|
|
| Author |
Message |
FairCasinos
Posts: 1059
 Cash
|
 Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2003 11:57 pm Post subject: Microgaming casinos blacklisted until further noticeRESOLVED |
 |
|
Unfortunately, one of the oldest ever online casinos, The Gaming Club, has forced FairCasinos.com to blacklist all Microgaming casinos until a resolution is reached. The casino recently ran a promotion that lasted two weeks that applied to certain depositing methods (such as Neteller). It advertised and sent out emails offering a 15% bonus on deposits totalling over $2500. For smaller deposit totals during the two week period, there was a 10% bonus. All bonuses were to be added at the end of the promotional period.
A lot of players were denied the bonus for unknown reasons. Gaming Club claimed that only 29 out of 1647 players were denied the bonus. The 1647 figure given for the number of players that had taken part seems very much on the high side (may be highly exaggerated) and the casino also claimed that bonuses were denied due to a 'negative database' which may not have much basis in fact. Any losses were refunded to the players who didn't receive the bonus, although the bonus was given to many other players. It is important to know what distinguished the players.
The Gaming Club used to be owned by Microgaming. When Microgaming started licensing it's software, it had to be seen to be independent and not competing against licensees, but The Gaming Club should still be considered highly linked with the software company. Although other licensees become innocent victims if Microgaming is boycotted, these licensees pay Microgaming a rather large percentage in fees and revenue. Licensees may be forced to change software if the Microgaming situation isn't resolved.
If you choose to play at MicroGaming Casinos, please understand that they are not currently recommended for the reasons given. It is potentially fraudulant for a casino to offer a bonus and subsequently deny the bonus claim for reasons that aren't clear. It is open to abuse because the casino could choose to only give the bonuses to the losing players. The fact that all denied players who lost were refunded their deposits doesn't diminish the fact that The Gaming Club saved a lot of money by not keeping its part of the deal, but the casino didn't void the promotion because many players did receive the bonus. The promotional terms and conditions may not have permitted them to void the promotion, but that would have been preferable to selectively denying the bonuses for no clear reason. It was justified using the 'negative database' clause in the terms and conditions.
Many of the players denied were those who deposited the most and would have expected the largest bonuses. The promotion encouraged larger deposits. 5% more bonus was offered for deposits totalling more than $2500. It is fraudulant for the casino to pick and choose who receives the promised bonus purely to maximise the casino profits. If there is a genuine reason that doesn't depend on how much the players being denied are likely to win, then everything would be fine. However, no adequate explanation has been forthcoming. In fact they've tried to put blame on the players. but it seems to be a simple case of a badly thought out promotion which was more expensive for the casino than expected. If important questions remain unanswered then it will turn out to be more expensive still.
More information: http://www.winneronline.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/006036.html
EDIT: Visit the above link. Everything has been sorted out.
EDIT 2: I've noticed the link is now outdated because winneronline changed their forum around. I have corrected it in a message below and added more information.
_________________
www.FairCasinos.com
The definitive and trustworthy resource for Fair Casinos.
Disclaimer: Faircasinos.com is for entertainment purposes only and any external links are not endorsed. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
FairCasinos
Posts: 1059
Cash
|
| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2003 10:13 pm Post subject: Gaming Club |
|
|
On 14th March (the date I edited the above post to lift the Microgaming ban), they did enough to resolve the issue.
They announced that they would be adding 110% of the bonus to the accounts of these 29 players (the extra 10% was for the inconvenience). Even those who had losses refunded earlier would get the bonus.
More issues will come out of this incident and I'll try to keep you informed in the news section of the forum. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
FairCasinos
Posts: 1059
Cash
|
| Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2004 2:03 am Post subject: |
|
|
This incident happened nearly a year ago now but was fully resolved to everyone's satisfaction. They admitted mistakes and compensated players with an extra bonus for the inconvenience.
The link given above is outdated and the new forum link is here: http://mb.winneronline.com/showthread.html?t=5733
This is copied from their post on winneronline when The Gaming Club finally came to their senses:
| Quote: |
After an extensive review of the circumstances of this promotion, The Gaming Club (GC) hereby acknowledges that a number of substantial mistakes were made in connection with it.
In particular, the promotion (including its terms and conditions) was badly designed, and numerous players were offered the promotion when they should not have been. In addition, once the mistake was made, the manner in which it was responded to did not take into account all of the facts.
Notwithstanding that a number of the players who were excluded should not have received the offer in the first place, GC believes that it is incorrect to exclude players after they take up an offer that has been made to them unless such players blatantly breach the published terms and conditions.
GC therefore apologizes to all players for not acting in accordance with this belief, as well as for taking so long to realize and admit its error.
Steps have been taken to rectify the error by crediting all of the excluded accounts with the previously denied bonuses plus an apology bonus of 10% of the denied amount. All of the affected players have been emailed informing them of this and will also receive courtesy telephone calls from the casino.
Further, the shared industry database of promotion abusers used to exclude some of the players is not part of a fair and transparent process. GC believes that this should also be rectified.
Both of these issues, along with how GC will rectify them, are dealt with in more detail further below for those who are interested.
Finally, GC wishes to apologize to the affected players for the inconvenience and irritation that they have suffered in this process. It is entirely true to state that if GC has been foolish enough to offer an attractive but badly-designed promotion to players, then blame should not be placed upon the players when they seek to take advantage of it.
The inept way in which this promotion was handled has served only to damage the Gaming Club’s reputation, which Gaming Club deeply regrets. The Gaming Club has been in operation since 1995, which it believes gives it legitimate claim to being the world’s first online casino. Since 1995, GC has grown to become one of the largest and most successful online casinos, which is only possible through the winning of player trust through honesty, integrity, fairness and efficiency.
Unfortunately, however, the pressures of fast growth can easily take their toll on the ability of an organization to serve its customers as best possible. GC hopes therefore that all of its players will recognize that the mistakes made in the poor handling of this promotion were honest ones and that players will accept the apologies and restitution made as appropriate signs of GC’s genuine desire to ensure that all online casino players acknowledge GC’s honesty and integrity in the operation of its business.
Gaming Club Casino Management
---------------------------------------------------------
|
The Gaming Club is actually the first ever online casino that took real bets. There is no need to be wary of this casino. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
FairCasinos
Posts: 1059
Cash
|
| Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2004 2:17 am Post subject: |
|
|
I'm now copying the second post of theirs which is mainly a continuation of their first post and followed shortly after the first.
Second Post by Gaming Club on 14 March 2003:
| Quote: |
As mentioned above, the details of the mistakes made by GC in this process are listed below, along with how GC intends to rectify each instance:
1. The terms and conditions were unclear, and most of the players who were later deemed to be ineligible to receive the promotion should never have been offered it in the first place.
GC believes that the exclusion of players known only to make use of promotional offers without ever risking their own funds is entirely justifiable and necessary in order to ensure that honest gamblers can continue to receive generous rewards for their ongoing play at the casino.
However, it is unfair to apply this rule after players have been offered the promotion on an individual basis.
Further, the casino’s general terms and conditions at the time that the promotion was offered were unclear as to the application of this rule, while the terms and conditions stated in the promotion offer email did not make any mention of the applicability of any terms and conditions other than those stated in the offer email.
GC accepts that it could have avoided the resulting uproar entirely had proper effort been made to exclude ineligible players in advance of the promotion offer being mailed out.
GC usually does filter its promotion offers in order to include only genuine players (other than for sign-on bonuses, where generic terms and conditions apply), and will ensure that such a lapse in filtering does not happen again.
To rectify this situation, GC has credited all of the previously excluded accounts with the bonuses previously refused, along with a further 10% of the bonus amount in order to make up for the poor handling of this matter.
The wagering requirements published with this promotion will apply before any cash-outs will be allowed. This means that the minimum amount to be wagered will be three times the sum of the purchase plus the bonus (excluding the additional 10% of the bonus amount). For example, if a player purchased $1,000 and should have received a bonus of $100, such a player will now find $110 in their account, and will be required to wager 3 x ($1,000 + $100) = $3,300 before cashing in. Any wagers made since the time of the original $1,000 purchase will count towards this requirement, providing that the wagers were placed on eligible games.
2. The promotion was poorly designed.
A promotion of this nature should have required a minimum wagering level (on eligible games) before any bonus could be granted. Such a requirement would have removed any incentive for promotion hunters to exploit the bonus with minimum risk to their own funds, while still giving genuine players value for money.
Future promotions will be better designed to minimize any incentive for promotion abuse, while still ensuring that genuine players obtain value for money from the promotion.
3. The “shared industry database” currently being used to exclude known promotion abusers is not part of a transparent process in which players have the ability to seek the removal of their names if they have been unfairly added to the database.
A central database of known promotion abusers is something that all genuine players should welcome, as reducing the possibility of promotion abuse allows casinos to offer more generous bonuses to their genuine players.
However, as with all such databases, it is necessary for players to be able to query their inclusion in the database, and also to have opportunity to seek their removal if their inclusion is without good reason or if they have made genuine effort to make good on the reason why they were included in the first place.
GC intends to work with other online casinos to establish a transparent and fair mechanism for operating such a database. In particular, such operation must include the participation of an independent party, acceptable to both players and the casinos, who would act as the independent arbiter in disputes arising in respect of whether or not a player should be included in the database.
As would be expected, securing the co-operation of various parties (along with finding an acceptable independent arbiter) will take some time, but hopefully this will prove to be a workable solution to this problem. The Gaming Club will keep players and this forum updated on its progress in this regard.
|
I copied these here now to save you having to go through the hundreds of messages on the winneronline thread to locate them. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
LovelyEssences
Posts: 50
Cash
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 6:51 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Gald everything work out 110% is great
_________________
LovelyEssences |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
FairCasinos
Posts: 1059
Cash
|
| Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 7:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
This was very serious and many casinos still don't understand how fraudulant it is to deny bonuses with no good reason. I didn't take part in this problematic promotional offer but hopefully I did something to help make them understand their error by posting a lot on the winneronline thread. They admitted it was unfair and resolved the situation.
The casino software companies should have rules to stop licensees doing this sort of thing. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
notLOL
Posts: 171
Cash
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2004 12:13 am Post subject: microgaming |
|
|
very impressive!!! most definately !!!! not sure why rivernile was able to be the deniers that they currently hoook and bait avertising gimmicked many with! 
fishy 
notLOL 
_________________
notLOL
peace and harmony with and amongst All |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
joann23
Posts: 55
Cash
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2004 12:19 am Post subject: Denied |
|
|
I too was denied the bonus from rivernile making me wonder where they get thier info because I thought it was supposed to be safe? also I tried to call them and speak to a manager but the only way I could do that was if I were to call at 3:00 am because of the time diffrence lets just say I aint losing sleep over it. They are on my blacklist for sure false advertisement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
vertori
Posts: 7
Cash
|
| Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
I think I must be one of the only people on the entire planet who received the $15 bonus from River Nile (which showed up in less than 48 hours). I played for quite a long time on it too though I didn't cash out. (the promo ended but it's back again so you may as well give it a try). I don't know what the criteria was for deciding who would receive the bonus and who wouldn't, though I did read that if you had received bonuses from any of their sister casinos, you couldn't get one there (and I've never played at the others). Also, there was some complaints from a player who was denied a cashout but it was because s/he wagered on a progressive, and the terms/conditions clearly state any wagering on progressives will nullify cashouts on the free money.
I've done most of the micro freebies but only cashed out once from it, and the only micro's I've cashed out at were ones I'd deposited at, so I guess I'm not on their hit list (yet). |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
slotski
Posts: 2
Cash
|
| Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2004 3:14 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I am glad to see this happen |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
caxxino
Posts: 2
Cash
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 9:30 am Post subject: |
|
|
Please remember that most of the Microgaming Casinos out there are honest !
I myself has had only good experiences with for example Captain Cooks, Casino Kingdom, Casino Grand Bay on so on ...
I do very much prefer the Microgaming software, so I would very much like to see som of those casinos here !!
- about the Rive Nile Casino ... I didn't either recieve the bonus ... STAY AWAY AND SUPPORT THE HONEST MICROGAMING CASINOS INSTEAD!! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sunspun
Posts: 80
Cash
|
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 4:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
After reading the part of this thread about The Gaming Club admitting that the shared customer database of alleged bonus abusers was "not part of a fair and transparent process", I wondered what exactly they have done to fix this... they say specifically that part of the problem was that players had no way of querying the inclusion of their names on this list -- does this mean that they have now made this list available to the public so that players can check to see if their names are on this list? If so, does anyone know how or where to find this list now? I would be interested to see any such list used by these or any other casinos to see if I may be on any of them or not.
Is this possible?
From reading the above explanations made by The Gaming Club, I would expect to be able to see this list now.
Thanks for any more information on this issue! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
FairCasinos
Posts: 1059
Cash
|
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 5:52 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I believe there are one or two lists shared among some Microgaming sites (maybe Proc Cyber Services, the main ecash processors for Microgaming sites, handles it) but it is only really for players who chargeback deposits after they lose or have multiple accounts at the same casino to get multiple bonuses. Chargebacks were more of a problem when Credit Cards were the main deposit method. I think any idea for a 'negative database' which included anything more than this would have been scrapped as unworkable.
This was quite a while ago and there have been no player complaints anywhere I've seen of reputable Microgaming sites claiming players are on this list and are not entitled to a bonus (would only make sense when players try the initial sign up bonus because it is then up to the casino whether they receive any more bonus offers). The only question is whether players can contest their inclusion when they end up on one of the negative databases but I have not even heard anyone complaining about being included. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sunspun
Posts: 80
Cash
|
| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:33 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I was still thinking about this, and I realized that surely there can be no way that any list of this sort could be made public, even for the purpose of players checking for their own names, because of privacy issues... if you were allowed to check the list for your own name, you would necessarily be able to see all the other names on it, and disclosing the other names to anyone wouldn't be allowed. Who knows, you might happen to see your neighbor's or your mother's name on the list when checking for your own. Some people don't want it to be known that they gamble at all, much less that they are being accused of whatever unscrupulousness that got them on the list.
Of course, I guess it would be easy to avoid this problem, and still allow players to find out if they are on any list, by making it possible to submit your own name to the casino, to be verified one way or the other by the casino as to whether or not you are on the list. That way you could find out but never about anyone's name other than your own.
So I guess I'm still wondering, can we actually do that - check to see if we have somehow ended up on some blacklist by any casinos? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
FairCasinos
Posts: 1059
Cash
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:02 am Post subject: |
|
|
There was no suggestion of seeing people on the list. You could probably just ask a casino if you were on the negative database.
Maybe you were confusing it with another unrelated website (online casino managers association.org) linked to Windows Casino owners which was a complete violation of privacy. It wanted casinos to join and share information about fraudulant players. This was a quote from it when it existed around 2001 (obviously no legitimate casino took it seriously): | Quote: | | You can have access to our most up to date black list. It contains, the names, address, email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, and credit card numbers of players who play fraudulently or charge back. |
That was something completely unrelated to Microgaming. The Microgaming initiative was on the website risksentinal.com but this was up for a very short while in early 2003 and then disappeared. It was a service linked with Proc Cyber Services (the ecash processor) and dealt with negative database management. They claimed they were only dealing with fraudulant accounts and not bonus issues with their negative database. There are a few quotes from the site on message boards when there was some debate about it. The RiskSentinal.com site has been down for a while and no archive exists anywhere I can see. It wasn't totally scrapped though because the name is mentioned on many casino sites still. They were quoted as saying this when they were questioned:
| Quote: |
We have designed a product whose single purpose is to deal with fraudulent transactions, bonuses are not part of our brief. Our aim is to improve risk management techniques so that everybody benefits casinos from an improved trading environment and consumers from a safer and more secure experience. As the saying goes time will tell.
|
The only problem is if you were mistakenly branded fraudulant, is it possible to appeal and get off the list. A lot of players at the time on the message boards were worried they wouldn't be able to get any more bonuses if they'd won too much at one casino group but that sort of information has never been shared. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
brettkun
Posts: 2
Cash
|
| Posted: Thu May 18, 2006 12:14 am Post subject: |
|
|
| This forum is great. Heck yeah on this forum. Forget casinomesiter mi homies! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sexylil1
Posts: 24
Cash
|
|
LINKED: 
