William Hill - Rough behaviour and 9 months delay

Hi OzMaster - thanks for getting in contact.

I'll get in contact with my contacts at William Hill and see if I can get some information for you.

Can you clarify how much money is in your account? Also how many times have you sent in your Not ID, was it just scanned or posted in and what were the dates of sending if you know them?

Thanks

ThePOGG

I should have in my account 10545 euro.

I have sent my notarized ID and an utility bill in original by post (not scanned) 2 times. I don't know the exact dates, but I have sent the first one approximately one or 2 weeks after I have received the email from WH (16.11.2012), and the second one approximately one month later.

Hey OzMaster,

Thanks for getting back to me about this. I've already made contact with William Hill regarding this issue and they are looking into as I type this. Hopefully we'll have more information very shortly.

ThePOGG

Hi OzMaster,

I just wanted to keep you up-to-date. I am talking to someone at William Hill and they are trying to get information for me. I know this is taking a bit of time but it's not unusual for it to take a while to get different departments to communicate about player complaints and I'd rather keep the positive tone to the conversation for just now. Basically what I'm saying is bare with me.

Thanks.

ThePOGG

Hi OzMaster,

I have heard back from William Hill and they've stated that they cannot discuss the details of your account with me due to the Data Protection Act. This isn't strictly true - as long as written permission from the account holder is provided there are no legal barriers to discussing account details with a 3rd party. There are casinos that carry internal policies not to discuss player accounts with 3rd parties, but an internal policy is markedly different to a legal requirement.

Anyway, I've been informed that William Hill will be in contact with you tomorrow to discuss the issue. If you could pass on whatever information you can it will help me decide what status this complaint should receive.

Thanks.

ThePOGG

Hi OzMaster,

Two issue - firstly, have you heard from William Hill regarding this issue?

Secondly, I have heard back from William Hill to clarify their position - they are in fact willing to discuss this issue with me, but before they could do so they'd have to receive a letter from you giving your permission to discuss your account. That is a Data Protection Act requirement and one that I fully support.

If you are unhappy with the response that William Hill provide, let me know and I'll help you draft a letter to allow me to discuss this issue with William Hill.

Thanks

ThePOGG

The casino replied to me yesterday and said:

"Dear Mr [EDIT],

I write in reference to the complaint you recently raised with one of our Affiliate Managers regarding the sanctions which have been placed on your account. Unfortunately under the Data Protection Act I am unable to discuss this matter with any person other than the account holder themselves and this is the reason that I am contacting you directly.

Having checked your account I can confirm that we have evidence which suggests that you have breached the terms of several promotional offers available on our site and furthermore this activity has been deemed as bonus abuse.

As such your account has been suspended and your funds withheld, in strict accordance with the terms and conditions you agreed to upon registration:

11.1 The following practices (or any of them) in relation to the Services:

abuse of bonuses or other promotions;

constitute "Prohibited Practices" and are not permitted and will constitute a material breach of the Terms of Use. We will take all reasonable steps to prevent and detect such practices and to identify the relevant players concerned if they do occur

11.4 If:

11.4.1 we have reasonable grounds to believe that You have participated in or have been connected with any form of Prohibited Practice (and the basis of our belief shall include the use by us (and by our gaming partners and our other suppliers) of any fraud, cheating and collusion detection practices which are used in the gambling and gaming industry at the relevant time);

then, (including in connection with any suspension and/or termination of Your Account) we shall have the right, in respect of Your Account (and/or any other account held by You with a William Hill group company) to withhold the whole or part of the balance and/or recover from the account the amount of any deposits, pay-outs, bonuses or winnings which have been affected by or are in any way attributable to any of the event(s) contemplated in this paragraph 11.4. The rights set out in this paragraph 11.4 are without prejudice to any other rights (including any common law rights) that we may have against You, whether under the Terms of Use or otherwise.

Unfortunately for reasons linked with security I am unable to provide any further information to you directly."

I do wish to mention that I am very unsatisfied with their answer and their abusive way in which they have confiscated my money.

They say that I have “breached the terms of several promotional offers” but I am 100% sure that this did not happen. Thrust me that I have been playing at William Hill and other casinos for a long time and I am extremely careful with the terms and conditions of a casino.

They say that I have committed “bonus abuse”. This is very absurd, giving the fact that I haven’t received any bonuses from WH, the only promotions that I have used were the cashbacks of 10%, which means that I have risked my own money, not bonus money, in order to receive a small amount of my money back in case I have lost. It is true that I have played with this cashbacks for a long period of time, but if the casino would not have wanted me to use this "bonuses", they shouldn't have sent me this kind of offers every week on my e-mail or they should have stopped crediting cashbacks for me when I played. How can the casino confiscate all my money, money that I have deposited, with such an absurd explanation? If I have had bonus money in my balance, or winnings made with bonus money maybe this could have been right.

It is not fair to send promotional offers to someone, and when they use it, to say: “oh, you used our promotions, you are a bonus abuser. “

If they would have answered my e-mails I would have told them to extract from my current balance all the cashback money they ever gave me since I have started playing in 2010 until 2012 (when my account was closed) and to send the rest of the money back to my account. I think I would have been very happy with this decision. I have tracked my MB history…. 37 deposits at WH and only 13 withdrawals…does this sound like bonus abuse?

The thing that bothers me the most is the way the casino treated me. They made me wait for almost a year to get this answer (and I am sure that I got an answer thanks to this complaint).

For security reasons, they can’t give explanations about their decision to a 3rd party, they can’t provide any further information to me directly and they have the right to confiscate my money, without having to give any explanation to anybody because of “Data Protection Act”. I think they’re good…and they make a lot of money out of this. These are like bonus money for them.

In ideal circumstances, I would have loved if the casino provided you with the “evidence” that I have breached the terms of promotions (how can you breach the terms of a cashback offer?) and you to decide whether it is reasonable or not. But as this is not possible, due to “Data Protection Act”, what do you advise me to do next?

Hi OzMaster,

As advised in my email, you need to complete the letter I drafted and mail it to the address on the letter.

I've just received conformation that emailing in the proof of signature would be acceptable rather than printing out and mailing.

Let me know once that's done.

ThePOGG

Hi OzMaster,

Thanks for the update - I'll email William Hill and inform them that it should be on it's way.

ThePOGG

He OzMaster,

William Hill have confirmed that they've received your permission letter, however we've run into some road blocks.

The sum total of the information that they've shared with me regarding this case is the contents of the above email. Supposedly that's what your signed letter of consent authorized them to share, despite the fact that I'd informed them that you'd already shared that communication. At the present time I'm not really sure why they've asked you to provide that letter if they didn't intend to share more detail.

I've informed them that for me to support their claims I would have to be able to review and confirm the evidence that they've used to come to their conclusions, which for the time being they've stated they are not willing to share due to the risk of teaching players who are looking to circumvent their security procedures how to do so. I've pointed out that I'm quite used to working under Non-Disclosure Agreements and directed them to several previous cases where other venues have shared this sort of information, demonstrating the lack of publication of details of what that evidence pertained to.

At the present time I think it's unlikely that I'll be able to continue this investigation, but I'm going to leave it until Wednesday (7th of August) for them to review what I emailed them and choose whether they want to respond or not. I'll keep you up-to-date with anything I hear and make a fuller statement on Wed if I don't receive a positive response.

ThePOGG

Hi OzMaster,

I think it's fair to assume at this juncture that William Hill will not be engaging in this mediation process.

I have to express real disappointment at this stage - given that all they were prepared to share upon receipt of permission to discuss your account was the email that they'd already sent you and you were free to share as you did, I really don't know what they thought the point of us investing the time to generate and post said permission was.

The hard reality here is that while William Hill initially wanted to present their refusal to co-operate with this investigation as a Data Protection issue when they were challenged on this and the legal boxes were ticked they were no more willing to engage, it's simply that now we can clearly see that this is William Hill's decision not to move forward rather than a legal issue. A lot of time could have been saved had they simply stated that they knew there were no legal barriers to discussing the issue, but internal policy was not to do so.

All we've received back from William Hill since their receipt of your permission letter - other than the email you published above - is assurances that William Hill would not take this action without substantive reason and that you should take this issue up with their regulator the GGC if you are unhappy with their decision.

Unfortunately assurances - regardless of which party gives them - carry no weight without supporting evidence. It would be absolutely unfair in a mediation sense if I was to take one parties word for what happened over the others. So I'm left with a player that feels they've done nothing wrong and a casino that's stating that the player has been doing something they should not have. I have nothing to support either parties claims and as such have no option but to mark this case as 'Unresolved'.

This neutral ruling should not detract from the criticism directed at William Hill in this instance - where accusations of wrongdoing occur, the burden of proof lies with the accuser and it has to be acknowledged both that it's William Hill's choice not to present that proof and that William Hill have benefited financially from this decision, even if in the grand scheme of things €10k likely wouldn't be a significant sum to a company of their size.

I'm really disappointed that we couldn't make further headway with this issue and would offer my apologies to OzMaster for this failure.

The only course of action that I can see left to you would be to do as directed and take your complaint to the GGC. I'll provide contact details below;

Website – hxxp://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/remotegambling/ (switch the xx for tt)

Email – gccomplaints[@]gibraltar.gov.gi (remove [])

Telephone – 00350 20064142

Fax – 00350 20064150

Address – Gambling Division

Government of Gibraltar

Gibraltar

ThePOGG