Fortune Panda Casino - Player’s bonus winnings have been voided.

About 6 months ago, I played at Fortune Panda casino with their welcome bonus. I got my balance up, then canceled the bonus. I did not withdraw the money for several months. Recently I decided to play some more slots at the casino and then I withdrew.

Then I got the next message from the casino:

Dear Saifon,

we are writing to you regarding your recent withdrawal request.

We came to the conclusion that you have breached our Bonus Terms and Conditions under section 10.1.7. - all games have a maximum betting limit of 4 USD per game round/spin during the time that a bonus is active on the player's account. It is strictly forbidden to use "buy free spins" feature with an active bonus or while having any winnings generated with the help of our bonus on your balance. Violation of this rule will forfeit the bonus and any winnings resulting from the bonus or other games that were completed during the bonus period.

As we have to work in compliance with our Bonus Terms and Conditions, we had to retract your winnings generated with the help of our Bonus. Your initial deposit has been left on your balance, however.

We strongly advise you to familiarize yourself with our Terms and Conditions in order to avoid any unpleasant events like this one in the future.

I was really shocked. I never made a bet more than 4 usd WHILE PLAYING WITH THE BONUS ON MY ACCOUNT. Only after I canceled the bonus I played some slots with the bet higher than 4. But it was ONLY AFTER THERE WAS NO BONUS IN MY ACCOUNT ANYMORE!

So, the casino applies the bonus rules to the gameplay which does not uses any bonus money at all. I asked the casino representative to refer me to the rules which could somehow justify their actions. They never replied.

Please, pay attention, that in the casinos own rules, which they quoted to me it is clearly stated that 4 usd max bet is only applied when the bonus is active in the account!

Dear Hakuho,

Thank you very much for submitting your complaint and forwarding all the relevant communication. I’m sorry to hear about the issue and understand your frustration.

Please do not hesitate to forward your game history along with any relevant communication to petronela.k@casino.guru if you feel that you’ve been accused mistakenly.

I hope we will be able to help you to resolve this issue and receive your winnings as soon as possible. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Petronela

The gaming history is 100 pages long. The email communication with the casino is quoted in my previous post here.

thank you!

You can request your game history in PDF or Excel file from the casino directly. Please do not forward screenshots.

Unfortunately, the casino ignored my request by email to provide me my gameplay history. Anyway, I suppose the story is already quite clear without any additional documents needed.

Regards

Is there any relevant communication that would prove that you cancelled your active bonus, please? Do I understand correctly that you cancelled the bonus before completing the bonus wagering?

Hi Petronela

this is a response which I got from the casino couple of days ago:

——-

Dear Saifon,

Kindly not we have inquired regarding your gaming history, however unfortunately game logs older than 3 months are archived and no longer stored, therefore the PDF cannot be provided.

Regarding your last point, kindly note you were playing with a wager-free bonus, which is a fairly rare bonus offer in the industry and, because there is no wagering requirement to fulfil, the rules differ from those of a regular wagering bonus. We have explained why, on the basis of that part of our Bonus Terms referring specifically to this wager-free Welcome Bonus, you were not allowed to place bets over 4 EUR with your bonus winnings.

Because bonuses in the Welcome Package are wager-free sticky bonuses, the Bonus Terms apply until the withdrawal request has been processed or winnings generated from mentioned bonus are part of players' balance.

———

Dear Petronela, pay attention to the next paragraph from the Fortune Panda casino rules:

10.1.7 All games have a maximum betting limit of 4 EUR/USD/CAD, 40 NOK, 560 JPY, 3500CLP, 16 PEN, 15 AED or 20 BRL per game round/spin during the time that a bonus is active on the player's account.

I never made a single made more than 4 when the bonus was in my account. Only after I canceled the bonus and it was REMOVED from my balance I made several bets that were higher than 4 usd.

Is there any relevant communication that would prove that you cancelled your active bonus, please? Maybe a screenshot of your bonus history or a live chat transcript where you requested your bonus to be cancelled.

There is no such an evidence, to my best knowledge. However, there is an email from the casino in which they confirm that the bonus was indeed canceled.

——-

Dear Saifon,

thank you for your reply.

Please note you were playing with a wager-free sticky bonus. The Bonus Terms apply to any winnings generated with this bonus until the withdrawal is processed or such winnings are on your balance. Unfortunately you cannot disregard the bonus rules by requesting and canceling a withdrawal.

You have breached our bonus terms and conditions in Trans_ID: 841199763 which you can check in your casino account.

If you wish to play without such restrictions we recommend playing with wagering bonuses or, even better yet, with your clean deposits only.

Thank you for your understanding.

Kindest regards,

Fortune Panda Casino Finance Team

—-

In the bold text above you can read that the casino acknowledges the fact that I requested a withdrawal upon which the bonus was canceled from my account. Later, I canceled my withdrawal and the balance was reinstated back to my account WITHOUT the bonus in it. Hope, this satisfies your query.

Saifon

Thank you very much, Hakuho, for providing all the necessary information. I will now transfer your complaint to my colleague Michal (michal.k@casino.guru) who will be at your assistance. I wish you the best of luck and hope to see your problem being resolved to your satisfaction in the near future.  

Hello Hakuho,

I'm Michal and I have taken over your complaint. I have reviewed this case and I have a few questions to better understand the situation. Did you cancel the bonus by request to the casino support or in your casino account or did you just request the withdrawal? When you requested the withdrawal have you canceled it after a couple of days or the same day or hour or when exactly have you canceled it? What was your balance when you requested the withdrawal? What was the amount of the withdrawal?

I will contact the casino to see if I can help.

We would like to invite Fortune Panda Casino to join the conversation.

Dear Fortune Panda Casino,

Can you please shed more light on this matter? Can you please forward me the player game log at michal.k@casino.guru to see if the bonus terms we still applicable even after the player has requested a withdrawal? When the player requested the withdrawal was the bonus canceled immediately or is there some time needed for the withdrawal to be processed so the bonus terms would not apply to future gameplay anymore? When the player canceled the withdrawal was the player able to see that the bonus itself or the bonus conditions are still active/applicable in their account?

Hi Michal

I will try to answer your questions:

1. The bonus was canceled automatically the moment I requested withdrawal. According to the rules of the bonus I played - the bonus itself is non-withdrawable.
2. I do not remember exactly if I canceled my withdrawal the same day or the next one. Most probably, the same day.
3. I withdrew about 300 eur. The casino confiscated 250 (winnings) and put 50 (my deposit) back to my balance.

Hope my answer satisfies you.

Thank you for the clarification, Hakuho.

Now we need to wait for the casino's explanation why the bonus rules still applied if the bonus was canceled automatically (at least it should) when you submitted the withdrawal request.

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.

Dear Hakuho,

I have tried to contact the casino repeatedly but had no success. I’m afraid there is not much that can be achieved without cooperation from its side. I will mark the complaint as "unresolved" in our system. I understand this isn't a satisfactory solution to your issue. However, the decrease in the rating caused by unresolved complaints might help to change the casino's approach. If the casino decides to react, we will reopen the complaint, and you will be notified by email. In the meantime, I recommend you contact the Curacao/Antillephone Gaming Authority (complaints@gaminglicences.com, certria@gaminglicences.com) and submit a complaint to them. The Gaming Authority has more options and tools to help players. Please let me know if you need help with submitting the complaint or how they responded if you can do it on your own (michal.k@casino.guru). I am sorry I could not be of more help on this occasion.

Best regards,

Michal

We are reopening this complaint at the casino's request. We would like to give this case one more chance to get resolved. We are extending the timer for additional 7 days.

Dear Hakuho, can you please confirm your casino player ID/user name and the email you have used for registration?

Dear Hakuho,

Thank you for confirming your details.

Dear Fortune Panda Casino,

Can you please double-check the player's account history and clarify the situation?

Hello there,

As we reviewed the case, our customer support was asked to provide a statement regarding this issue.

Here is their official position:

First of all, it clearly says in the part he quoted himself, "It is strictly forbidden to use the "buy free spins" feature with an active bonus *or while having any winnings generated with the help of our bonus on your balance*." This means it applies not only when the bonus is active, but also to any winnings that you have generated with the bonus, even after the bonus was canceled.

This is made even clearer by this rule:

10.2.9 Each bonus in Welcome Package is "sticky" and will be forfeited once you make a withdrawal request. Bonus restrictions (maximum betting limit of 4€, forbidden games, maximum cashout of 5 times the received bonus amount) apply until the withdrawal request has been processed or winnings generated from mentioned bonus are part of the players' balance.

This was all quoted to him with extensive explanations but he decided to ignore it and fixate on that "while the bonus is active" part, which is not the relevant thing here. Also, he claims we "never replied" which is simply not true, we had a whole email thread with him. Sending you the screenshots of just two of our replies.

Even though there was clearly a misunderstanding between the casino representative and the customer, we are truly concerned that similar issues would not occur in the feature.

I'm attaching two pieces of communication provided by our support where they have stated that the violated term is 10.2.9 rather than 10.1.7.

Please note the dates as they are pretty recent, meaning that the communication has been on.

For further references, visit our Bonus Terms page.

Here is an exact quote from the Bonus terms of the casino:

10.1.7 All games have a maximum betting limit of 4 EUR/USD/CAD, 40 NOK, 560 JPY, 3500CLP, 16 PEN, 15 AED or 20 BRL per game round/spin during the time that a bonus is active on the player's account. It is strictly forbidden to use "buy free spins" feature with an active bonus or while having any winnings generated with the help of our bonus on your balance. Violation of this rule will forfeit the bonus and any winnings resulting from the bonus or other games that were completed during the bonus period.

----

While the bonus was ACTIVE on my account (e.g. while it presented on my account) - I did not make a single bet exceeding 4 EUR thus fully staying within the rule. Additionally - I never used "buy free spins" feature during my whole gameplay (with or without bonus in my account).

There is nothing more to discuss here: the casino should decide if it respects its own rules or NOT.

P.S. The casino representative's attempt to play with the contextual meaning of the word "or" in the terms above is just ridiculous. The whole sentence refers ONLY to the case of a player using "buy free spins feature" and as such cannot be applied to my gameplay IN ANY WAY.

Dear Hakuho,

Just to give you a quick update. I'm in contact with the casino representative and we are discussing your case. I am awaiting further evidence from the casino.

Hello everyone,

The documents required were sent to the casino.guru representative. We have provided all the information needed in order to resolve the case.

We are waiting for Michal to share his thoughts on this case.

Thank you,

Fortune Panda

Dear Hakuho,

We are still discussing your case, it became much more complicated when it first looked. We kindly ask for your patience.

I do have some questions for you. Can you please confirm where did you come to the €300 you have supposedly requested a withdrawal? How did you come to the deducted amount of €250, when your casino account balance was much greater at that time?

I do not quite understand your question. After the last bet I made at the casino my balance was about 300 eur. I withdrew the amount. The casino confiscated 250 and returned 50 to my casino balance as my deposit amount. What is not clear here?

Dear Hakuho,

I want to express my understanding of your dissatisfaction with the user experience you encountered while dealing with the casino support team. It is evident that they could have provided a clearer explanation of the situation. The confusion arising from your balance being displayed as real money added to the complexity of the matter. However, I must emphasize that the situation was more complicated than it initially appeared.

While we would have been willing to seek a compromise with the casino if the max bet breach were the sole issue, unfortunately, there were other factors contributing to the matter. The primary concern was that the bonus had already expired before it could be fully wagered. Moreover, the withdrawal process was not completed properly, and its lack of review by a casino employee may have further compounded the confusion.

We acknowledge that the continuous display of your balance, even after the bonus had expired, created a negative user experience, and we have strongly recommended to the casino that they work towards improving this aspect. However, it is important to note that due to the incomplete processing of your withdrawal, your actual winnings were affected, as the bonus amount should have been cleared from your balance, leaving only your real money deposit.

We understand that the communication regarding the bonus not being fully wagered was less than ideal. Nevertheless, had you not canceled the withdrawal, the casino would have promptly notified you about the incomplete wagering of the bonus. Based on these factors, we made the decision to reject your complaint.

Sorry we were not able to help you with this one, but please, do not hesitate to contact us in the future, if you run into any issues with this or any other casino and we will try our best to help.

Best regards,

Michal