Good afternoon my fellow CM'ers.
It has come the time to forkify this thread as I will not have any further "remarkable days" at Videoslots.
Over the past few weeks, I had an issue which in my view has been handled very poorly and for now, that means the end of playing at VS. I will actually take the unusual step to execute my first ever full-length Self-Exclusion to avoid going back for the next few years. If I don't go this ultimate step, the least I will do set my deposit limit to AUD10 / week.
I'll give a short summary of what happened to get your comments on it as I value highly your opinions.
On 9th July I received an email that my account at VS has been play-blocked, which included playing Free Battles. The reason was that on 6th February I received a payment in error. Yes, it took more than 5 months to find out. On that day I withdrew AUD140, only to receive a few minutes later an email that the withdrawal has been denied. The money turned up in my VS account again and I played it away.
Appears, that they actually paid the withdrawal, which means they are short of AUD140. So I checked my Ecopayz account and indeed that money came in but I never realized it. On that day, I played at VS,
Rizk and Betat and had countless deposits at $100 - $250, some in rapid succession and a few withdrawals from Rizk and Betat in between. They were in AUD and CAD, which were then converted into EUR, my Ecopayz account currency. Hence, I had no clue that the 140 bucks were extra there.
Fast forward and more than 5 months later I get this email. Fine, no problem I thought, mistakes happen although for a player depositing yearly AUD50K+ I would have expected that they might just forego that small amount. However, as you all know I work with weekly gaming budgets and at that point I had zero in my gaming account. So I asked Dan to help to unblock my account so I can play my race winnings + Free Battles and latest on 20th July, when my next gaming transfer comes in, I would then deposit enough funds to cover the AUD140. The account was then unblocked.
The transfer actually hit my account on 19th July, so I deposited AUD250 and informed their support via email to deduct the outstanding amount. Over the next 5 hours, I deposited more and lost appr. AUD1K but never slipped below the AUD140 threshold which they were supposed to deduct from my account. I even sent them a reminder email after a few hours as they still had not taken the money. An email from general support arrived saying that deducting money from an account can take time but it should be resolved shortly.
At some point, I hit some good base game wins on Bonanza @ AUD4 bets, taking my balance over AUD600 and over the next hour or so I let the game run on AutoSpins with AUD4 bets as I had some urgent work to complete and only glanced over again when the music stopped which meant the 100 AutoSpins sequence was finished. Once after 100 Autospins @ AUD4, my balance dropped so badly that it would have meant I had an RTP below 20% over the 100 spins which I have never seen on Bonanza. Hence, I thought, they took the AUD140 from my account during those 100 Autospins.
Case closed for me and I carried on, dipping now below the AUD140 and ultimately losing nearly my entire budget in less than one day. At no point did I hear anything from the relevant department, either way. I actually deposited more on Friday, all normal.
Comes the weekend, I have my son with me and only play a few Free Battles, winning overall some 50 FS. I played them Sunday evening after my son went to bed and got some 10 bucks from them. Played then on Center Court and Bonanza and while I made it once to appr. AUD100, the balance went down to $40 again at which point I decided to withdraw. The reason was that I had a 200% bonus chip in my account (yes, 200% at VS is possible). So my thinking was to withdraw and re-deposit to claim the bonus.
To my amazement, within minutes I received an email from the same person who play-blocked my account the first time, telling me that she play-blocked it again and will not lift the block until I paid the AUD140. This came as a total surprise as I was convinced that they had taken the money on Thursday. Funny, that over more than 5 hours she did not respond to my email when I asked her to deduct the amount but was quick to pounce on a measly $40 withdrawal.
End of the story, I have now $42 sitting in my account plus race winnings coming in tonight, which I cannot use to play. Nor can I play any Free Battles or take part in the marathon this weekend (which I earned via depositing and wagering) as it will take until 3rd August until my next transfer to my gaming account will arrive. I just can't shorten it because that is how I set-up this little system of gaming control for me.
I pledged with Dan but to no avail which really frustrates me badly because first, it was never my fault, neither them falsely paying the withdrawal in February nor failing to take the amount from my account in more than 5 hours on Thursday. Apparently, it can take days for the department to deduct money from an account. Who knew that a few hits on a keyboard would take that long?
Conclusion is that I have lost faith in VS when they can't manage even a relatively small issue. What if next time there are thousands of $'s involved? The only path of action for me personally is to stay away. And that does not take into account that we are talking about somebody who deposits 50K+ in a year. Any other of my favorite casinos (Rizk, 32RED etc) would have just forfeited such a small amount because it was their fault to start with.
As you all know, I don't lose my cool easily, but this has really p*ssed me off. What are your thoughts and opinions?