21.com Casino - Player's account was blocked and the balance was confiscated.

Hello. I'm one of the apparently several players who, on the 14th of march 2023, had their accounts locked, withdrawals cancelled and balances confiscated on all the 8 casinos run by PressEnter Group through their company PB Group;

21.com

NeonVegas.com

RapidCasino.com

UltraCasino.com

NitroCasino.com

JustSpin.com

CasinoFest.com

XLBet.com

I've been a customer for the casino network for years, I registered my NeonVegas account all the way back in 2020 while some of their casinos are of a more recent addition.

Lately they had started offering deposit bonuses on an unusually high frequency. They had daily deposit bonus campaigns that offered freespins, tournament promotions and on top of that they were generously offering bonus money on deposit every so often.

Constant depositing combined with their high withdrawal fee of 3 euro per withdrawal led to balance accumulation on these individual casinos.

At least in my case they couldn't have picked a better timing to confiscate my balances across all the 8 casinos, almost as if it was calculated... as I already had 2 pending withdrawals that I made day or two before and as I was attempting to make a third withdrawal on the 14th, they had disconnected my accounts from Trustly Pay'n'Play and I was asked by their system to make a deposit in order to activate the Trustly service. Obviously the Pay'n'Play function didn't work despite of making a deposit.

I contacted the customer service and they said they'll get in touch by email. Some hours later they emptied all my casino balances and sent me and email from the customer service of a singular site (21.com) on behalf of their whole network of 8 casinos telling how they suspect me of breaching their terms and conditions and based on that they've "confiscated" my money and closed down my accounts on all the casinos thereof. All the confiscated assets were real money.

My inquiries about the nature of the situation was met with response; "All the details are stated in the previous mail" - which only vaguely pointed to section 17 and 20 of their terms and conditions.

Unwillingness to elaborate further as to why they have confiscated my money and blocked my accounts, I once more requested my money to be returned to my casino balances and be allowed to be withdrawn and in the case they deny my request I also requested them to provide me with the reference number for the incident so that I can open a ticket with eCOGRA about this dispute.

Their response was again generic stating that my request has been forwarded to the relevant department and that they'll get back to me via email once they receive an answer. This latter exchange was on the 15th and as of yet, there has been no reply.

I have played by the rules of the casino; I've wagered my deposits and bonuses. I have not played games that aren't allowed with bonus money, even when they unannouncedly added one of the games I enjoy playing to the unallowed games list. Luckily I happened to check the bonus terms on that very day and noticed it. Well part of it being luck, part of it me being cautious as I had noticed them starting to add games to the unallowed list without notifying the customer about the changes, although they also recently made changes to the ToS that they did notify about.

All in all I was totally shocked by the actions taken by this PressEnter Group. I understand losing players are good business for casino and offering them promotions is a way to get them to play at your casino, what I don't understand is this attempted theft of customer assets when continuous effort of offering promotions has failed to turn the customer into a profitable asset for the company. This feels like a desperate last resort to recoup their losses. So desperate in fact, that I was shocked that an MGA licensed casino would even consider attempting something like this, let alone going for it.

Dear dessuli,

Thank you very much for submitting your complaint. I’m sorry to hear about your problem. I checked the terms and conditions of the casino and found out you are referring to the following: https://www.21.com/en/info/terms-and-conditions

BREACH OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Without prejudice to any other rights, if we reasonably believe that you have breached (in whole or in part) any provision contained in the Terms and Conditions, we reserve the right to take any such action as we deem fit, including terminating the Service or any other agreement that we may have in place with you, immediately blocking your access to your Player Account and the Service, terminating your Player Account with the Website and retaining all monies held in any Player Account which you may have with as well as any Winnings and/or taking legal action against you, and you shall have no claims in such regard.

You hereby agree to fully indemnify, defend and hold the Company and its affiliates and their respective officers, directors, and employees harmless immediately on demand from and against all claims, demands liabilities, damages, losses, costs and expenses, including legal fees and any other charges whatsoever, howsoever caused, that may arise as a result:

Any breach of the Terms and Conditions;

Violation of any law or the rights of any third party; or

Use of the Services by you or any other person accessing the Services using your username, regardless of your authorisation.

and

TERM AND TERMINATION

These Terms and Conditions shall come into force immediately upon your completion of the registration process with us and shall continue in force until terminated in accordance with the terms hereunder.

We may terminate your Player Account immediately without notice to you if:

your use of the Services has been in any way improper or breaches the any of these Terms and Conditions; or

your Player Account is associated in any way with any existing Player Account that has been terminated for breach of the Terms and Conditions; or

for any other reasonable grounds determined by the Company.

Unless otherwise provided under these Terms and Conditions, upon termination of the Terms and Conditions, any balance in your Player Account will be returned to you within a reasonable time of your request, as well as any Winnings, subject always to our right to deduct any amounts owed by you to us.

Upon termination of the Terms and Conditions, neither party shall have any further obligation to the other and you shall discontinue the use of the Website and the Services, pay all amounts due to us and destroy all related documentation in your possession relating to this Agreement. Further, we will void all Bets and Wagers which have yet to take place and, only where possible to cancel the orders associated with such outstanding Bets and Wagers, we will also return the respective Stakes amounts to you.

Upon the termination of the Terms and Conditions for any reason, except as otherwise provided herein and subject to any rights or obligations which have accrued prior to termination, neither Party shall have any further obligation to the other under the Terms and Conditions.

Any provisions hereof which expressly or by their nature are required to survive termination or expiration of the Terms and Conditions in order to achieve their purpose shall so survive until it shall no longer be necessary for them to survive in order to achieve that purpose.

Was the casino any more specific in its accusations related to balance confiscation and account closure? Would you be able to forward the email you received from the casino to my email at tomas@casino.guru? Please include any relevant communication between you and the casino as well.

I hope we will be able to help you to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Thank you in advance for your reply.

Best regards,

Tomas

Hello Tomas! I've sent the email correspondence with the casino via email.

As stated, the casino only said they have well-grounded reason to believe I've used their service with ill intention and against their terms and conditions. Going on to state that based on their section 17 and 20 of the terms they have closed down my account and confiscated my assets.

They refused to elaborate any further.

Thank you for your patience.

Please understand we have a 1 complaint per 1 casino policy.

Before we contact the casino I would like to ask you to please let me know what balance was confiscated in 21.com casino specifically, so I might accurately set the disputed value.

I shall proceed to file a complaint for each of the casino separately then. The exact balance amount in this dispute regarding 21.com is 2563.77€

I hope you don't mind me pretty much copy pasting my wall of text for the rest of the casinos.

Thank you very much, dessuli, for providing the necessary information. I will now transfer your complaint to my colleague Adam (adam.m@casino.guru) who will be at your service. I wish you the best of luck and hope the problem will be resolved to your satisfaction in the near future.  

Hello dessuli,

I have reviewed your case and will contact the casino to see if I can help.

We would like to invite 21.com Casino to join the conversation and participate in the resolution of this complaint.

Dear 21.com Casino,

Can you please clarify the reason for the player's account having been blocked?

Kind regards,

Adam

Hello again dessuli,

I am going to oversee all of your complaints regarding PressEnter casinos. To avoid flooding everyone with e-mails unnecessarily I will focus on correspondence from this thread initially, just so that you are aware that all complaints are being addressed.

I have made contact with the casino via Skype and they are looking into the situation, I hope to be able to provide an update here shortly.

Kind regards,

Adam

Hi dessuli,

Thank you for contacting us regarding this!

We have asked the relevant department for an update regarding your case. We will let you know as soon as we have received a reply back!

Kind regards,

Sally

Thank you for your response Sally.

I will extend the timer while we await further information.

Kind regards,

Adam

Hello dessuli,

There has been no further response from the casino, I will contact them once more. In the meantime, please let us know of any developments.

We would like to ask the casino to respond to this complaint. I will extend the timer for 7 days. If there is no response within the specified timeframe, the complaint will be closed as 'unresolved' and have a negative effect on the rating of the casino.

Kind regards,

Adam

Hello dessuli,

We have addressed the topic during our internal meeting. While we acknowledge that some complaints were submitted up to a month ago, we also need to take into consideration that investigating such matters can be time-consuming. In fact, we discovered that nine players raised concerns with our Complaints Resolution Center regarding the entire PressEnter Group, involving eight casinos, resulting in over 70 active cases. The investigation is being conducted by the entire group of casinos carefully, and we have already informed the affiliate team of PressEnter casinos. We appreciate your patience as the casinos gather evidence and work towards resolving the matter.

Thank you.

Kind regards,

Adam

Dear dessuli,

After some weeks of internal discussions and communications with the casino, no progress has been made regarding this case. We acknowledge that the investigation may be stalled by the involvement of multiple casinos and players, and therefore, we recommend seeking assistance from the Licensing Authority. As a possible solution, we suggest reaching out to eCOGRA, the official Alternative Dispute Resolution of the casino, by submitting your request here.

ADR is a free of charge service and the ruling reached by the nominated ADR entity will be considered final by both the Company and yourself, subject to full representation being given to all parties involved. You may submit a Claims Form at https://ecogra.org/forms/adr-dispute-step-1. Alternatively, you may email eCOGRA with details of your complaint at complaints@ecogra.org.

Kindly refer to this complaint as a point of reference. Let us know if you need any assistance when filing the official complaint and keep us informed about any further developments. Thank you in advance. 

Kind regards,

Adam

Dear dessuli,

Please respond and address my last post regarding contacting the ADR service.

I will extend the timer for 7 days, please be aware if we do not hear from you within that time the complaint will be rejected.

Kind regards,

Adam

I have filed the claim for eCOGRA to handle.

Dear dessuli,

As you have confirmed that you have submitted your complaint to the relevant ADR we will now close this complaint with the status "Waiting for the regulator's decision".

Once the outcome is known, the complaint can be reopened and updated as necessary.

Please let me know of any further developments (adam.m@casino.guru).

Kind regards,

Adam

Dear dessuli,

We hope this message finds you well. We wanted to follow up on your case, which was marked as "Waiting for Regulator" on our website some time ago. We were wondering if there have been any updates or resolutions since our last conversation.

If your case has been resolved by the Licensing Authority, we kindly request you to forward us their official statement at adam.m@casino.guru. On the other hand, if the ruling was in favor of the casino, it would still be incredibly helpful for us to know. We understand that it has been a while, but updating your complaint will allow us to either issue black points to the casino (if the ruling was in your favor) or warn other players and users about cases where the Authority supports the operator.

We truly appreciate your cooperation, and your response would be of great assistance to us. Thank you in advance for your reply.

Best regards,

Adam

Dear dessuli,

We are extending the timer by 7 days. Please, be aware that in case you fail to respond in the given time frame or don’t require any further assistance, we will reject the complaint.

I just send them an email 2 days prior to your question, inquiring about the progress of this dispute and whether anything has come up that I can assist with, but I haven't heard anything back from them since their initial response to take up the case in the first place.

Hello dessuli,

I have reached out to the casino also and they have stated that the ADR has not contacted them. Are you able to forward any response you have received from eCOGRA to my e-mail, adam.m@casino.guru?

Kind regards,

Adam

I've now forwarded the transcript of correspondence with eCOGRA to your email.

Note that I filed the disputes through their website so I filled in the details of each case via their webform.

Thanks for the additional information dessuli.

I am now waiting for a response from the casino, so will extend the timer accordingly.

Kind regards,

Adam

Hi @dessuli,

Your case is still under review by the relevant department.

We apologize for the delay in your case and will reply back to you as soon as possible!

Kind regards,

Sally

Thank you for your response Sally and 21 Casino.

We will allow more time and wait to hear from you.

Kind regards,

Adam

Dear dessuli,

The case is still being looked into by the casino's legal department, so we will once more extend the timer while we await an update on the situation.

Kind regards,

Adam

We would like to ask the casino to reply to this complaint. We are extending the timer by 7 days. If the casino fails to respond in the set time frame, we will close the complaint as ‘unresolved’ which may negatively affect its rating.

Hi @dessuli,

Our legal team has responded to the eCOGRA complaint accordingly and the final decision stands due to breaches of our terms and conditions.

For any further correspondence, we kindly advise you to communicate through your ADR.

We wish you all the best!

Kind regards,

Sally

Since after the beginning of this dispute I have yet to hear anything back from the Casino or the eCOGRA ADR.

Latest reply I've got from the Casino was on the 20th of March saying "We have passed on your complaint and request to the relevant department and they will revert to you as soon as possible."

And I have yet to hear back from eCOGRA since my initial contact on the 16th of august.

If indeed there has been a resolution as the casino claims, I would like to receive additional information and documents about it.

Dear dessuli,

As I understand the situation, the ADR has not yet reached a final decision.

I recommend that you contact them in order to gain an update on the case.

Please then let us know how they respond.

Kind regards,

Adam

I already reached out to eCOGRA on the 6th of March, but they have not responded.

Hello dessuli,

I certainly appreciate that you have contacted them previously, but as it has been some time and the casino has now responded to them I believe there is good reason to contact them again.

Unfortunately, I am not able to do so on your behalf.

Kind regards,

Adam

I have now reached out to eCOGRA once more. I'll be awaiting their response.

Thank you dessuli,

We will wait to hear further from you.

Kind regards,

Adam

There has been no reply from eCOGRA as of yet.

I received an email from eCOGRA stating:

This is to inform you that we have received the initial submission of evidence from both parties and can declare that we have a ‘Complete Case File’ for your dispute. eCOGRA will make every effort to conclude the dispute resolution process as quickly as possible however, please note that the process may take up to ninety days.

Best regards,

eCOGRA

Hello dessuli,

Could I ask you to please forward this e-mail to me (adam.m@casino.guru)?

Kind regards,

Adam

Forwarded.

Thank you for sending me the email, dessuli.

Can I please confirm that you have mentioned all of the PressEnter casinos in your complaint to eCOGRA?

Kind regards,

Adam

I filed a separate complaint for each of the casinos respectively.

Hello dessuli,

Thank you for your reply, but has eCOGRA only responded to one complaint? Has there been any acknowledgment by them of the other cases?

Kind regards,

Adam

Hello dessuli,

As eCOGRA is still investigating the situation, we will again close this complaint temporarily while we await a final decision. We will do so for a period of up to 3 months.

Please do let me know via e-mail if a decision is reached in the meantime (adam.m@casino.guru).

Kind regards,

Adam

Dear dessuli,
We hope this finds you well. We would like to ask you to provide an update regarding this case, which was previously marked as "Waiting for Regulator" on our website. Your complaint has now been automatically reopened, and we are eager to know if there have been any recent developments or resolutions since our last communication.
If the ADR or the Licensing Authority has resolved things in your favor, please update the thread and send over the official statement to my email. Alternatively, if the ruling favored the casino, your insights are just as crucial.
We understand that some time has passed, but updating your complaint will allow us to take appropriate action, such as issuing black points to the casino in case the ruling is in your favor or warning other players and users about instances where the authority supports the operator.
We truly appreciate your cooperation, and your response would be of great assistance to us.
Thank you in advance for your reply.

Dear dessuli,

Please respond to my previous post. I will extend the timer for 7 days. Please be aware that if there is no response from you this complaint will be rejected.

Kind regards,

Adam

As this case is being discussed via email, the timer will be extended one more time.

Kind regards,

Adam

Dear dessuli,

As there has been no further response from you, this complaint will now be rejected.

It can be reopened at any time.

Kind regards,

Adam