Gambling Grumbles

Casino Club
All's Well That Ends Well.
by Steve Russo
March 2010

Philip Y of Ontario was not particularly happy when he first wrote to us -- for 18 months he had been trying, he said, to make a withdrawal from Casino Club with no success.

Today, however, he is very happy and quite a bit richer.

"I deposited 5000 Euro to Casino Club and received a 1000 Euro bonus," he wrote in his original letter to us. "While playing at the casino I won 1000 Euro. At the end, I cashed out 7000 Euro. Casino Club closed my account and did not respond to my e-mails. They say that I was using a robot to play the games."

Philip denies ever having used a robot program (bot) and Casino Club insists that its security programs detected that he had -- in violation of its Terms and Conditions.

This was a clear case of the player's word against that of the casino and Gambling Grumbles has absolutely no way of knowing which one is right. What we could do, however, is see what the casino's T&Cs say.

This is what we found:

"The Company reserves the right to immediately close the account of any User who uses unauthorized programs such as “bots”, or any other illegal software that gives the User unlawful advantages, and to void all winnings from those accounts...In case a player will request a withdrawal, any remaining bonus amount will be automatically expired from the players' account. In addition, the withdrawal of any funds from those accounts will be prevented during any technical and legal investigation that is a result of a suspected violation of this rule. The Casino reserves the right to void all winnings accrued by any violation of out Terms & Conditions."

Shortly afterwards, Thomas, Casino Club's Head of Operations, wrote to us saying that Philip should have received the money long ago.

"It turned out that this whole issue has been a misunderstanding. The funds were always available in the customer’s account but due to lack of communication on our side he was not really aware of it.

"Our support team called the customers and we pushed the money to his Click2Pay account.

"We apology for the inconvenience that Mr. Y_____ experienced and we are happy that the situation has been resolved."

Philip agreed to waive any claim to the bonus and winnings.

"I am really amazed at what is happening now... I am been trying to get back the money all these 2 years, but you only took one e-mail and got the matter fixed and I can have my money back.. I am really happy and don't know how to thank you for your time."

Casino Club is happy. Philip is happy. That means that we at Gambling Grumbles are happy, too.