the main problem with the PAB process

[P.V.]

I'm sorry, I don't think I understand your question. Please rephrase and ask again.

Dunover's reply answered my question, thanks.

 

[maxd]

Yeah, I seriously doubt that the new state regulatory people are going to have much in the way of an "open door" policy when it comes to dispute settlement and 3rd party folks like us. I'd bet real money that their approach is going to be "my way or the highway", rather like we've seen from the re-tooled Gib (for example).

 

[jetset]

How New Jersey - and its licensees - handles the first complaints will obviously be the litmus test on this important element in the online gambling mix, and one can only hope that they have invested time in monitoring player forums to appreciate at first hand the risks, problems and needs of the player community.

I would hope that they have also taken the trouble to frequent major industry gathering events and consult with experienced industry mediators, and that a combination of these activities gives them an understanding of how vital a public and honest dispute channel really is to all concerned, and the positive influence it can wield if handled properly.

I'm sure most of us could suggest a formidable panel of highly experienced industry mediators more than capable of advising newbie regulators!

A lot will depend on the casinos themselves as the first line of contact with the player, but I would hope that the New Jersey regulator uses its powers to intervene when required, and does not effectively leave the power too much in licensees' hands.

The rise in popularity of national regulatory jurisdictions may take some of the pressure off third party dispute mediators like CM, but I don't see the need for the independent PAB systems here and elsewhere diminishing too far - there are still plenty of player traps out there, and operators that need to be straightened out on fairness in legitimate disputes imo.

 

[vinylweatherman]

That isn't entirely true now, is it? Unless the product is classified as a necessity and regulated pricing, the business has a freedom to price it in accordance to their business model. In fact, as we are talking about WR here (i havent read the original thread, it was huge)


ENERGY isnt chewing gum. You cant mix the two and claim the same rules apply. Energy SHOULD be regulated as it is a living neccessity. I SHOULD be able to charge whatever i want for chewing gum and have the freedom to find the right buyer.

moreover, if i choose to sell a chewing gum and state that you get a box of them free if you run around my shop every other tuesday at precicely 1.14PM wearing your wifes night gown (so in my mind i could attract a crowd to buy more chewing gum) and you agree to it, then you are bound by the terms of our agreement. Should you fail, i am within my rights to take my box back.

If a business decides that they will offer anything free, or with purchase and adds conditions to it which are clear and prominent, then the buyer must carry some of the responsibility for their actions in relation to those terms. Without delivng into the other thread and just focusing on your comment regarding a WR of an amount being unfair, because you can get lower WR elsewhere (to follow on your welsh pricing example), does not mean that this business must meet the lowest price or else, or that they don't have other opportunities on offer that supplement their busines model.

That is the beuty of the world today - it gives YOU, THE BUYER, the choice of what works for you and what doesn't: as long as the information about the offering was presented to you in an honest, non-ambiguous format, YOU get to decide where your hard earned penny is best spent. However with that choice, also likes the burden of responsibility that you made it.



key sentence in your comparison, but you kind of skimmed over it.

I must say, coming back and seeing silva's name in red shocked me. i didnt read the thread as im horribly behind on things after my prolonged leave, but fact remains that the PAB process challenges operators to JUSTIFY their decisions to an un-bias third party and the very act of justification carries some burden of necessity for responsible behaviour.

The way i see it, PAB service simply puts the fullstop on blatantly wild-west behaviour on businesses that either 1) dont care to follow their own rules, or 2) create such rules that it gives them a window to not follow at their discretion them or claim the rules were broken due to lack of clarity. As i said, simply someone forcing businesses to justify themselves or be poorly labelled is a huge positive that has been felt throught the industry - and if you need proof of that, all you need to do is look around at how hard casinos try to meet these standards.

How can anyone say that such service is "wrong", or has something wrong with it, is not within my realm of understanding. It may not offer full consumer protection, but it's definitely a step (i'd call it a long jump personally) in the right direction. And as for complete consumer protection, i'd say myself as a consumer leave it up to me to do my out-most to protect myself.

However, if I wanted to buy a particular brand of chewing gum, I would be free to shop around by going to a different town and buying it there. This is NOT the case with online casinos, as I MUST purchase at the specified store, which in terms of online casinos is my IP address/home address.

We already have cases where the terms were based on currency, not country, and some players "shopped around" by picking a currency that gave them better terms of "purchase". This was deemed invalid.

There is another comparison, iTunes. Certainly not a necessity, but a while ago iTunes had dual pricing, one in Euros and the other in UK Pounds. They tried to prevent UK customers from paying in Euros (as it was significantly cheaper). It turns out they were NOT free to do this, even though what they sold was not a necessity. They were fined by the EU, and told to stop blocking UK customers from using the Euro based service.

Whether this will be the case with online casinos where different quality deals exist between the Euro site and the UK pound site has yet to be seen. Escaping such problems would require being based outside the EU.

Given that the games and odds are uniform, there is no justification for doubling the WR for specific countries, and I would expect the EU regulators to take a similar position if called upon to make a ruling.

It is a subset of the free trade rules that mean a citizen of any one EU country can buy goods or services from any other EU country as well as their own. The intent is that consumers have as much freedom as possible to shop around for the best deal, which in turn creates competition between the various providers. Laws are introduced to make this as easy as possible, as well as to scupper any attempts by businesses to ring fence specific EU countries into a high price "rip off" trade zone as Apple tried with UK iTunes users.

These laws do not prevent businesses charging whatever price they like, but they DO prevent businesses from blocking consumers from trying to get a better deal at a different outlet operated by the same business that offers a better deal.

It is most likely to affect online casinos that ban UK players from choosing to play in Euros instead of UK Pounds. There is even a chance that customers from elsewhere in the EU will gain the right to play in UK Pounds, or any other EU state currency where the Euro has not been adopted.

Remember, operators were caught on the hop in 2006 by the US finally succeeding in their quest to drive them out. In the run up to UIGEA, the consensus was that like the attempts before, this one would fail and it would be business as usual after a year or two of "talk and no action" from the US government. They soon found out they were wrong the expensive way, and almost all of the reputable operations have long since been driven out of the US market. They are even being scared out of the Canadian market, even though Canada has not adopted the draconian approach used by the US.

To get a taste of things to come, operators should look at the data on the ASA website regarding UPHELD complaints about UK ads, which now includes ANY ad seen by a potential UK customer, not just those shown on TV and appearing in UK media. Whilst the ASA is relatively toothless at present, regulators with teeth are likely to appear in 2015. Operators could again get caught out by dismissing the consumer protection frameworks in individual countries and carrying on as they have always done.

 

[Nifty29]

Nice to see you back Igor

Don't waste your time mate. I've learned the lesson now.

You will always get a "Yes, but...",or a "However...", followed by assumptions and hyperbole about laws that not only don't apply to online casinos yet, but haven't even been formulated.

I will say one thing. If the big operators in the UK have any say, and I reckon they do, they will not be a party to regulatory micro-management of every single term they implement. If there IS a clause in the new legislation that prevents currency restriction of players, I have no doubt that operators will find alternative methods to stop such activity I.e. refusing to offer bonuses etc to such players, introduce extra conversion fees on deposits and cashouts, etc.

Personally, I cannot see how the government can force ANY business to accept a particular customer, given gambling is not an essential service.

 

[maxd]

I would hope that they have also taken the trouble to frequent major industry gathering events and consult with experienced industry mediators, and that a combination of these activities gives them an understanding of how vital a public and honest dispute channel really is to all concerned, and the positive influence it can wield if handled properly.

I appreciate your optimism and in a fair-and-blanced world such hopes might be well placed. Unfortunately I don't think that is likely to apply in the case we're discussing or other similar state-side situations.

Bryan has attented all the significant US conferences the past couple years and what I hear from him is that this current wave of US operators and regulators are new blood and are perfectly happy in their ignorance: they have no clue about internet gambling beyond the revenue streams they believe are on offer and they couldn't care less about the established i-gaming community. Outsiders aren't even in the picture never mind being offered a place at the table.

I'd like to say that I forsee them coming to their senses but unless there is significant reason -- meaning the Benjamins -- for them to do so I rather doubt it's likely to happen. Again I'd say look at Gib: from my perspective the restuctured Gib regulatory office basically gutted the building, so to speak, and started from scratch with Gib interests being the only line on the horizon that they cared to acknowledge. Since the restructure they have pretty much been a black hole as far as anyone outside of Gib is concerned and given that they've got some of the biggest and most successful casino groups in the world as their clients they seem well-placed to keep it that way.

How does that affect the players? Well (a) they are playing at some of the biggest and most successful casino groups in the world and continue to do so in droves, and (b) they're pretty much screwed if they have a problem that the casinos won't deal with. Net result? Gib seems to be doing fine and there's no reason that I've seen to expect any significant changes soon, other than possible trickle-down from legislative stuff happening in the UK.

The point is that the move to nationalised regulation is working hand-in-hand with the industry-wide conglomeration: big groups can function very well under a nation's umbrella and there are more than enough players to feed the beast. I'm not seeing the pressures that are likely to force change on that basic model, which I believe is more-or-less a glacial shift happening across the industry. If a country has the will, resources and economic muscle to stand alone in terms of casino regulation then they probably will. Those that can't manage it are, I imagine, likely to be left with the status quo that we're all familiar with.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Nice to see you back Igor

Don't waste your time mate. I've learned the lesson now.

You will always get a "Yes, but...",or a "However...", followed by assumptions and hyperbole about laws that not only don't apply to online casinos yet, but haven't even been formulated.

I will say one thing. If the big operators in the UK have any say, and I reckon they do, they will not be a party to regulatory micro-management of every single term they implement. If there IS a clause in the new legislation that prevents currency restriction of players, I have no doubt that operators will find alternative methods to stop such activity I.e. refusing to offer bonuses etc to such players, introduce extra conversion fees on deposits and cashouts, etc.

Personally, I cannot see how the government can force ANY business to accept a particular customer, given gambling is not an essential service.

Business has always done this. A regulator imposes something, big business looks for the loopholes, regulator closes loophole, big business looks for another. Just look at the merry dance we have between the big banks, insurers, etc and the regulators. However, the regulators are now pretty determined to reign in the big banks and other financial firms, and they are rapidly pursuing and closing the loopholes as they appear, and also issuing big fines and compensation orders.

If similar determination is used to police online casinos, we could see regulators actively fighting for players interests. It is most likely that players' interests will be fought for where they coincide with the interests of the UK government, most probably in matters related to accounting and taxation.

Where casinos refuse to obey the UK laws, I would expect the same enforcement model to be used as has been used against sites like Pirate Bay, making them available only to the determined player, rather than the newbie. This model has already been tested, and it is clear that the government will need to obtain court orders to block casino websites before the ISPs will implement blocks. These court orders also appear to prohibit any discussion on how to circumvent the blocks, as has been seen on the Virgin Media customers' forum where any post that mentions circumvention is swiftly removed "due to the court order".

The UK could extend the measures to implement blocks on the transactions, but as can be seen in the US, determined casinos and players can easily circumvent them.

The norm under UK laws would be to treat players that play unlicensed casinos as victims of a scam, and in need of protection by the implementation of site blocks and transaction blocking. Criminalising victims would not go down well here, and voters might resent such draconian measures.

The UKGC may well be thinking that most sites will obey the new regime, and if so, may not be considering it to be a big problem in terms of a mass refusal to obey by large numbers of operators. 2015 will probably be a year where the new measures are really running on a trial basis, so players would probably not encounter problems playing at sites deemed illegal.

How players enforce their rights remains to be seen. It could be the UKGC with a compulsory mediation scheme, or it could be down to individual players having to pursue operators through the civil court system (much as it is now, but possibly simpler due to the requirement for operators to have UK based assets and a notional UK office).

One danger for operators is that it may be officially suggested that aggrieved players first approach their banks for help, much as it is for other transactions that go wrong where payment has been made by credit card or some types of debit card. Banks tend not to deal with such matters in a manner that is understanding of the unique problems faced by this industry, and may well treat a dispute in the same way they treat a dispute over a foreign purchase that fails to live up to expectations, or fails to arrive at all. It could be a field day for fraudsters unless the potential for such problems is dealt with in advance. Unlike other services and outlets, online casinos tend to ignore their rights to put their own side when there is such a dispute, and this can mean a customer wins by default, even if they are in the wrong - the situation that currently exists in much of the world, especially the US.