Just been given
A formal letter from a solicitor in reply to theirs should be enough to shut Sky Vegas up. Without this, they may continue to pile on the pressure. It is common practice to insist that all further communications are via the solicitor once one has been engaged. This would mean that Sky Vegas could find themselves in trouble if they continue to harrass the player directly in order to put the pressure on and bypass the "due process" that has begun.
Sky Vegas started it by passing the matter to THEIR solicitor.
It is also possible to write a good formal letter oneself that carries the weight of a solicitor's letter, but without the cost, which could be £150 per hour, plus a fee starting at £25 per letter. If the amount is still significant, it could be a price worth paying. The chances of Sky Vegas going all the way would depend on the amounts involved, and their desire to keep this as much out of the mainstream public eye as possible.
If they take players to court, there is bound to be coverage in newspapers and even TV news programs, and it will undermine confidence in the security of online casinos because it is a case of a game paying out without any obvious evidence of malfunction, but a few days later the casino realises that the short term RTP over all players shows that something has gone seriously wrong. If the CASINO didn't notice for 2 days, and then only after seeing aggregate data, the PLAYER can reasonably use the "good faith" defence for continuing to play in the belief they had just been lucky. Sky Vegas even went as far as irreversibly paying this player, another clear demonstration that at the time, they didn't believe there had been a problem.
Even now, there has been no further information from Sky Vegas about what happened, so at present, we only have their opinion that the game paid out too much. When PLAYERS claim a game has malfunctions because they lost their money too fast, and for too long, they are told it is nothing more sinister than bad luck, and that their low RTP is "normal". Sky Vegas have not substantiated their claim that the high RTP over these 2 days is enough to be deemed evidence that there was a malfunction, rather than just bad luck for the CASINO.
One thing that should be done right away is to request the full detailed playlogs for the disputed 2 days of play. These can be used to show whether it is reasonable to rely on the "good faith" argument.
Given that this was a new game, the players cannot be argued to have any expectation of what is "normal" for a session on it, and thus should not be expected to question their winning session as "abnormal". If Sky Vegas persist, the next request should be for a full description of the game, it's reel strips, and any probability tables behind the "pick" features. If they ask why, say it is to run a statistical analysis on the results from the playlog to see if there is any abnormality that is "statistically significant".
With luck, this request should scare the proverbial out of Sky Vegas, and they will keep this WELL away from a court
This should limit the costs for the player to a couple of solicitor's letters, and a couple of consultations. With luck, this should come to less than £1K, and could always be claimed from Sky Vegas for failing to substantiate their claim further.
The fact that the player was told they had a mere 5 days to settle the matter shows that Sky Vegas do NOT want this player to have time to think about it, get advice, nor see a solicitor. Sky Vegas always have a team of solicitors on call, so they would have immediate access. Most players tend to employ solicitors when the need arises, and in everyday life this is not all that often.
