I said nothing about casinos being noble. Of course casinos first priority is to protect themselves, everyone knows that. The ones that actually care about players (or at least their reputation) put fairness to players soon after. The rest just do the minimum.
If you could drop the sarcasm and talk like a human, that would help a bit. We probably don't disagree nearly as much as you think we do. But we have to acknowledge the way things are. And the way things are is that the first step a casino takes is to protect themselves, so don't put yourself on the other side of that.
I absolutely agree that casinos should attempt to check for excluded players at signup as far as reasonably possible, and thought about editing that into my original post to make sure it was crystal clear but it seemed obvious. The question is what should happen when a casino FAILS to catch a player. There isn't much point in discussing what an unethical casino "should" do from a moral perspective, the only question is what can be done to keep them in line (if anything.)
So the question remaining is what "should" an ethical casino do in this situation - one that failed to catch on to a self-excluded problem gambler until after they had played, wants to be fair to players, but foremost wants to protect themselves. There's no guarantee they would have caught on before a player cashed out either. Are you arguing that the casino should refund the losses? That puts the casino in a position where they could be freerolled and defrauded. You might make an argument along the lines of "Well, maybe they should refund it because they should have caught it right away." But then you have to somehow go through and determine a set of cases which "should have been caught" vs "would not have reasonably caught" to treat differently, unless you think a casino should refund player deposits made with completely different account information as well.
So if we want to have a productive conversation instead of sarcastic moralizing, perhaps you could tell me either
1. How you propose to keep the less ethical casinos in line, so that they don't take advantage of problem gamblers by "accidentally" missing self exclusions on sister sites, or
2. What you think an "ethical" casino should do once a player comes to them potentially looking for a refund and tells them they lost money on casino #2 after self excluding on casino #1 (and does the answer change depending on whether the account info provided was different).
I absolutely do agree with you that casinos often have a tendency to be quite slow in fixing problems that cost their players money (with some few exceptions of casinos that actually go out of their way for their players) while lightning fast with problems that hurt their own bottom line. I'm probably more cynical than many here about casino management - I think a lot view their players as a bunch of idiots and "congratulate" their big winners through clenched teeth - but as long as they treat their players fairly and honestly, that's all I really ask.
So basically, a player should receive winnings unless fraud is provable (in which case it may go to charity), but shouldn't receive losses back unless casino negligence is provable, in my opinion.
i already explained in my previous post how i do agree with you there, no fraudster should be able to get a green light just because of this issue.
The problem is, casinos ARE abusing it and you are willing to give them a pass simply because few fraudsters are going to try and take advantage of current situations.
When it comes to charity, as i said i dont really buy that. For several reason. If big...ish casinos were "donating" all confiscated money to charity, dont you think they would be bragging about it... stuff like "we donated $100,000 to charity last year" would be all over the place. Second thing, if they are donating said money, it should be public info because its not their money to begin with. Live chat rep saying "oh yeah we are going to donate it to charity" shouldnt be good enough, no?
Now im sure there are casinos out there (few of the good ones) that do stuff by the books, including that charity money but if you expect all other casinos to sort it out on their own, its never going to happen.
I get it, you ask for players to be fair towards casinos and i can relate with that because its fraudsters that made it so hard for your regular player to play with a bonus, or even understand bonus rules to begin with but id also like casinos to be fair too. What im not ok with is casinos willingly abusing current situation either because they wont implement simple checks. Or not so simple, i dont really care, we all agree it should be done, its just that they have no incentive to do so and thats what it all boils down to. And they have been abusing it for years now.
1. How would i solve it? id make it mandatory to make name/dob check instead of simple email. Its easy solution but as i said it would result in casinos donating less money to charity, and apparently they dont want that (!?)
2. It shouldnt be treated as simple solution because, obviously every case is going to differ. If its obvious player is abusing the system, charity money it is. But how many players actually know xx casino is sister casino of xy or yy ? Thats the problem here, there are groups (and some reputable...ish) ones with dozens of casinos, which you cant possibly know they are related unless you are frequent visitor of CM, pogg and similar sites. If player passes checks, and tries to cheat casino (same casino, not one of 90 casinos in that group), in that case id always side with casino too.
We had situations of people being excluded from casino X, not being able to cashout from casino Y because years after player self excluded himself from casino X, they were bought by same group that owns casino Y. After that point they started to share license, so naturally player was now self excluded at both casinos and wasnt allowed to cashout.
How many people actually know there are casino groups out there? Yes, people should read T&C but we are at that point where just bonus T&C have 88 paragraphs, while regular T&C would take days to go through. In reality, regular players just want to play some slots, thats it. They dont care about casino group, licenses, owners, shareholders or anything like that. And casinos know that too.
Also i dont hear about many cases where casinos donate money to charity, or give money back to self excluded players out of blue. It almost always happens when players try to cashout, and in case where that doesnt actually happen, casinos are pretty damn happy to keep the money. Only time casinos were forced to return money was when UKGC made them do so, so yes id like casinos to stop freeloading players simply because its not in their license rules yet. Are casinos going to do it? probably not, maybe a few will do it but after all these years its obvious the other 2981 online casinos out there are not going to do anything until ugkc/mga/aliens make them do it.
So (too)long story short, thats why im not exactly on casinos side here (and im NOT defending fraudsters either), i just think some more regulations would come in handy.
