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Gaming Club - duty of care
Ruling
Resolved - This player has become unresponsive to our requests for further information about their complaint. As such there's nothing further we can do to help them.
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Player's Complaint
I was a long time member of Gaming Club. During the breakdown of my marriage I gambled more. I used it as an escape and developed an addiction. Last year I sold my house and with my half of the money I spent 100k in the Gaming Club casino in around 1 month. Gaming club did not question my erratic spending or ask me whether my gambling was a problem for me, even though I was suddenly spending at least 10 times more than I had ever spent. Instead the casino gave me bigger bonuses on the condition I deposit more, and whenever I exceeded my daily deposit limit, they would give me free bonus money, so I would stay in the casino. They took longer than usual to process any wins I had and made sure they kept the money in there long enough for me to go in and spend. One night when I realized how much I had lost and I accepted that I was never going to win the money back, I broke down in Gaming Club chat and begged them to ban me. They only did so on my request and after I was extremely depressed and they had taken all my money. The signs were clearly there, my spending had changed drastically and until I mentioned it they didn't care. I sent them an email explaining all this, and explaining it was actually against Australian law for Gaming Club to have even offered me access to their site, and I got an email back saying they would not give me any money back. It was after that email Gaming Club closed shop to Australian residents, after I told the what they were doing was wrong. I sent many emails requesting some consideration for the money I lost, begging and pleading for a partial refund if not all of it. I was largely ignored and when I was answered it was in a very condescending manner. I was made to feel like an idiot. I pointed out to Gaming Club that they promoted themselves as advocates for responsible gambling, yet they didn't question me when I was handing my money over to them. I asked them to consider that, but over and over again I was ignored. My depression has gotten worse. My anxiety is worse. I am on medication and need to see a psychiatrist for further evaluation but can't afford it. I am not living with my daughter. I am flat broke. Gaming club cost me everything. Every day is a struggle for me because of the way this casino has dealt with me. The blatant disregard. The refusal to assume any of the responsibility. Their actions after my emails. They knew they were doing the wrong thing, and they did it deliberately and with intent to ruin me. A few years back when I was gambling with them, they came to sydney and invited me to an rugby match with vip seats. They came and took me out to lunch a year after that. That was with account managers and senior management. As soon as they milked me dry and took iver 100k from me, I couldn't get anyone from senior management to talk to me. It is gut churning and disgusting the way they have treated me. I really need them to look at my case individually and acknowledge there was some negligence on their part and refund me that money. They ruined my life.
4 Responses
Hi rana343,
I'm following-up on the above to see if you have anything else you'd like to add to this conversation?
Thanks,
ThePOGG
Hi rana343,
I'm following-up on the above?
Thanks,
ThePOGG
Hi rana343,
If we haven't from you by Friday the 21st of September I'll assume you've nothing further to add to this discussion and close this complaint.
Thanks,
ThePOGG
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Agreement
rana3434 consented for ThePOGG to act on their behalf and share the personal information that they provide to ThePOGG with the following agencies for the purposes of resolving their complaint:
August 20, 2018
Hi rana343 - welcome to ThePOGG.com!
Before going further I have several concerns about your complaint.
Firstly, Gaming Club are part of a group that are routinely non-responsive to complaints posted with this service. As such the chances that we can do anything to help you are low.
Secondly, reading your complaint it seems that when you explicitly informed the operator of your problem they did close your account. However you are looking for them to refund losses before this point. That means that your case would have to be based on your behaviour patterns and a determination of whether there was a significant enough change that the operator should have recognised the problem without being told. That's a tall order. So I need you to think very carefully regarding what evidence you can show to support this assertion.
Finally, with regard to the status of online gambling in Australia. Gaming Club did not pull out of Australia due to your case. Many operators pulled out of the Australian market around the same time due to the changes going on in the Australian market at that point. Without looking to be at all demeaning I can say with certainty that the size of balance in contention here would not be a big concern to the owners of this group and certainly would not incentivise them to leave an entire market to avoid paying. What the legal status of online gambling in Australia does do in this case - unfortunately - is ensure that there's no regulatory body that casinos have to answer to within Australia.
If you believe you have sufficient evidence to show via behaviour patterns alone that there was a significant enough change in your behaviour that the operator should have picked this up then lets us know and I'll review what you have.
Thanks,
ThePOGG