All British – Allowed play despite restrictions

Ruling

Resolved - All British casino have made procedural changes to ensure accounts remain closed for specified durations upon request and have returned this player's deposit. While not absolutely ideal, the player is also at fault given that they specifically requested that their account be reopened. As such this result - that voids all transactions with the casino - is a reasonable compromise.

Read our All British Casino Review.

Player's Complaint

I deposited £50 at All British Casino on 19th July 2014 and went on to win £1000. I asked on 20th July 2014:

[Honest Gambler]ok thanks [All British Rep]. is there a self blocking system i can use until my withdrawal is in my bank?

[All British Rep] i will deactivated the gameplay for yoou

I do this at every casino I play at while waiting for a withdrawal to be processed, knowing I have a gambling problem and will need a system in place to stop me from reversing my winnings and losing them.

The only exception is Metro Play Casino because they don't put a reverse withdrawal money saving procedure on your account (they are brilliant by the way).

As you can see I asked for a block on my account (meaning not to be reversed (White bet Casino were brilliant at this for me). I honestly thought that what they had put on my account was an actual block that could not be reversed just by the player asking for it to be undone. Why would I ask for a system that could be reversed?

When your brain is in gambling mode you cant control what you are doing and they should be aware of this, and I made the step of saying I would need a block until my withdrawal is in my bank account. - unless they are completely non-savvy about gambling addictions, in which case they should NOT be operating.

I know I fell right into their hands, and they got what they wanted by not having to pay, but this cant be allowed to happen. I have been abused as a person with a mental illness (gambling addiction).

Their response to me (in their best English) was that I did not say in exact words, I have a gambling addiction. Incredible, I know! Below is what they said:

What you totally forget is your own responsibility. When you are aware that you have a problem with gambling then its most important to not play at all. What you forget as well is that you make the decision to unblock the gamplay block and cancel the withdraw AND play.

As you say, we have to take responsibilty by paying you back, I think that we are not the ones to blame in this case. If you would have said that you have issues with gambling, ok. But there is no sign of that.

Kind regards,

[EDIT]

Customer Service Team, All British Casino

Nowhere in their terms and conditions does it say that in order to have your account blocked for any reason, you must say in exact words, I have a gambling addiction. I do have screenshots of this, because if they were changed I have the date and time of when mine were saved.

I really do feel abused by these people. They didn't even have the decency to give me my deposit back!

I want my £1000 that I won fair and square into my bank account, and I am entitled to it. I have not done anything wrong apart from letting them know that I have a gambling problem, nor have I broken any terms and conditions.

If they continue to repeat the same text and show no negotiation, at least others can now see what they have done to me and I can hopefully help others not to get into this form of abuse, and stay clear of this casino and their group.

Please note that my username at this casino is also my email address, which is why I have not posted it.

Thanking you in anticipation The pogg.

Read the casino review

7 Responses

ThePOGG

Sep 22, 2014

Hi Honest Gambler - welcome to ThePOGG.com!

Apologies about the delayed response - the Scottish Independence Referendum at the end of last week distracted me for several days.

Having read your complaint I am a little concerned about the practices that All British casino have displayed here. What I would say is that I think it's highly unlikely I'll be able to get any of they funds you lost back. There are a good number of instances of players intentionally testing casinos account restriction systems out then when they win they keep the funds and if they lose they demand their money back, placing the casino in a no win situation.

I would agree with All British that if you're looking to get your account restricted for reasons of issues with gambling that you really need to make that crystal clear at the point where you request the restriction. It's very important to use words along the lines of "problem gambling". That said, from the short piece of chat transcript that you've provided I'm not convinced that the All British chat agent did enough to establish the reasons for you requesting that your account be restricted.

I'll contact All British and let you know once I've spoken to them. Before I can do that though I do need you to post your email address. This is currently a private forum so only you and me can see this information and I'll edit it out at the time of publication.

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Honest Gambler

Sep 22, 2014

I replied to your much appreciated email, thank you. Hopefully it reached you, if not I will post my email here.

[EDIT]

Kind regards

[EDIT]

ThePOGG

Sep 25, 2014

Hi Honest Gambler,

Your email will be removed BEFORE publication. I don't publish personal details of either players of casino staff as I view that as a highly unprofessional and irresponsible practice.

You mentioned in your email having a chat transcript with WhiteBet surrounding the same issue. It would be useful to have the full chat transcripts with both WhiteBet and All British casino so if you could forward them on to [email protected] I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Oct 10, 2014

Hi Honest Gambler,

To keep you in the loop I'm currently discussing this issue with All British casino and will let you know as soon as I've any relevant information.

Thanks,

ThePOGG

Oct 17, 2014

Hi Honest Gambler,

I think it's fair to say that All British casino have withdrawn from this conversation. As such I'm marking this complaint as 'Found for the Player' and I've moved all casinos run by the Sarah Enterprises group to 'Not Recommended' status.

There are several comments I'd make to support this issue;

All British casino - as clearly detailed in their email to you - feel that this is your responsibility as you requested that your account be reopened. In part I agree with that. Had you played an won you would have happily cashed out your winnings. This creates a situation where the casino cannot win - if you win they're expected to pay and if you lose you expect them to return your losses. That's not a fair or reasonable position.

However had the casino left the restriction in place until such time as your withdrawal had been paid - as you clearly requested - this issue would never have arisen in the first place.

There is responsibility for this issue on both sides.

Alongside the above, All British informed me that you've already taken this issue to the LGA - All British casino's regulator - who ruled in favour of the casino. I find the fact that you failed to make any mention of this to me far from 'honest'. That said, I cannot in good faith agree with the LGA's ruling and consider this case to be a failure on their part.

The solution I suggested to All British casino was as follows;

- A review of support staff training. Specifically I'd suggested training support staff to ensure that when a restriction is requested by a player the team member either obtains a reason for the restriction or gets the player to clearly define when a restriction is to extend to.

- Return the player's deposit. It's only £50 and and this leaves the player no better or worse off than they were to begin with.

It's been 3 weeks with numerous follow-up emails and All British are no longer responding at all. I don't feel that either of the above suggestions was at all unreasonable, in fact I feel the first is nothing short of common sense for any casino seriously interested in protecting problem gamblers. This is extremely disappointing behaviour and as such I've been forced to mark this group up as non-responsive to complaint and move them to Not Recommended status.

ThePOGG

Oct 18, 2014

Hi Honest Gambler,

I'm going to publish your last email to me as I feel it would be useful to other readers;

Hi The POGG

Thank you for investigating this for me, just having your opinion and support has helped me a great deal.

I did not mention LGA to you because I did not want their biased decision to influence your opinion on my complaint, I am very sorry if you feel disappointed in me.

It was obvious what the outcome would be, but you have agreed with me on the main points I raised and this is a result for me. I now know that it was not entirely my fault, but I can't and won't take full responsibility for asking for my account to be re-activated, because I had no control over what my brain was telling me to do, and I would not have a gambling addiction either if I could control this.

I thank you for the final conclusion you came to, and I sincerely hope that this will help others in the future.

For future reference though, I would like to give you a few casinos that I have used within the past month that I have managed to actually withdraw from and the reasons.

21 Prive - They requested documentation and had a pending period for my withdrawal. I asked live support for my account to be blocked until this pending period was over and my documents had been accepted. Live support had a complete understanding of what I was asking for and did so immediately.

Casino Saga - They did not request documentation and my withdrawal was processed the morning after I had won my money.

Betsson - They did not request documentation and my withdrawal was processed within a matter of hours.

I hope this information will be useful for your website, and if I find myself in trouble with another casino in the future, I will know which mediation website will deal with the complaint most professionally.

While I understand your reasoning for not mentioning your LGA complaint, I would hope that for other readers this instance will serve as an example. While I do think that by and large those regulators that are responsive to player complaints are trying to do the best they can, they are also often under staffed and under trained for the job they're trying to do. As such I'm very aware that they do not always get it right. In these situations it's better to let me know ALL the details and let me sort out what is and isn't relevant rather than end up looking like you've held back to try and influence the outcome.

Thanks for your support and I'm sorry I couldn't have got your deposit returned.

ThePOGG

Nov 04, 2014

Hi Honest Gambler,

All British casino have got back in contact with me having been alerted to this report by someone within the industry. Apparently there's been some technical issues at their end and very few of the emails that I sent through regarding this and another complaint have actually been arriving.

They have now - after I sent it through again - read my full assessment of the situation and have agreed that there is responsibility to be taken on both side. As such they've implemented procedural changes to ensure that accounts that have restrictions placed on them will remain closed for the duration of the requested restriction.

They've also agreed with my assessment that your deposit should be returned and this will be put into your account by the end of this week.

As I explained above, for me to stipulate that the casino have to return more than your deposit would be unfair - had you won you would have rightly expected to receive your winnings, so I can't argue for the return of the lost winnings. I do feel that returning the deposit is necessary in this situation however to ensure you did not suffer any financial harm.

If you could let me know when you receive your deposit I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

ThePOGG