Integrety Casinos - Dishonest Bonus Tactics
Published: Friday, March 25, 2005 Online-Casinos.com
INTEGRITY LOST
Shedding expert players is one thing...dishonest bonus
tactics is quite another
The storm over the Integrity Casino Limited group
- Captain Cooks, Casino Kingdom and Classic Casino continued to rage this week
as concrete fact in the form of aggrieved player complaints, many from what appeared
to be ordinary gamblers began to surface.
Adding to the row were reports
of affiliates being paid three weeks late, or not at all.
And appeals
submitted to ICL by mediators were turned down on ridiculous grounds such as autoplay,
just meeting bonus requirements and using currencies other than home country.
None of these requirements were in the T&Cs pertaining at the time of the
wagers, rendering the unilateral judgements blatantly unfair.
Despite
repeated and sincere advice and guidance from industry specialists including InfoPowa,
the ICL management stubbornly refused to acknowledge wrongdoing and reverse their
flawed bonus disqualification policy. Unfortunately this has led to serious consequences,
with responsible and player sensitive affiliates and portals alike distancing
themselves from the actions of this formerly respected management.
How
did a reputable and successful online casino group move from hero to zero in such
a short timespan?
ICL management felt strongly about the smart gamblers
who exploit casino bonusing to make their play more profitable - it didn't want
them. The managers confirmed that this was their motivation on several occasions.
Management said that bonusing was an incentive to join the casino and
remain a regular player "for entertainment" and that it would rather
reward loyal players than help expert players to profit from its promos.
Following
the advice of an analyst, the strong but risky decision was made to examine every
account in order to identify the advantage players, and then expel them under
the casinos' right of admission.
So far no problem - the right of admission
is a generally accepted convention, and had those expelled been paid what they
were owed there would have been no argument.
But from this point on, ICL
appeared to stagger from one blunder to the next.
Their first mistake
was not knowing enough about the industry to recognise the knee-jerk reaction
that use of the word "audit" triggers. And that was how they described
their first moves to inspect their accounts. It is a word which many casinos on
their way under have used in order to stall player payments. Allied to the first
reports of delayed affiliate payments, it immediately raised the spectre of financial
failure in many player minds, and encouraged rampant and damaging speculation.
Then, ICL ran way over the promised 7 day timelines for its *audits*, creating
further resentment and suspicion.
ICL was also found wanting when it came
to communicating clearly and honestly with the player community, either ignoring
emails and the furore in general or neglecting to answer pertinent questions at
later stages regarding their actions. For example, they consistently avoided defining
the category of player they wanted to get rid of, leading to speculation that
expulsion orders were an arbitrary management decision.
But their worst
mistake was the misguided notion that they could with impunity strip a player
of his or her earned bonuses in contravention of their own T&C's.
The
convention in the industry is clear and has the visibility of a flashing neon
sign:
If a player accepts a bonus and wagers in full compliance with
the T&Cs framed by the casino and in force at the time of the wager, he or
she is entitled to all the rewards - all the rewards - that have been promised.
The only justification for removing bonuses under these conditions is
where a player is fraudulent ie false ID, multiple accounts, previous fraudulent
activity etc
This is Casino Management 101 stuff, and yet incredibly ICL
took away monies that had been earned in compliance with their own T&Cs.
The uproar continues, and must surely have caused a major dent in ICL's business
and reputation.
Where this will end is anyone's guess, but for ICL it
is unlikely to be a happy finale....unless of course a change of ownership is
in the wind. We're picking up whispers that that might be the case and soon.
If the rumours are true, then the new owners face a formidable task to repair
the damage caused by these astonishingly bad management misjudgements.
The
starting point has to be an immediate reversal of the bonus disqualifications
that lay at the centre of the issue, and an honest attempt to redress the prejudice
suffered by innocent players to date.
Until then, Online-Casinos.com and
InfoPowa has to urge extreme caution around this formerly reputable group.
Related Pages
