I currently have a similar dispute with Paddy Power which may be of interest.
I'm self excluded from their sister site Betfair for more than 3 years now. I opened an account with Paddy Power a few days before they updated their self exclusion policy to automatically exclude you across both sites PP & Betfair regardless of which site you self excluded from. However they made no checks as to if I was on the Betfair self exclude list once they introduced this cross platform policy on 30/12/16, despite me using the same name, DOB, email address, security questions & answers, even virtually the same username.
I made a lot of hefty deposits with a lot of compulsive betting activity that should also have raised alarm bells with their RG team, but it didn't. I'd made a couple of withdrawals without needing to send them photo ID/statements as is usual too. Yet despite the big deposits and bets and no further withdrawals (clearly chasing to anyone's view), they didn't even send me the obligatory Responsible Gaming email warning or a phone call (as for example BET365 do). Instead they eventually contacted me 3 weeks in, but within minutes of my account hitting zero after losing deposits of almost £30k, to let me know I was now a VIP customer. At this point I spoke to my new VIP manager to tell him it was a sign to close my account as I was a compulsive gambler self excluded across many online sites. He phoned me back the next day to say they had discovered my self exclusion on PP Betfair and that my account would be closed permanently in any case.
I have emailed them stating the case requesting my deposits be returned as clearly they would not have honoured any winnings under their own policy and the UKGC directives. After many emails back & forth they are still refusing this stating that the new cross platform policy was only intended for new customers after that date of 30/12/16 and they had only been checking customers on a selective basis. I said that amounted to a failure in their duty of care to monitor self exclusions across their sites. I eventually emailed their CEO and he passed it on to another customer service rep, but after 5 days they have come back with the same stance. I've informed both UKGC & Malta Gaming Auth as IBAS (PP's selected dispute authority) will not deal with self exclusion disputes. From what I've read it seems I'm going to have to head to the courts. It's above the £10k small claims so I'll probably have to go the next step up.
I've read of other people in similar circumstances getting a refund after the steps I've taken, but maybe they were just lucky?
Either way I think the industry is behaving in a disgraceful manner on this issue. The UKGC seems to not want to wield any authority on self exclusion issues, instead passing the buck to the courts. If needs be I will go that route, but in the meantime I'd welcome anyone's advise who has actual knowledge on these sort of disputes. By that I mean, I appreciate everyone will have a moral view either way, but it's actual policy & legalities I'm interested in.
