Galactic Wins Casino - Player’s bonus winnings have been voided.

Hi

I received bonus spins and after using it to play through the requirements, I made around R1500.

I then requested a withdrawal and now I see that the casino has canceled my withdrawal and my balance in my account is 0.

The email they've sent me is as below, I don't see that I've done anything wrong here as the casino does occasionally provide free spins.

On review of your withdrawal request, we see that a number of bets were placed that were greater than 10% of the bonus credited to your account. According to the Bonus Terms and Conditions, this is not allowed.

We have therefore cancelled your withdrawal request, and voided the winnings.

We do apologize for any inconvenience and disappointment, and we invite you to continue playing on our site.

Should you have any questions please reply to this email or contact our customer support via live chat on our site.

Dear styphoiz,

Thank you very much for submitting your complaint. I’m sorry to hear about the issue and understand your frustration. I carefully checked the Bonus Terms on the website, and this is what I found (here):

„Free Spins Terms & Conditions

...

4. Betting more than €4 per spin or 10% of the received bonus amount (the smaller of the two) on a slot game"

We would like to see casinos implementing systems that would prevent players from placing higher than allowed bets, but, unfortunately, this is not standard practice yet.

Please do not hesitate to forward your game history 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 as soon as possible. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Petronela

The casino hasn't provided details of this, my bets have always been at the minimum so this makes no sense as to why they have said this.

Just to add, the casino has free spin packages that you can purchase for bonus spins, I don't know if they consider this a bet or not, theoretically, this is equivalent of buying a bonus table.

Dear styphoiz,

Are you able to access your game history and forward it to petronela.k@casino.guru?

How do I download this, I'm on mobile.

If you can't download it, please try to request your full game history from the casino directly.

Will do so

Just a note, the casino hasn't been responding to me since the 17th when I queried the withdrawal

Thank you very much, styphoiz, for your reply. I will now transfer your complaint to my colleague Andrej (andrej.p@casino.guru) who will be at your assistance. I wish you best of luck and hope to see your problem being resolved to your satisfaction in the near future.  

Dear styphoiz,

I’m sorry to hear about the situation. I’ll contact the casino and see if I can help.

I would like to invite the representatives of Galaxyno Casino to join this conversation.

Dear casino team,

We’d like to kindly ask you to clarify the situation and provide evidence to substantiate your allegations in styphoiz’ case. Any relevant information can be forwarded to andrej.p@casino.guru.

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.

Hello Andrej and styphoiz,

We have looked into the players' history with us and the relevant withdrawal, the winnings of which were declined.

Here is what we found.

This player has registered with us and has received a free good will gesture in the form of free spins.

From those free spins he accumulated winnings in the sum of ZAR54, that had wagering requirements attached to them.

In our T&C's it is stated that the maximum bet allowed within wagering is either 10% of the bonus amount received or ZAR70.

In this case, the player has made bets of ZAR93, ZAR135, ZAR235.5 and ZAR243.75, within wagering.

Therefore, he has violated our maximum bet rule and we were within our right to void his winnings, due to this breach.

I will be happy to provide any further information necessary.

Regards,

Galaxyno Casino Representative.

Hi

I accumulated winnings of R1500+ of which I purchased a spin package of 10 spins, how are you using an amount of R54 if my withdrawal winnings was R1100.00, surely somethings amiss with your calculations

Thank you, Galaxy Casino Representative, for providing the necessary information. Please note that any evidence that would substantiate your claims (bet/transaction log from the player’s account) can be provided via e-mail (andrej.p@casino.guru).

Dear styphoiz,

Could you please advise if the statement that R54 is the amount you accumulated with the use of the free spins, before wagering the won amount, is true? Do I understand correctly that you’re not aware of placing the bets in the indicated amounts while wagering your winnings from the free spins?

Hi

That R54 never got used, if I looked at my winnings, that R54 was locked in place and wasn't allowed to be used on the website until the funds that I won were used up so I really don't understand how they say I bet with it, the casino really should provide you with a proper audit of their games.

I never even try to withdraw that R54.

Thank you, styphoiz, for the reply. Is there a link to the specific bonus offer? If so, could you please send it over? Do I understand correctly that after you used the free spins, the won amount could not be used and all bets were deducted from your real balance?

Dear casino team,

Can you please clarify the situation? As mentioned earlier, the relevant logs can be forwarded to andrej.p@casino.guru.

Hello all,

Please allow me to explain.

The free spins work as free rounds given on the game, once a player plays them, the winnings from them are added to the players account as a wagered bonus.

Seeing as we cannot know in advance how much a player might win from free spins, as they are simply rounds, each win gets added individually and is wagered.

The accumulative amount that a player wins from the original free spins is considered the bonus that he received from us.

In this case, it was R54.

The players' claim that he never used this sum is quite ludicrous, as he never deposited with us and therefore had no other funds to play with. He played exclusively with the winnings from the free spins - therefore, he was subjected to all related T&C's, which can be seen here:

https://www.galaxyno.com/en/tnc/free-bonus

All of our players receive a link to the T&C's in the bonus confirmation email we send each player once we add something to their account.

The betting history was forwarded to indicated email address to show the large bets done by the player.

Regards,

Galaxyno Casino Representative.

You keep claiming R54 bonus, you do realize your casino gives 10 free spins every once in a while not just the first time?

Attached

Thank you Galaxy Casino Representative, for the reply and for providing additional information via e-mail. Please note that I’ve responded to your e-mail and am currently awaiting your response.

Dear styphoiz,

Could you please advise if there was any other balance present in your account at the time you used the last free spin that was part of the offer? Upon review of the evidence provided by the casino team so far, it seems that there was in fact no other balance than the amount won from the free spins present in your gaming account at the time, meaning that all disputed bets were made using bonus funds while wagering the bonus. Please be informed that we’ve requested additional evidence from the casino to further clarify the situation.

Hello Andrej,

I have replied to your email.

Regards,

Galaxy Casino Representative.

Dear styphoiz,

Could you please advise if there was any other balance present in your account at the time you used the last free spin that was part of the offer?

Hi Andre

I don't recall, this should show in the casino logs?

Dear styphoiz,

Thank you for the reply. Please be informed that the casino team refused to provide us with further evidence due to their internal policies regarding private information, however, you should have direct access to some of the necessary information. Thus, to proceed with the investigation, I’d like to kindly ask you to log into your gaming account, enter the ‘My Account’ section where you should see your transaction history, make a screenshot (multiple if necessary), and share it with us. You can upload the information directly in this thread or forward it to andrej.p@casino.guru.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

So from what I see there was a winnings of R52,85 from the winnings of those free spins and I then used the minimimum bets on the same game to get that winning.

Thank you, styphoiz, for the screenshots. Could you please also share with us a screenshot of the section of your transaction history that shows the first bets you made on 16.11.2022, after 14:43? Furthermore, could you please forward the e-mail you received from the casino, where you were informed about the availability of the bonus free spins offer you used and about the conditions that were attached to the offer? My e-mail address is andrej.p@casino.guru.

Thank you in advance.

Thank you, styphoiz, for your e-mail and for providing the screenshot. The link from the e-mail you received from the casino seems to be expired. Do you recall opening the link after receiving the e-mail? Did it redirect you to the Terms and Conditions of the bonus offer?

Furthermore, could you please also share with us a screenshot of the section of your transaction history that shows the first bets you made on November 16, 2022, after 14:43? Please understand that this information is essential in the investigation of your case.

Hi

I don't recall.

I have shared this info as requested already via email, note, the website doesn't show amount better, it just shows bet/win amount, it could be either, it's not exactly split into different values.

Does the casino not have this info already, I would be very concerned if this is the case as stating that players breached T&C without this info doesn't make sense to me.

Thank you, styphoiz. Since the transaction log you have access to doesn’t include the bet amounts, but only net win/loss amounts for each bet, to calculate the bet amounts and to see if the maximum allowed bet rule was in fact not breached, we will need to also review the part of the log that shows at least three bets made right after the one recorded at 14:47. Therefore, I’d like to kindly ask you to screenshot and upload that part as well. Thank you for your patience.

Thank you, styphoiz, but unfortunately, after a thorough review of all information provided by the casino team and you, we are rejecting this complaint as ‘Unjustified’.

There’s sufficient evidence proving that you placed multiple bets higher than the maximum allowed while playing with an active bonus, which means the casino’s decision in your case was justified.

I would like to emphasize once more that at Casino Guru, we’d like to see casinos implementing a feature that won’t let players place bets higher than the allowed maximum while playing with a bonus, however, since this is not yet a standard practice in the industry, we cannot penalize casinos for situations like this and can only advise players to be more careful next time. More on our position on these situations can be found in our Fair Gambling Codex.

I'm 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. We will try our best to help.

Based on what exactly, buying free spins with winnings, the cost of those spins / by the number of spins received cost less than the amounts provided.

You guys give free spins and then act unfaithful about it.

Your links to your t&c are dead.

You have no view of your own auditing and go and ask customers to send you screenshots which means there is no way for galaxyno to even correctly audit wins/losses which to me means this is just guesswork and flagging players so as not to pay out players.

Seems very shady to me

Dear styphoiz,

We’ve thoroughly reviewed all relevant logs – both the ones provided by you and by the representatives of the casino. Please understand that there’s no reason to doubt that at the time of wagering your winnings from the free spins (bonus), you placed multiple bets of amounts exceeding the maximum allowed for bonus play, which means the conditions of the promotional offer were not met. Please understand that casinos usually don’t give out money for free. Promotional offers in any online casino usually come with many strings attached. Limiting the allowed bet amounts for bonus play is one of the ways online casinos battle bonus abuse and is quite standard in the industry.

Earlier you mentioned that you do not recall if the link to the terms of the bonus offer had been active at the time you received the e-mail informing you about the free spins being added to your gaming account. Unfortunately, this leaves us with no option but to believe the statements of the casino representatives and assume that the link was active at the time it was relevant.

For future reference, in this kind of situation, if the terms and conditions of any bonus you are offered are not clear, whatever the reason might be, I strongly recommend contacting the casino’s customer support and refraining from further play until all concerns have been addressed.

I hope you will never come across a similar problem in the future.

If you’re not satisfied with our decision and truly believe that your complaint is justified, I strongly recommend submitting your complaint to the casino’s appointed ADR (eCOGRA) and/or licensing authority of the casino (Malta Gaming Authority). Please let me know if you decide to do so and/or if our assistance is needed (andrej.p@casino.guru).

Nah, I'm done, this has been a waste of my time, I have better things to do than go back and forth wasting my time over some measly winnings. Casinos want money but when people stop playing or want to take their winning then there's always some excuse, why offer free spins and then make excuses when the playthrough is done on the those spins, admit you made a loss and accept it, casinos just rip customers off, that is exactly what gambling is all about, if the casino where in the same position, they would look for some loophole or the other, this complaint been exactly an example of this.

Dear styphoiz,

I appreciate your frustration, but the situation is what it is. Unfortunately, you breached one of the restrictions attached to the bonus you used multiple times.

Needless to say, had Galaxyno Casino implemented a feature that wouldn’t let players place bets higher than the allowed amount, this situation would have been avoided. However, as such a feature is not yet standard in the industry, all we can do is point out the issue and recommend online casinos to implement such a feature.

With that being said, as explained earlier, we will now close this complaint as ‘Rejected’.

I agree with you, the casino in my opinion seems shoddy, as a developer, this is programming best practices to build in business rules to avoid such scenarios, not even casino standards, I would also like to add, I didn't actually gamble more than the amount, all I did was buy free spins but whatever. It is what it is and karma will catch up eventually.