What this does NOT explain are the numerous tales of winnings being confiscated for vague, silly, or completely BS reasons. The worst I saw was a player who deposited without a bonus and won being told that depositing WITHOUT a bonus was "bonus abuse", as with so many on offer they should never need to play without one. It was accompanied by the BS explanation that if players lost with a bonus, and then played without one, the games "remembered" the lower RTP from their bad earlier session and paid well above RTP with the non bonused deposit to compensate so that TRTP was maintained, thus this was considered "bonus abuse" by the casino.
This BS reasoning was also used to explain having a max cashout on a deposit without a bonus if in the recent past a player had been playing offers that did have a max cashout; the most recent max cashout being carried over and imposed on any next deposit made without claiming a bonus. Can you please point me to these examples? I’m curious as to when they took place and I’d like to get an understanding of the what and why’s behind everything.
These cases happened some years ago, but are typical of the Virtual group. These explanations were initially given to players who made a fuss to the casino about having their winnings confiscated.
One case I remember in more detail is a member here who regularly deposited small amounts of the order of $25, sometimes with a bonus, and sometimes without. She eventually hit a random jackpot of around $6000 from $25 deposited WITHOUT a bonus. The casino (Palace of Chance) voided the win because a PREVIOUS deposit was used to claim a bonus that had a max cashout. They said that this max cashout would apply to a future deposit made without a bonus, and the grounds for this rule was that players should never need to deposit without a bonus, and by doing a mixture, there was a degree of this "bonus abuse" going on, so in order to deter this behaviour, all deposits without a bonus were held to the bonus rules that applied to the last deposit made WITH a bonus, hence the max cashout rule carried and voided all but $150 of the random jackpot.
https://www.casinomeister.com/forum...ndom-jackpot-palace-of-chance-or-did-i.17424/
In the end, after a few failed attempts, payment was grudgingly made in full (over three YEARS later). This appeared to be a good will gesture (or "PR stunt" as it is better known, because this was one case that just would not die). Despite this, Virtual maintained they had done nothing rogue in imposing this rule, so they remained in the pit.
https://www.casinomeister.com/forum...ing-wages-rep-trying-to-assist-players.37533/
This is the main thread regarding the previous failed rehabilitation attempt by Virtual group, it can be seen even then many members considered the whole thing a "stunt" rather than a genuine attempt at rehabilitation, and the sceptics were proven right. The sceptics also believe this is simply the next "PR stunt", and that this too will eventually fizzle out and things will return to normal. If Virtual had not tried this fake rehabilitation ploy before, this attempt might have had fewer sceptics, and more well wishers. Somewhere in this thread, the earlier complainant reported that they finally managed to get the full amount of the random jackpot paid.
The biggest problem of all for Virtual is that Bryan has decided to put the decision as to whether to remove the group from the pit to a members vote. This is not how such things are normally done, it is more a reflection of how many members believe this is yet another stunt, and so Virtual have to convince the members that this is a genuine attempt if the vote is going to be for their removal from the pit.
Marty Davis was also billed as an "outsider", but it emerged that he was not as impartial as it appeared, as his website was an extended arm of the Virtual group, rather than an independent affiliate site. I got the impression that Marty was allocated a certain budget, and once this had been spent in resolving some high profile cases, Virtual were no longer going to cooperate in getting the rest of the cases resolved.
The same problem could arise this time around if too many old cases come forward for review.
They are not the only operator that seems to know next to nothing about how the product works though, many others seem to believe that the games will compensate over the cycle, and that it's possible to "deliberately lose" whilst playing the SLOTS with a bonus, and then making a fresh deposit without a bonus whilst "playing to deliberately win" in order to benefit by pulling the TRTP back on track and thus "abusing the previous bonus".
What they may ACTUALLY be seeing is players who make far bigger slot bets when playing with a bonus, and smaller bets when playing without, interpreting the short session with bigger bets as "deliberately losing" a large chunk of money, and the longer, possibly winning, session with smaller bets as "getting back the losses from the slot memory" so as to make it adhere to it's TRTP. The players are doing nothing of the sort, they are in fact increasing the variance and lessening the overall WR by betting big, because if they win big occasionally, they only have the WR of that specific bonus to complete, rather than the WR of all the bonuses they lost in trying.
If there is any "bonus abuse", it's in the making of bets that are very big in relation to the bankroll, which casinos usually deal with by having a max allowed bet rule, an example being "max allowed bet is less than 30% of the bonus credited".