could actually be far far higher than that. Going by our affiliate stats we see a huge number of players that don't stick around across all online casinos we refer to. An educated guess would be that many of these players that deposit only a few times never reach the point of having to verify their account.

To give some context, at one of our better listed venues (though not top) we have a total of 254 referred players. Of that 245 129 have made either 1 or no deposits. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to suggest that at least 90% of those accounts never went through verification. 90% of 129 is 116. Even if we assume that EVERY other account was verified that's still almost doubling the workload for the risk department right there. That's an unrealistic assumption though. Another 40 accounts have less than 10 deposits - would you like to take a guess as to how many of them remain unverified to this day?

Increasing the workload for the risk department this significantly, who are for obvious reasons more expensive than standard customer service reps as they require more training and carry more responsibility, creates a very large additional overhead. This overhead is likely to dwarf the additional gains from genuine self-exclusion misses.

The above said, it's actually still the lesser factor in why registration point verification won't be enforce.

2) Gambling is fundamentally an impulse activity. If operators were to start locking accounts at sign-up, when players are confronted with this what happens is they go elsewhere. Barry Boozo on a Friday night doesn't want to be told that he can't play until Monday when his account is verified. Even if we dramatically increase the number of risk personnel and have that department open 24/7, Bazza isn't going to want to wait the couple of hours it takes for his documents to be verified, he wants to bet now. He goes elsewhere to an operator that doesn't carryout checks before play.

Even if the UKGC were to force all licensed operators to do pre-play checks so that the playing field was levelled, all that happen is they drive players to any of the multitude of unlicensed operators that are still happily accepting UK players. Just like everyone else, getting on top of these dodgy operators functioning in nowheresville is a huge challenge even for the UK government.

And none of this takes account of the fact that verification would then be required again at the point of withdrawal as many of the indicators that lead to identification of multiple accounting and other term breaches can only be seen after deposits/play have taken place. So in fact registration verification wouldn't be instead of the current verification system, it would be an addition on top of the current system.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Regulation is a delicate process. Consumers need to be protected. However, if the regulator goes too far and makes the rules too harsh for businesses it makes the market unattractive and not profitable enough as a whole to encourage growth and sustainability.

While I would actually agree with registration point verification on principal, enforcing this would be such a significant blow to the bottom line of UK licensed operators that it would cause a large scale push back from industry. This isn't a fight I think the UKGC are likely to want to have and to be completely honest, in their position, I don't think I would either.

TP
 
I'm afraid I'm a fence sitter on this issue. I just don't see it as all that significant. It's a technical problem and absolutely should be addressed, but most players will say that they don't read all the terms anyway and as ADRs are required to make the statutory rights of player very clear I have significant doubts that this is really confusing players on a large scale basis.

I do think it's an issue that should be addressed - these terms ARE intended to make the player feel as if they have next to no rights - I just think there's far more significant issues that could have received this type of attention that would have been of far greater benefit to the general gambling population.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With regard to your point Dunover, the UKGC are never going to enforce pre-registration checks. It's not going to happen. I understand why many players feel that this is done cynically to let operators only catch things at the point where it benefits them not to pay, but the truth is there's a FAR more significant incentive for operators not to do this.

Simply put, pre-registration is not only a huge time sink, it's massively off-putting to players. I'll break this into the 2 factors:

1) You're talking about likely over doubling the number of accounts that would need verification as every single player now needs to be investigated before they're allowed to play. That figure's a guess and it could actually be far far higher than that. Going by our affiliate stats we see a huge number of players that don't stick around across all online casinos we refer to. An educated guess would be that many of these players that deposit only a few times never reach the point of having to verify their account.

To give some context, at one of our better listed venues (though not top) we have a total of 254 referred players. Of that 245 129 have made either 1 or no deposits. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to suggest that at least 90% of those accounts never went through verification. 90% of 129 is 116. Even if we assume that EVERY other account was verified that's still almost doubling the workload for the risk department right there. That's an unrealistic assumption though. Another 40 accounts have less than 10 deposits - would you like to take a guess as to how many of them remain unverified to this day?

Increasing the workload for the risk department this significantly, who are for obvious reasons more expensive than standard customer service reps as they require more training and carry more responsibility, creates a very large additional overhead. This overhead is likely to dwarf the additional gains from genuine self-exclusion misses.

The above said, it's actually still the lesser factor in why registration point verification won't be enforce.

2) Gambling is fundamentally an impulse activity. If operators were to start locking accounts at sign-up, when players are confronted with this what happens is they go elsewhere. Barry Boozo on a Friday night doesn't want to be told that he can't play until Monday when his account is verified. Even if we dramatically increase the number of risk personnel and have that department open 24/7, Bazza isn't going to want to wait the couple of hours it takes for his documents to be verified, he wants to bet now. He goes elsewhere to an operator that doesn't carryout checks before play.

Even if the UKGC were to force all licensed operators to do pre-play checks so that the playing field was levelled, all that happen is they drive players to any of the multitude of unlicensed operators that are still happily accepting UK players. Just like everyone else, getting on top of these dodgy operators functioning in nowheresville is a huge challenge even for the UK government.

And none of this takes account of the fact that verification would then be required again at the point of withdrawal as many of the indicators that lead to identification of multiple accounting and other term breaches can only be seen after deposits/play have taken place. So in fact registration verification wouldn't be instead of the current verification system, it would be an addition on top of the current system.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Regulation is a delicate process. Consumers need to be protected. However, if the regulator goes too far and makes the rules too harsh for businesses it makes the market unattractive and not profitable enough as a whole to encourage growth and sustainability.

While I would actually agree with registration point verification on principal, enforcing this would be such a significant blow to the bottom line of UK licensed operators that it would cause a large scale push back from industry. This isn't a fight I think the UKGC are likely to want to have and to be completely honest, in their position, I don't think I would either.

TP

Points accepted but you went off on a tangent to what I actually meant - I mean cross-referencing. In other words if I try to open a dupe account at Coral it will instantly freeze and invite me to contact CS. I didn't mean FULL KYC verification. This will happen at Gala too, if any of my details match the Coral SE one or closed one. It will happen at many other licensees too, Betsafe/Mr.Smith and bet-at/Slotty Vegas. It can be done easily, it's automated and any similar detail like a mobile no. or e-mail will automatically void/suspend your registration. So although the UKGC may not be keen, it already happens at the better-organized groups.

All the licensee needs to do is automatically run the application details against their database, a relatively simple bit of code that would flag identical mobiles/phone numbers/e-mails/addresses etc. Any one matching, account suspended.

As for depositing at these bent Cup-o'-cocoa and Montenegro licensed sites, that's really a matter for the UKGC along with the banks and payment processors. These sites simply couldn't exist aside from prepay vouchers or shitcoins if processors and banks were kept up to date with sites that shouldn't be played from the UK. Yes, the payment processors like Skrill/Neteller are greedy and will readily assist you in losing cash to rogues. Again, there is no dialogue between the UKGC and banks/processors so the parasites will exist and breed until their lifeblood is cut off.
 
Points accepted but you went off on a tangent to what I actually meant - I mean cross-referencing. In other words if I try to open a dupe account at Coral it will instantly freeze and invite me to contact CS. I didn't mean FULL KYC verification. This will happen at Gala too, if any of my details match the Coral SE one or closed one. It will happen at many other licensees too, Betsafe/Mr.Smith and bet-at/Slotty Vegas. It can be done easily, it's automated and any similar detail like a mobile no. or e-mail will automatically void/suspend your registration. So although the UKGC may not be keen, it already happens at the better-organized groups.

All the licensee needs to do is automatically run the application details against their database, a relatively simple bit of code that would flag identical mobiles/phone numbers/e-mails/addresses etc. Any one matching, account suspended.

Agree on that point up to a point. Most groups are applying some sort of automated system with regard to auto checking for duplicate accounts. There is one major group I can think of that doesn't seem to be at the moment and to me that's become a huge black mark on their reputation.

However this isn't always as straight forward as "relatively simple code". Pre the UKGC deciding that ADRs weren't to manage self-exclusion issues there was a strong theme amongst many of the SE complaints I looked at, that being that certain key pieces of data were being change between the duplicate accounts. The player's used a different email address, the player's changed their phone number, the player's switched the first and middle name around, the player's given their name as a double barrel rather than a separate first and middle name. For instance, the names Kerryann, Kerryanne, Kerry-Ann, Kerry-Anne, Kerry Ann and Kerry Anne would all be interpreted as different by an automated system. And this is where the real problem occurs. It seems perfectly reasonable that someone might make these types of changes, but programs have to become increasingly more sophisticated to catch the variations.

There are certain fields that on registration should be auto lock if they match. I'd completely agree that phone number or email address would be 2. Matching payment accounts should be an immediate lock. Other than that though, things start to get murky. Loads of people share names and DoB. Same with address, people move house all the time and the same issue I highlighted above with the formatting of a personal name can quickly manifest in a physical address. The phone number/email address fields have standard formatting making them easy to lock down, but they're still subject to the SE player changing their phone number/email address.

To be complete you need to start comparing multiple fields and grading points of concern - for instance, a new account with a name the same as another account might not be worth auto-locking and even if there's a matching DoB it may not be worth auto-locking, but if it also resides at an address that you already have registered or within a certain geographical area of an account with a matching name/DoB then this would be high risk and needs to be locked for manual review.



As for depositing at these bent Cup-o'-cocoa and Montenegro licensed sites, that's really a matter for the UKGC along with the banks and payment processors. These sites simply couldn't exist aside from prepay vouchers or shitcoins if processors and banks were kept up to date with sites that shouldn't be played from the UK. Yes, the payment processors like Skrill/Neteller are greedy and will readily assist you in losing cash to rogues. Again, there is no dialogue between the UKGC and banks/processors so the parasites will exist and breed until their lifeblood is cut off.

It's not quite as straight forward as that - the banks/processors are often not UK companies and are not beholden to the UKGC in any official manner. Ultimately this is a matter that the UK government do have to deal with, I'm just pointing out that it's not an easy one to address and it's likely there's never going to be an entirely robust solution. What the UKGC don't want to do is put in place policies that are actively going to drive UK players towards non-licensed operators and imo that's likely to happen if they were to put in place registration point verification.

TP
 
Why not allow a new player to deposit up to a low value, e.g. 200EUR/£/$ and withdrawals to the same amount. After that the account doesn't need to be locked, just deposits and withdrawals deactivated.

Western Union, Entropay, Neteller, they all do it. Seems to work there as a genuinegenuine customer will do the KYC asap, should be the same for casinos.

As for cross referencing to find duplicate or SE'ed accounts I just can't believe that in this day and age that it is not instantly possible without security personnel getting involved. We have most complex software systems, face recognition, you name it...... all the KYC could be fully automated and done within seconds of receiving the uploaded docs.
 
Why not allow a new player to deposit up to a low value, e.g. 200EUR/£/$ and withdrawals to the same amount. After that the account doesn't need to be locked, just deposits and withdrawals deactivated.

Western Union, Entropay, Neteller, they all do it. Seems to work there as a genuinegenuine customer will do the KYC asap, should be the same for casinos.

As for cross referencing to find duplicate or SE'ed accounts I just can't believe that in this day and age that it is not instantly possible without security personnel getting involved. We have most complex software systems, face recognition, you name it...... all the KYC could be fully automated and done within seconds of receiving the uploaded docs.

Because the amount is irrelevant - whether the player deposits 10 quid or 500, should he/she win they'll be caught under the dupe a/c rule (I refer to the non-disclosure of sister sites not with the same casino) and then the FU term will come into play. Same aggro, same BS.

What I can say with the UTMOST CONFIDENCE is that should anyone win on one site and then be FU'd because they were SE at another site under the same license AND the casino had failed to list the relevant sites in their terms/bonus ad terms at the time you joined and deposited then regardless of any IBAS ruling to the contrary you WILL win in a civil court:

Terms must be 'complete, comprehensive, fair and relevant' and therefore the onus is NOT on the player to click a link to an outside body or business that contains information that is vitally important and therefore should have reasonably been expected to have been included at the point of sale.

If you heard the R4 article today even IBAS agreed (although this may have been due to the publicity).

So if you win a decent amount, live in the UK and were FU'd by any casino that did NOT have sister sites included or present in the terms when you joined, sod IBAS - just go straight to County Court and summons them. The casino is in breach of basic consumer law and this will always be upheld and have 10x more clout than any ADR/IBAS decision - the loser can give the middle finger to either of those if they wish. If these casinos even try and contest your case it's bordering on the vexatious as your argument is essentially outlined in statute. :thumbsup:
 
Why not allow a new player to deposit up to a low value, e.g. 200EUR/£/$ and withdrawals to the same amount. After that the account doesn't need to be locked, just deposits and withdrawals deactivated.

Western Union, Entropay, Neteller, they all do it. Seems to work there as a genuinegenuine customer will do the KYC asap, should be the same for casinos.

That's a reasonable middle ground - I don't have any specific thoughts on this. Perhaps some Casino Reps could chime in here?



As for cross referencing to find duplicate or SE'ed accounts I just can't believe that in this day and age that it is not instantly possible without security personnel getting involved. We have most complex software systems, face recognition, you name it...... all the KYC could be fully automated and done within seconds of receiving the uploaded docs.

I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying it's not as straight forward as many people would like to imagine. It requires specialist programming and a lot of careful consideration as to how you weight the grading system to not impede/put off players where there's no reason to while at the same time catching any account that is genuinely duplicate.

And it's got to be remembered that a significant number of the complaints that ultimately turn up will still turn up as the player has changed information enough that the automated system won't detect the duplicate account. Sometime that's innocent and other times it's intentional. At the end of the day the impression I've come away with is that while there are unquestionably cynical attempts to manipulate the system by changing info but there are also some players who self-exclude and re-register with details different enough to get through the system for fairly innocent reasons. They've just decided they want to play again and want to play with their favourite operator. They're not allowed, but they don't see why that should be the case. So they change some details and register again. Then the win comes along, or the big loss and that's when the problems occur. Gambling addiction isn't a rational condition and it can do huge damage to lives. So when things go wrong people will panic and rationalise their actions, even when they know that they've specifically taken action to circumvented the systems that are their to protect them. It becomes the operator's fault that they were allowed to play.

All the above said, I've spent days on end highlighting the issues with SE policies to the UKGC. To me the first thing that should be implemented as a quick fix (while working to longer term more robust strategies) is a check box on the registration page that stipulates that you cannot register if you've previously self-excluded at [BRAND] or any of the operators found on this page [LINK TO THE LICENSE PAGE]. This quickly shows the player what operators are on the same license and would make a significant difference.

And as much as I've spoken about player's circumventing automated systems, there are operators that are unquestionably abusing the current system. I'm aware of one operator who refused a payout because the player had SE at another operator that shared a payment processor. There was simply no way what-so-ever that the player could have possibly known that their SE would apply at this operator. It was a disgraceful case and all I could do was highlight the issue to the UKGC and hope that they took it forward.

In another case an EM operator refused a payout and claimed that the player didn't get detected as SE because they changed one field, that being their first name and it was a switch between 2 common variants of the same name.

I'm again fence sitting - I see the difficulties that the industry has with players who are manipulating the system and I see the genuine problem gamblers that the system is letting down. More work needs to be done in this area, but as stated a couple of paragraphs above there are some quick and simple solutions that could be implemented relatively easily across the industry that would start us moving in the right direction.

TP
 
The way I look at it its not very hard, Like its been pointed out, We have so much now days in the way of technology, Yes emails change, phone numbers change, IP's change, Address change, But very rare a name gets changed and Nether I heard of an D.O.B being changed,
Whats stoping a casino group, Lets say E.V Every site that is under them they have a pre sign up form, Name & D.O.B canot be that many with the same two, click to continue, Sorry name and D.O.B is recognised as excluded,

Its been going on sinse the internet arrived, Sorry this user name has been taken, Whats so hard to incorporate a name and D.O.B into that?
 
The way I look at it its not very hard, Like its been pointed out, We have so much now days in the way of technology, Yes emails change, phone numbers change, IP's change, Address change, But very rare a name gets changed and Nether I heard of an D.O.B being changed,
Whats stoping a casino group, Lets say E.V Every site that is under them they have a pre sign up form, Name & D.O.B canot be that many with the same two, click to continue, Sorry name and D.O.B is recognised as excluded,

Its been going on sinse the internet arrived, Sorry this user name has been taken, Whats so hard to incorporate a name and D.O.B into that?

It isn't hard as many do. It may be expensive though, hence the minor operators not doing it.
 
It isn't hard as many do. It may be expensive though, hence the minor operators not doing it.

Thats the trouble, Its not the minor operations that are really having this trouble, There the ones that seem to be doing something about it,

To me its not a problem, I nether exclude or take a break, Only thing is if they changed that you can only sign up to one of there sites in the group than I would be in the shit house, Luckily most operations let you sign up to more than one, There is a few that do not alow this,

The 888 group and there knocking on 1 million bingo sites do state only one bonus alowed per group, Now that is some complicated shit, Reason being, They have groups whiten groups, Such as the costabingo has sites such as wishB, fancyB, Than another group which has, LoneyB, SilkB, SugerB, I nether had a problem using bonus or what they call it, Bonus abuse, I think JonM got stinged by it,
 
Because the amount is irrelevant - whether the player deposits 10 quid or 500, should he/she win they'll be caught under the dupe a/c rule (I refer to the non-disclosure of sister sites not with the same casino) and then the FU term will come into play. Same aggro, same BS.

What I can say with the UTMOST CONFIDENCE is that should anyone win on one site and then be FU'd because they were SE at another site under the same license AND the casino had failed to list the relevant sites in their terms/bonus ad terms at the time you joined and deposited then regardless of any IBAS ruling to the contrary you WILL win in a civil court:

Terms must be 'complete, comprehensive, fair and relevant' and therefore the onus is NOT on the player to click a link to an outside body or business that contains information that is vitally important and therefore should have reasonably been expected to have been included at the point of sale.

If you heard the R4 article today even IBAS agreed (although this may have been due to the publicity).

So if you win a decent amount, live in the UK and were FU'd by any casino that did NOT have sister sites included or present in the terms when you joined, sod IBAS - just go straight to County Court and summons them. The casino is in breach of basic consumer law and this will always be upheld and have 10x more clout than any ADR/IBAS decision - the loser can give the middle finger to either of those if they wish. If these casinos even try and contest your case it's bordering on the vexatious as your argument is essentially outlined in statute. :thumbsup:

Sorry, unfortunately i missed the program on R4, read the thread too late. Well, finally IBAS saying something in favor of the player. I agree the ONUS has to be with the casino, fail to detect then pay up, simple.

The reason I see this happening at all is because the casino/gambling lobby, being afraid/scared to lose business, had too much influence on the RG regulations, be it UKGC or Malta.

Secondly, the UKGC/Malta firstly focused on getting the casinos registered to make sure the tax money is rolling in, RG was only much further down the list.

Thirdly, the RG regulations have so many loopholes, as mentioned in the ONE thread, my lawyer laughed when he went through it.

Proper RG regulations wouldn't care if a casino is losing a few customers because they are put off by the KYC procedure. They would focus on protecting the players first, casino second.

You will always have hard core addicts/fraudsters that will try to circumvent possible detection of duplicate accounts, SE rules etc. Well, in this case it would be clear for me --> deposits/winnings confiscated.....BASTA. Do that a few times and they will think twice before trying to do it again, the addict because he will be afraid of losing more without having the kick of winning and the fraudsters because they only stop when they see that there is no profit to be made. You could even agree with the casino operators to donate the confiscated deposits to charity organizations who help fight addiction.
 
That's a reasonable middle ground - I don't have any specific thoughts on this. Perhaps some Casino Reps could chime in here?

E.g. with WU you register and are allowed to transfer/receive up to 500$ before KYC needs to be done, Entropay the same amount.

It would not solve the problem in itself, but having a limit of e.g. 200$ would limit the damages to both sides, player and casino. And if the winnings are higher than the 200$ limit then the casino can hold on to it until a satisfactory KYC is completed.

At WU you get a pop-up at registration stating the 500$ limit, the reasons behind it and a link to the KYC procedures. How well thought through and simple is that!! The new customer is fully informed and makes his/her decision based on that.

I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying it's not as straight forward as many people would like to imagine. It requires specialist programming and a lot of careful consideration as to how you weight the grading system to not impede/put off players where there's no reason to while at the same time catching any account that is genuinely duplicate.

And it's got to be remembered that a significant number of the complaints that ultimately turn up will still turn up as the player has changed information enough that the automated system won't detect the duplicate account. Sometime that's innocent and other times it's intentional. At the end of the day the impression I've come away with is that while there are unquestionably cynical attempts to manipulate the system by changing info but there are also some players who self-exclude and re-register with details different enough to get through the system for fairly innocent reasons. They've just decided they want to play again and want to play with their favourite operator. They're not allowed, but they don't see why that should be the case. So they change some details and register again. Then the win comes along, or the big loss and that's when the problems occur. Gambling addiction isn't a rational condition and it can do huge damage to lives. So when things go wrong people will panic and rationalise their actions, even when they know that they've specifically taken action to circumvented the systems that are their to protect them. It becomes the operator's fault that they were allowed to play.

All the above said, I've spent days on end highlighting the issues with SE policies to the UKGC. To me the first thing that should be implemented as a quick fix (while working to longer term more robust strategies) is a check box on the registration page that stipulates that you cannot register if you've previously self-excluded at [BRAND] or any of the operators found on this page [LINK TO THE LICENSE PAGE]. This quickly shows the player what operators are on the same license and would make a significant difference.

And as much as I've spoken about player's circumventing automated systems, there are operators that are unquestionably abusing the current system. I'm aware of one operator who refused a payout because the player had SE at another operator that shared a payment processor. There was simply no way what-so-ever that the player could have possibly known that their SE would apply at this operator. It was a disgraceful case and all I could do was highlight the issue to the UKGC and hope that they took it forward.

In another case an EM operator refused a payout and claimed that the player didn't get detected as SE because they changed one field, that being their first name and it was a switch between 2 common variants of the same name.

I'm again fence sitting - I see the difficulties that the industry has with players who are manipulating the system and I see the genuine problem gamblers that the system is letting down. More work needs to be done in this area, but as stated a couple of paragraphs above there are some quick and simple solutions that could be implemented relatively easily across the industry that would start us moving in the right direction.

TP

The system as it is, can and is abused by players and casinos alike. That is why i think the above strategy with just a low amount before KYC would work best. Fraudsters will stay away because the possible profits will diminish. Addicts will realize that they can't just open 100's of accounts with ever changing details to circumvent SE rules/duplicate account detection.
 

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