GambleStakes Casino - Player's account was blocked.

The situation is as follows:

On October 13, I saw a video on YouTube with Gamblestakes casino. Immediately registered in this casino. I started playing at this casino. But today it all ended and it ended in a scam.

During this time, quite a lot of deposits and withdrawals have been made in Gamblestakes casinos. I played and did not experience any difficulties. Yesterday I also made a few deposits, it's funny, I wanted to try myself as a streamer, or at least to start, just record a video with the opening of bonus rounds in slots. At Gamblestakes Casino, I had $900 real money on my balance. I caught bonus rounds in 24 different slots in order to wager them later on the broadcast or just record a video with the opening of these bonus rounds.

But today, 12/07/2022, I tried to log into my account and found out that my account was disabled.

When I contacted support, I found out the following:

"Hey, we have received a complaint of our game provider stating that we are unable to provide service to many countries included Belarus, in case you're not currently in Belarus, please provide your ID to have your account relocated and re enabled. If you are in Belarus, please let me know so we can make a ticket and get your situation resolved."

I answered that I am from Belarus

They answered me many times, but the answer is about the same:

"We greatly apologize but Belarus is not an authorized country to be on our site. You can review the unauthorized locations in our TOS which you can find at https://gamblestakes.com/en/contacts/terms-and-conditions"

If anyone is interested, I can publish the entire correspondence.

To my question about how should I deal with the fact that I risked my money and I still have 24 slots with unfinished bonus rounds and I would like to receive this money (yes, the stakes are small 0.50$-0.80$, but 24 slots with bonus rounds at these stakes, the potential winnings from these games are a tangible amount of money for me).

They answered me:

"I see you have deposited 950$ and withdrawal $1.6k You have recieved more than deposited so atleast you made some money. But we greatly apologize for this."

But It doesn't matter that I "made some money on it" - after all, this is a casino, I could lose. I risked my money. so this is not an argument.

I understand that it is unlikely that anyone from the administration will consider this situation.

So I will file complaints against all gambling resources known to me, such as: bitcointalk, casino.guru, lcb, askgamblers, chipy etc., I will also file a complaint with licensee. As well as game providers where I have unfinished rounds (pragmatic play). At a minimum, they should report the exact amount of unfinished rounds if possible.

I play in many casinos, but this is the first time I see such an attitude. Many casinos are trying in every possible way to resolve such situations in order not to spoil their reputation.

And in the gamblingstakes casino they just blocked me and deprived me of my money.

By the way, I was removed from the Gamblestakes casino channel in the discord for this message.

Я играла на свои, без бонуса.

Изначально я поставила 900$ на вывод, но потом отменила этот вывод.

Я поймала на 900$ реальных денег, без бонуса - 24 бонусных раунда в разных слотах исключительно для того, чтобы потом открыть их для видео или стрима (я посмотрела у них в дискорде много кто так делает из стримеров)

За моё сообщение о том что они заблокировали мой аккаунт в казино они меня заблокировали и в своем дискорд канале.

Там кстати мне один из их администраторов предлагал выделить партнерскую ссылку

They wrote that "our system had not detected that Belarus is an unauthorized country and we greatly apologize"

but I initially chose Belarus in the profile in the list of countries.

Dear pozndarya,

Thank you very much for submitting your complaint. I’m sorry to hear about your problem. Please allow me to ask you a few questions, so I can understand the whole situation completely. Do I understand correctly that €900 is being held in your account? Did you activate any bonuses?

Could you please confirm that you registered and always played from Belarus and didn't use a VPN to alter your location?

Thank you very much in advance for your reply.

Best regards,

Kristina

No, I have 50$ on my account, 24 bonus rounds were caught on 900$ in various slots. No, 900$ - were won without using bonuses.

Yes, I registered from Belarus, I had the country Belarus and a Belarusian address selected in my profile, and I always played from Belarus and did not use a VPN to change my location.

If my jurisdiction was restricted, then I should have seen this message:

This is not my picture, it is an archival picture from the Internet.

For clarity

in addition to previous deposits and withdrawals,

12/05/2022 - I still made deposits and 12/06/2022 I even received a payout

and on 12/07/2022 - I made deposits and got banned.

Thank you very much for your reply, pozndarya. Do I understand correctly that you didn't manage to play with your last deposit?

If there is any other relevant communication between you and the casino, please forward it to kristina.s@casino.guru. Alternatively, you can post it here. Thank you in advance.

after the last deposit (without any bonus, I played with my own money) I won ~1200$ on my account it was 1200-1300$, then I lost up to 900$ and decided to catch bonus features in slots (for these 900$ I caught bonus features in 24 slots at rates of 0.5$-0.8$) in order to open them later on video (in order to attract new players to this casino). By the evening, I could no longer log into my account because it was deactivated.

Thank you very much, pozndarya, for your cooperation. I will now transfer your complaint to my colleague Peter (peter.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.  

Hi pozndarya,

I have looked at your case and understand the situation. Let me contact the casino and I will do my best to help. I would like to invite GambleStakes Casino to the conversation to participate in the resolution of this complaint.

Hi Peter, thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Below is an overview of the situation regarding the corresponding user.

It appears this individual was able to play undetected for some time on our website without having their account flagged for location restriction contrary to this user playing from a restricted country; we have since then heightened our technology to ensure we catch users in breach of ToS more hastily. 

The moment our administrative team became aware that this user may have been in breach of our Terms of Service (See Section 11. Prohibited Uses), this user’s account was deactivated and given the opportunity to provide KYC documents to potentially rectify the situation if in fact the user was playing from a non-restricted country.

This user then proceeded to upload ID and KYC documents confirming that the user was playing from a restricted country clearly outlined in our Terms of Service agreement. We consulted with our i-gaming provider as to how these situations should be handled, and they explained that the way this case was handled was done properly according to our terms of service and casino licensing expectations. 

Due to our Discord rules, this player was removed from our Discord server for insinuating GambleStakes were scamming their users.

We understand the frustrations shared by this individual that they were amid opening up their bonus rounds while this was happening, however, to continue to let this user play slots after we’ve confirmed they are using our site from a restricted country would put our gaming license at risk.

We thank the CasinoGuru team for mediating this conversation and if there is anything else that can be provided on our end, please feel free to reach out. 

Below is the earlier-referenced section along with a link to our full Terms of Service.

Link: https://gamblestakes.com/en/contacts/terms-and-conditions-

11. Prohibited Uses

"Persons located in or reside in Afghanistan, Australia, Belarus, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Curaçao, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, France, Germany, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Libya, Lithuania, Netherlands, North Korea, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, South Sudan, Spain, Sudan, Syria, United Kingdom, United States, Zimbabwe (the "Prohibited Jurisdictions") are not permitted make use of the Service."

Best regards,

-GambleStakes

"The moment our administrative team became aware that this user may have been in breach of our Terms of Service (See Section 11. Prohibited Uses), this user's account was deactivated and given the opportunity to provide KYC documents to potentially rectify the situation if in fact the user was playing from a non-restricted country.

This user then proceeded to upload ID and KYC documents confirming that the user was playing from a restricted country clearly outlined in our Terms of Service agreement. We consulted with our i-gaming provider as to how these situations should be handled, and they explained that the way this case was handled was done properly according to our terms of service and casino licensing expectations. "

I'm sorry, but that's not true.

My documents (my passport) were uploaded in my profile at this casino on the day of my registration in October on their site, but for some reason they accepted my deposits and allowed me to continue playing until December.

I did not hide and did not try to deceive anyone, but simply risked my money for the sake of enjoying the game and the opportunity to win (well, or lose, this is a casino, after all), I just made deposits and withdrawals in this casino, talked in their discord , even wanted to get an affiliate affiliate program.

On December 5, I still made deposits (before that, I also had deposits and withdrawals), on December 7 I received a withdrawal. After making some deposits on December 7th, winning about $900 which I spent to catch the bonus rounds in 24 slots, the next day on December 8th, when I wanted to start streaming games at this casino, my account was deactivated without any warning. There is no justice here. Why on December 7, when I received the withdrawal of funds, I was not warned about the deactivation of my account and was allowed to make deposits, I received hope for a good (for me) win. And on December 8, that hope was taken away from me. It would be considered good form from the casino to at least warn that the account will be deactivated. It would be better if I played in a trusted casino, but alas, this cannot be changed.

In other casinos, if the player's country is banned, then it is common for the player to simply not be allowed into the casino under the ISP of the banned country. Or there is simply no banned country when selected in the profile. Why, having registered back in October, in the profile, when filling in my data, I was able to select the country of Belarus, by uploading documents (passport), I was able to continue playing in their casino?

Hi all,

Thank you for your replies.

Dear GambleStakes Casino team,

If you let the player register from a restricted country and even accepted their documents for verification clearly showing that they were from a restricted country, the system clearly doesn't work as it's supposed to. First of all, players from restricted countries shouldn't even be allowed to find their respective countries in the registration form because it's a trap for casual players. If these players lose their deposits, it's OK but if they win, they get blocked and it doesn't seem to be fair. The casino should pay the player the balance in their account and after that, the player can be restricted from further play.

Hi Peter,

We appreciate the gathering of information from both sides and the assessment in trying to achieve a fair conclusion for both parties.

In regards to this player registering from a restricted country and our team taking a while to detect it, it appears the system worked exactly as intended, although we didn't catch this user breaking Terms of Service as quickly as we would have hoped... We appreciate CasinoGuru's opinion that "players from restricted countries shouldn't even be allowed to find their respective countries in the registration form," however, this is an industry-standard practice used as an effective way to catch players playing from restricted countries. As proof of concept, the reason we requested KYC documents from Ponzndarya is because our team saw that she selected a restricted county.

Again, although our team didn't catch this as quickly as we would have hoped, given that this player is actually making money from our casino, it would appear that this is actually to this user's benefit rather than his detriment. Had we caught on earlier, this player never would have won and withdrew hundreds of dollars in profit from our casino. However, given that we are a casino, we understand that users breaching our terms of service for profit is a loss that we sometimes take.

When you say that GambleStakes "even accepted their documents for verification, clearly showing that they were from a restricted country," to be clear, the moment this user uploaded their documents confirming they were from a restricted country, our team took immediate action in restricting the account, as it is clearly outlined in our Terms of Service that Belarus is a restricted country.

In response to your comment, "If these players lose their deposits, it's OK, but if they win, they get blocked, and it doesn't seem to be fair," we at GambleStakes completely agree with you that if casinos were making decisions based on this metric, it would be unfair. As stated by Pozndarya, this user was actually able to withdraw hundreds of dollars in profit from our casino without issue and is actually net positive from our casino, which shows that we didn't request this information on the basis of the player winning or losing. Our request of KYC documents from the user is a standard practice in the industry and was requested without any regard to this user "winning" or "losing" money, and only done so in suspicion that this user was playing from a restricted country.

Despite the advice from our aggregator and regardless of this user already having withdrawn hundreds of dollars in profit from our casino while being in breach of our Terms of Service, GambleStakes is still willing to refund the last deposit from this user as a courtesy, as the risk of their money seemed to be a major concern and we feel this solution would thereby alleviate that risk.

Best regards,

-GambleStakes

"however, this is an industry-standard practice used as an effective way to catch players playing from restricted countries. As proof of concept, the reason we requested KYC documents from Ponzndarya is because our team saw that she selected a restricted county."

If I didn’t see my country in the list of countries in the profile, then I would not play in such a casino, because it is obvious that if my country is not selected when choosing, then players from my country are not allowed to play in this casino. Everything, and nothing like that would happen.

"When you say that GambleStakes "even accepted their documents for verification, clearly showing that they were from a restricted country," to be clear, the moment this user uploaded their documents confirming they were from a restricted country, our team took immediate action in restricting the account, as it is clearly outlined in our Terms of Service that Belarus is a restricted country."

The documents were uploaded by me not after you requested them (you didn't even ask me for them), but immediately after registration. That is, for 2 months my passport was uploaded in the casino profile and I made deposits and withdrawals. Because in new casinos, I immediately upload documents for verification so that there are no problems with the withdrawal of funds later.

You just asked me if I was from Belarus and that's it - it turned out to be your test.

You have never asked me to upload documents for verification, although this is not the first time you say that after you found out that I am from a certain country, you asked for documents - no, you never asked me for documents - it was solely my initiative , I uploaded my passport when I registered, back in October.

"Despite the advice from our aggregator and regardless of this user already having withdrawn hundreds of dollars in profit from our casino Terms while being in breach of our of Service, GambleStakes is still willing to refund the last deposit from this user as a courtesy, as the risk of their money seemed to be a major concern and we feel this solution would thereby alleviate that risk."

I wonder why only the last deposit? Why is the risk of only the last deposit taken into account?

Before the last deposit, there were 3 more deposits that I lost - why is the risk from them not taken into account?

Here, 4 deposits have been made since the last withdrawal

It turns out that 3 deposits that were lost are not taken into account, because I did not risk them? 🙂

but the 4th deposit, thanks to which I won money - this is, of course, a risk.

This is very true: "If these players lose their deposits, it's OK but if they win, they get blocked and it doesn't seem to be fair"

We at GambleStakes feel we have made our stance very clear on the subject matter at hand and provided more than sufficient reasoning behind our decision while also providing evidence in our terms of service to warrant this decision. We appreciate the suggestions on how to better our platform from both Pozndarya and CasinoGuru and will absolutely take this into account moving forward. 

This user states that if we wouldn't have had their country in the list of profiles, they would have never deposited. Even if this were the case, the user depositing onto our site only resulted in a net positive gain by this interaction as the user actually profited overall from interacting with our site. 

We would offer to take into account the risk of ALL deposits (as the user suggested) by taking the net sum of all the withdrawals/deposits and pay the user the difference and refund their net losses so that this user incurred no risk overall, however, being that this user is in overall profit from their interaction with our casino this would result in negative funds for the user.

With that being said, despite the advice from our aggregator and regardless of this user already being in net profit from our casino while being in breach of our Terms of Service, GambleStakes is still willing to refund the last deposit from this user as a courtesy if this would bring this case to a resolution.

As we've provided our proposed resolution and reasoning behind it, we would love to hear from CasinoGuru on how to proceed and resolve. 

Looking forward to your response,

-GambleStakes

Dear GambleStakes Casino team,

Since the player was able to register in the casino with the correct data and uploaded his documents immediately after the registration in good faith before she made a deposit and her account wasn't blocked, she should get paid in full. We always try to look at the overall fairness of the situation. There was obviously no intent to harm or defraud the casino. If casual players played in good casinos before, where the registration was so to speak foolproof without an opportunity for an error, they expect the same experience in all casinos. Basically, why would you be able to pick a country in the registration form if the country was restricted? Moreover, if you upload your documents to make sure that everything is OK before you make a deposit and nobody informs you that you can't play, you can't suspect a problem, right? I'm afraid we can't accept your decision to cancel the player's winnings.

Hi Peter, 

Thanks for your response as we appreciate you thoroughly taking into account both sides equally when coming to a decision. 

As we've made very clear and reiterated several times, this player did not at all upload her documents until it was requested by our casino to KYC. While it's evident CasinoGuru has a lot of experience dealing with inapt casinos which has likely contributed to CasinoGuru taking the player's word over the word of the casino, we are confirming that this player did not upload their documents immediately after registration contrary to what the player suggested and we are treating this case as such. The moment this player uploaded their documents confirming they were in breach of Terms of Service, we IMMIDIATELY took action in disabling the account.

Again, we appreciate CasinoGuru's opinion that "If casual players played in good casinos before, where the registration was so to speak foolproof without an opportunity for an error, they expect the same experience in all casinos. Basically, why would you be able to pick a country in the registration form if the country was restricted?" However, this is not industry standard and the same process we've used in verification is the same process some of the largest, most respected casinos use. 

For example, if you look at one of the largest online providers (take "Stake" for example and look at their Terms of Service,) you will see countries such as: Afghanistan, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, and Spain outlined in the same format we have ours outlined in Terms of Service as restricted countries. If you also go to through their verification process, you will see that you can also select every single one of those countries to verify your account even though it was outlined specifically in their terms of sevice that these countries aren't allowed. Although this is something CasinoGuru may not agree with, this seems to be in contradiction with the opinion that this is not something to expect in "good casinos" and is very relevant in comparison to industry standard.

With that being said, despite the advice from our aggregator and regardless of this user already being in net profit from our casino while being in breach of our Terms of Service, GambleStakes is still willing to refund the last deposit from this user as a courtesy if this would bring this case to a resolution. 

Thanks for your time and consideration in reviewing this case. 

Best regards,

-GambleStakes

"As we've made very clear and reiterated several times, this player did not at all upload her documents until it was requested by our casino to KYC. While it's evident CasinoGuru has a lot of experience dealing with inapt casinos which has likely contributed to CasinoGuru taking the player's word over the word of the casino, we are confirming that this player did not upload their documents immediately after registration contrary to what the player suggested and we are treating this case as such. were in breach of Terms of Service, we IMMIDIATELY took action in disabling the account."

Unfortunately, I'm not used to constantly taking screenshots in the casinos I play in (I will try to fix this in the future), so here is my word against yours. But if you claim that the documents were uploaded after your request, then please don't be unfounded. Tritely prove your words that you have ever asked me for documents. Show me the email you sent me with this request. It won't be because you never once asked me to upload the documents. My documents were initially uploaded on the first day after registration solely on my initiative.

"The moment this player uploaded their documents confirming they were in breach of Terms of Service, we IMMIDIATELY took action in disabling the account."

You just closed my account without any warning, and not after supposedly requesting documents 🙂. You did not request any documents, because there was nothing to request, because they were uploaded on the very first day of my registration.

"With that being said, despite the advice from our aggregator and regardless of this user already being in net profit Terms from our casino while being in breach of our of Service, GambleStakes is still willing to refund the last deposit from this user as a courtesy if this would bring this case to a resolution."

Playing in a casino is purely luck. If, as unfortunately often happens, I lost a lot of my deposits in your casino, then they would hardly have returned my deposits to me.

I can at least be content with one thing - after looking at this topic, other people will see how "loyal" and "fair" the casino is and will think several times before starting to play in your casino 🙂

Hi all,

Thank you for your replies.

Dear GambleStakes Casino team,

Is there any evidence proving the date when the documents were uploaded? Can you send this as well as proof that the email with a request to upload documents was sent to the player to my email address (peter.m@casino.guru)? Even though it doesn't change the fact that you let a player from a restricted country register, deposit, and play in the casino, it would be interesting to find it out just for the sake of the argument.

Hi Peter, 

Thanks for your ongoing dedicated responses through lengthy time frames and various repetition. 

We completely agree with you that providing said documents doesn't change the fact that this player played on our casino in breach of Terms of Service, withdrew hundreds of dollars in profit while in breach of Terms of Service, and admits to uploading KYC documents confirming they are playing from a restricted country in direct violation of our Terms of Service. 

While we appreciate the gesture that you are still wanting to see documents "for the sake of argument" even though you made it very clear that your mind is already made when you stated that "it would not change anything", this is something we cannot provide as per our privacy policy in our terms of service. As you know, we take our terms of service very seriously and that we would not make ourselves liable for leaking private information. It is however important to note that we do not request KYC Verification of users through email, as it is provided from the user and goes directly through to our backend software requested by our iGaming provider. (https://gamblestakes.com/en/contacts/privacy-policy)

To reiterate for what hopefully will be the final time, though we are well within our legal grounds as well as backed by our Terms of Service to not provide any sort of refund to this user in confirmed violation of Terms of Service, our solution was to refund the NET casino Losses/Gains from this user so that this user incurred 0 risk and $0 loss from interacting with our platform. Being that this user is in net profit from our casino and that doing so would result in no money back to the user as we are net negative, we are offering to refund the last deposit that the user placed on our site as a courtesy.

For any further correspondence regarding this complaint, we would be more than happy to speak with a supervisor or manager for a case overview.

Kindly,

GambleStakes

Dear GambleStakes Casino team,

Thank you for your reply. I'm afraid the complaint will become unresolved in favor of the player. Let's sum up the situation here: Pozndarya was allowed to register, make deposits and play from a restricted country. According to her, she uploaded her documents for verification to avoid problems. The casino argued that the documents were uploaded later after the player was requested to do so, however, never sent any evidence to support this claim. The winnings Pozndarya made should be paid in full since the casino's registration process is misleading and the verification process insufficient. Requesting a second opinion will not help you because this is one of the company's policies and not something I came up with on my own. I strongly recommend updating your registration form in accordance with the casino's T&Cs to make the user experience smoother and avoid problems in the future.

Dear Pozndarya,

Unfortunately, the casino made its decision and as it seems I won't be able to change it. I’m afraid, there is not much that can be done without cooperation from its side. I will mark the complaint "unresolved" in our system. I understand this isn't a satisfactory solution to your issue. However, the decrease in rating caused by unresolved complaints could help to change the casino's approach. If the casino decides to reconsider, we will reopen the complaint and you will be notified by email. In the meantime, I recommend you contact the Curacao Gaming Authority (certria@gaminglicences.com) and submit a complaint to them. Even though the result is uncertain, it is worth a try. Let me know how they responded (peter.m@casino.guru). I wish I could be of more help.

Best regards

Peter