Thrill Casino - Player reports serious failure in responsible gambling practices.

I am lodging this complaint against Thrill Casino regarding what I believe to be an extreme failure of responsible gambling practices and player protection obligations.

Since late last year, I experienced a severe gambling relapse during which I lost essentially our family’s entire savings, along with significant borrowed funds and loans. Throughout this period, Thrill Casino had extensive visibility into my gambling behaviour, spending patterns, frequency of deposits, emotional state, and overall activity. Despite what should have been numerous clear indicators of gambling harm and distress, at no point did the casino meaningfully intervene, conduct welfare checks, suggest safer gambling measures, request affordability checks, or take steps to protect me from further losses.

Instead, the conduct from their VIP team appeared to actively encourage continued gambling activity. I was continuously drip-fed bonuses, promotions, personalised engagement, and ongoing communication designed to keep me playing. Over time, members of the VIP team developed what felt like a personal relationship through Telegram communications, all while my gambling behaviour was clearly escalating in an unhealthy and destructive way.

I have completed a full breakdown and record of the VIP interactions and Telegram communications, which clearly demonstrate the nature of the engagement and the complete absence of any meaningful safe gambling practices. In reviewing these conversations, it becomes evident that the priority appeared to be player retention and continued spending, rather than any concern for player welfare or responsible gambling obligations.

The consequences of this have been devastating for my family. I was ultimately forced to come clean to my partner regarding the extent of the losses and financial damage that had occurred. This has caused enormous emotional distress, financial hardship, and personal strain on our household. My partner is now also actively assisting in trying to resolve this matter.

We attempted to resolve these concerns directly with Thrill Casino before escalating externally. Unfortunately, the response has largely consisted of generic complaints team replies with little substance, accountability, or meaningful attempt to address the seriousness of the issues raised.

We are now exhausting all available channels to ensure this matter is properly reviewed and addressed. Given the severity of the situation, the extensive evidence available, and the apparent disregard for responsible gambling obligations, we respectfully request Casino Guru’s assistance in reviewing this complaint and facilitating a fair and serious investigation into the conduct of Thrill Casino.

This is an extremely distressing time for our family, and any assistance or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

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Hello,

Thank you very much for submitting your complaint. I’m sorry to hear about your negative experience with Thrill Casino.

Please allow me to ask you a few questions so we can better determine how to assist you.

• Is your account currently accessible to you?
• Could you please share the communication in which you informed the casino about your gambling issues? Please share the information with timestamps if available, to my email at tomas@casino.guru
• When was the last time the casino allowed you to deposit?
• Have you asked for a refund of your net deposits from the casino already? Have you received any response?

If your account is currently not blocked, as the next step, I recommend you send a self-exclusion request via email at support@thrill.com, separately to your VIP manager, and at the same time, include me in the copy of the email to tomas@casino.guru

When applying for self-exclusion, clearly state the reason for deactivating your account and specify the period. Additionally, the email subject should be marked and easily recognizable, as the casino support receives many requests per day. If it is marked visibly, you will stand a better chance of having your request granted as soon as possible.

Example:

Email subject: Self-exclusion:

Player’s info:

First name:

Last name:

Date of birth:

Casino login:

Email address:

"Greetings Thrill Casino Support,

I’m writing to inform you that I wish to be immediately excluded from this casino and from receiving any gambling-related marketing material permanently.

The reason for my decision is that I am suffering from gambling problems.

I acknowledge that I will not be allowed to rescind my self-exclusion during this period and that the self-exclusion cannot be lifted before the end of the agreed period."

In the meantime, check other resources and information in our responsible gambling guide found here: https://casino.guru/responsible-gambling-guide

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

Best regards,

Tomas

Hi Tomas,

Thank you for your response and assistance.

Please see my answers below:

1. My account is no longer accessible and has already been closed by Thrill Casino.

2. I will forward the communications showing discussions around my gambling issues and behaviour, including timestamps where available, to your email shortly.

3. The last day I was able to deposit was Monday this week, which is also the same day this matter escalated and ultimately resulted in the closure of my account.

4. Yes, I have already requested a refund of my net deposits from the casino. At this stage, the matter has not been resolved satisfactorily.

To clarify, my complaint is not limited to what occurred after I explicitly disclosed gambling problems. The core issue is what I believe was a complete failure by the operator to apply appropriate responsible gambling and safe gambling practices over an extended period of time.

There were, in my view, hundreds of opportunities where clear markers of problematic gambling behaviour should have triggered intervention, safer gambling checks, affordability reviews, welfare interaction, deposit restrictions, cooling off measures, or account suspension. Despite this, the casino continued accepting significant gambling activity and deposits without meaningful intervention.

My concern is that the operator failed to appropriately identify and act on obvious indicators of gambling harm over a prolonged period, despite having extensive visibility of the activity occurring on the account.

I will forward the supporting communications and evidence shortly for your review.

Thank you again for your assistance.

Kind regards,

Daniel ***

ill attached the communication separately with my requests to thrill

Better yet, I forwarded you the email chain

Just for additional context, I am a recovering addict. Late last year, after recently becoming a father and dealing with significant personal and financial stress, I relapsed into gambling through Thrill. I also was made redundant in January.

The behaviour I exhibited throughout this period was clearly not rational or healthy. I was gambling for 18+ hours a day, seven days a week, over an extended period. My communication with the VIP team reflected someone who was distressed, desperate, emotional, erratic and mentally unwell. There are countless examples within your own records showing this. 

I can understand if someone gambles briefly without obvious warning signs, but that is not what happened here. This escalated over many months in an extreme and highly visible way. During that time, nobody meaningfully intervened, nobody stopped to ask whether I was mentally fit to continue gambling, and no genuine duty of care appeared to be exercised despite the severity of my behaviour being obvious to anyone paying attention.

Instead, I was continuously encouraged to continue gambling. I was contacted constantly by VIP staff, incentivised to keep playing, and even lent money while clearly spiralling. Looking back at the communication and activity now, it is incredibly difficult to understand how this was allowed to continue unchecked for so long. 

Thrill only stopped taking money once there was literally nothing left to take. By that point, I had lost my savings, borrowed money, and put my family into an incredibly damaging position financially and emotionally. 

I want to be clear that I am not attempting to avoid personal responsibility. I am an addict, and I acknowledge my own role in what has happened. However, there comes a point where an operator also has a responsibility to act. In my view, Thrill failed entirely in its duty of care and allowed a clearly vulnerable person to continue gambling to catastrophic levels over a period of 6 to 7 months without any meaningful intervention. 

If this type of conduct occurred in many other industries, there would be serious legal consequences for such gross negligence around consumer safety and wellbeing. The fact that I was so obviously unwell, yet continued to be facilitated and encouraged to gamble, is something I am struggling deeply to come to terms with. 

This situation has had a devastating impact on my family, my mental health, and our future. I am genuinely asking for help to resolve this situation in a fair and compassionate way, because right now I honestly do not know how my family is supposed to recover from what has happened. We are likely to have our home foreclosed on within weeks if I am unable to get Thrill agreeable on a path forward, essentially making us homeless. Please help us. And quick…

I am happy to attached all the full telegram chat logs if you would like them, the previous document is just a highlighted review of them. Let me know and I can upload the raw files.

Hi Tomas, hope you are well, I don’t mean to put pressure on but we are in a really bad spot, about to be completely out of money, how is the discussions going with Thrill? This is very urgent we are out of options…

Hi Tomas, just checking in, I haven’t heard anything from you regarding this?

Thanks for your patience.

I went over the communication you provided. Please understand we can only pursue the refund request for the money that was spent in situations where we can conclude the casino should have protected you from further gambling. If you are experiencing gambling issues, to be protected, we believe the casino should act to protect you if you inform them of your gambling issues. In the communication you provided, there is no clear indication that you are suffering from gambling issues. Asking for bonuses is, unfortunately, not a sufficient signal for us to pursue the case. Since the casino has already closed your account after you informed them of your gambling issues, there is little more we can accomplish.

Please let me know if there is any information I might have overlooked.

Thank you for your response, however I strongly disagree with the position being taken here, both factually and from a responsible gambling perspective.

Respectfully, the suggestion that there was "no clear indication" of gambling harm is difficult to reconcile with the reality of how these VIP and gambling interactions occur in practice.

I am attaching a screenshot from another player who explicitly informed the operator that he was an addict. The response provided by the casino was a generic safe gambling message, after which the player was able to continue gambling and lose in excess of $10,000 the following day.

That example alone demonstrates a concerning pattern of reactive, surface-level "responsible gambling" procedures that appear designed more for compliance optics than meaningful intervention.

Does Casino Guru, a platform that markets itself as a trusted advocate for players, genuinely believe that is an acceptable responsible gambling outcome?

Because from a player protection perspective, it clearly is not.

The argument that repeated bonus requests, excessive engagement, VIP interaction patterns, inducements, loss behaviour, and escalating gambling activity are somehow not indicators of potential gambling harm is also extremely difficult to accept, particularly within a VIP environment where operators have vastly more behavioural visibility and data than the customer themselves.

Responsible gambling obligations are not limited solely to situations where a customer uses exact phrases such as "I have a gambling addiction."

If that is the threshold being applied, then the entire concept of proactive player protection becomes largely meaningless.

The reality is that gambling operators monitor customer behaviour extensively. They track deposits, losses, session length, behavioural trends, VIP engagement, promotional responsiveness, and player value metrics in significant detail. To suggest they are unable to identify escalating harmful behaviour unless a player makes an explicit formal declaration ignores how sophisticated these systems actually are.

I also note that the account closure only occurred after gambling harm had already substantially occurred. Closing an account after the damage is done does not absolve an operator of whether earlier intervention should reasonably have taken place.

More broadly, this response raises a serious question around Casino Guru’s standards when assessing responsible gambling complaints.

If a player explicitly stating they are an addict, receiving only a generic templated response, and then immediately being allowed to lose over $10,000 the next day is still viewed as acceptable conduct, it becomes difficult to understand what standard would ever qualify as a failure of responsible gambling protections.

I would ask that this matter be reconsidered more carefully and escalated internally for further review rather than assessed purely against an unrealistically narrow threshold of explicit wording.

Regards,

Daniel

Thanks for sharing your point of view.

Sadly, based on the circumstances related to your case, the conditions for our help weren't met. We suggested our help hinges on your disclosure of the gambling issues to the casino in the past, in one of your previous complaint submissions, and it's our position again at this time.

Communication from other players can't be considered as evidence in your case. If said player decides to file a complaint against the casino, we'll investigate any evidence related to their dealings with the casino that they can provide to us, as we have reviewed the evidence you provided regarding your situation.

Player protection should take place after the player informs the casino of their gambling problems. Previous game activity is not considered by our complaints team, and a refund of net deposit from previous activity isn't pursued.

At this point, we don't consider online casinos having the monitoring tools you describe as mandatory, and we can't penalize them based on a lack of such responsible gambling features. However, we consider self-exclusion due to gambling issues as mandatory in online casinos.

We recommend that you request a self-exclusion due to gambling addiction in any online casino where you have an open account and seek professional help if you believe it's the necessary step.

We provide several resources that might help you in that regard in our responsible gambling guide here: https://casino.guru/responsible-gambling-guide

Due to the aforementioned reasons, we will now proceed to reject this complaint. Thank you for your understanding. I am genuinely sorry that we were not able to assist you more effectively in this particular situation, as we always aim to help players resolve their issues whenever possible.

Please remember that you are welcome to contact us again if you run into any problems with this or any other casino in the future. Whether it is a question, a concern or a new issue that needs to be looked into, our team is here and ready to support you.