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How to File and Resolve Online Gambling Complaints
Online casino complaints, sportsbook complaints and complaints against lottery and bingo sites are not uncommon. Whilst rogue gambling operators are the single biggest source of friction with players, even the most reputable and well-regulated gambling business will be subject to some online gambling complaints from players.
This article helps you understand the best steps that players and bettors can take to ensure their general gambling or casino complaints are appropriately addressed.
Not sure where to submit your complaint?
We recommend CasinoReviews.com, a free online gambling complaints service offering to mediate disputes between players/bettors and online gambling operators. If you feel you’ve been treated unfairly, CasinoReviews is here to help you reach a fair outcome.
To get started, go to CasinoReviews.com, fill out the online form and submit your online gambling complaint to the site's dispute resolution team.
10+ years of experience
8,000 complaints managed
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Legal Disclaimer: The contents on this page are provided for informational purposes only and are not intended as a substitute for legal advice. When pursuing a complaint against an online gambling operator, always seek legal counsel from the appropriate entities in your jurisdiction.
Understanding Your Options
Knowing your legal rights and the systems that are in place to support and protect players is your single strongest defence when you need to learn how to file a complaint against a casino or other gambling operator. Let us guide you through the process step by step.
Formal vs Informal Complaint Options
If you feel that you’ve been treated unfairly and need to report casinos, a bookie or other gambling site, you will have recourse to one of two options: formal or informal complaint methods.
Formal Complaint Resolution
Informal Complaint Resolution
These options are player safeguards built into the regulatory system. The formal complaint options available to players/bettors vary for each region.
These options are applicable when formal complaint channels cannot manage your complaint OR if you do not wish to pursue your complaint formally.
How to Choose the Best Complaint Option For You
While formal options will ordinarily be stronger, many bookie and casino complaints do get resolved by informal methods. To decide which one is best for you, we advise you to proceed as follows:
Explore our guides to the formal and informal complaint options available in your region.
After you have chosen a formal or informal complaint option, return here and follow the steps described in this guide.
Explore Your Gambling Complaint Options
STEP 1: Make Sure You Have a Valid Case
Before you report casinos or other gambling sites, you’ll need to make sure you have a strong case against the operator. You can do this by re-reading the Operator’s Terms and Conditions.
⭐ Expert Tip: when it comes to online gambling complaints, checking the T&Cs is the very first thing you should do. What you’re looking to do is find out whether your actions have aligned with the terms of use that you have agreed to.
Focus on the sections of the T&Cs that are relevant to your problem. For instance, if the issue relates to a bonus, you should ensure you read the bonus terms and conditions. If it relates to a sports bet, you should read the rules for that particular sport.
💡 Can I still file a complaint if I’ve breached the terms of use?
Yes, you are free to pursue further steps (described later in this article) even if you have broken the operator’s terms of use. However, if you’ve breached the terms of use, with very few exceptions, it’s very unlikely that you will be paid. Indeed, it’s highly likely that you will be disappointed with the outcome of such a complaint. We would therefore encourage you to keep that in mind when considering how much time or energy to invest in pursuing your claim.
STEP 2: Strengthen Your Case
So, you’ve read the gambling operator’s terms and think you have a valid complaint. What next?
First, contact the operator’s customer support
Most bookie and casino complaints can be resolved quickly by simply talking to the operator’s support team.
⭐ Expert Tip: it is very important that you keep a written record of your interactions with the operator’s customer support in case of further issues later on.
Next, keep an organised paper trail
Ideally, contact customer support by email to ensure you have a written record of your communications with the operator. If email support is not available at the operator in question, use Live Chat and make sure you save a transcript of all conversations. You can either copy and paste these into a word document or ask the operator to send you a copy. Some Live Chat clients will offer you the option to download the chat as a file.
STEP 3: Decide if You Want to Take Your Case Further
At this stage, there are two possible scenarios: you have either reached a satisfactory resolution with the operator’s customer support or they’ve not resolved the issue for you. And if it’s the latter, the best course of action is to go back to the operator’s terms and conditions.
⭐ Expert Tip: In the operator's T&Cs, you want to search the page for the terms “complaint” or “dispute”. Well-regulated gambling sites will have a clearly laid out policy for the management of complaints.
What you can expect to find in the “complaint” or “dispute” section of the T&Cs:
First, the internal bookie/casino complaints policies will direct you to contact user support to resolve the matter (if you’re following the advice of this article, you’ve already done that)
Next, it will direct you to submit a written complaint to a separate department dedicated to managing player complaints, usually via email
💡 Do I really have to read the T&Cs again?
Yes, this is a necessary step if you want to take your complaint further. Therefore, it is really important that you follow this policy. We know that this can be slow and frustrating, even taking months, but if you don’t follow the operator’s internal complaints policies there’s a very good chance that when you try to escalate your claim it will simply be rejected by the operator’s regulator or Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service because you haven’t completed the operator’s internal complaints procedures.
STEP 4: Compose & Submit Your Written Complaint
Putting in a little time and care when composing a written complaint can make a substantial difference to how your case is processed. Follow our top writing tips for successful communication regarding your online gambling complaints.
Always Be Polite
The first piece of advice that we would give is keep your complaint polite. Don’t be disrespectful or demanding. It almost never helps. You can be firm and/or assertive, without crossing this line. Keep it polite and professional. It’ll get your further.
⭐ Expert Tip: we cannot overstate the importance of this piece of advice: NEVER swear.
Keep Language Clean
NEVER swear. If you are abusive in any way, or your communication can be interpreted as hostile or threatening, you are giving the operator additional grounds with which they can dismiss your complaint without even having to review the details of it. Don’t give them this out. Your complaint should be judged on the merits of your claim, not dismissed because you lost your temper.
Structure and Proofread Your Complaint
Within your written complaint, use appropriate punctuation and grammar. Here’s what this looks like:
use proper sentence structure;
avoid ‘text speak’;
try to break your complaint into appropriate paragraphs;
avoid typing in all CAPS.
💡 Why should I bother with grammar?
Remember that it will be a person who is reading your complaint. People are fallible and where you make it unnecessarily challenging to understand your complaint, important details can be missed. So, make your complaint as clear and easy to understand as possible.
Include the Relevant Information
There’s a fine balance to writing a complaint. You want to include all the relevant information. Don’t make the complaint handler chase you for highly relevant material. At the same time, it’s not a good idea to write an essay. You want to keep your complaint succinct and to the point.
With that in mind, here’s what you should include:
your name, your address and how you would like the operator to contact you;
the username and email address you registered at the gambling operator on registration;
the date when the issue occurred;
a description of the problem, including a timeline of events if appropriate;
the total funds that you are contesting;
copies of any relevant documentation. This may include email and Live Chat records, identifications, screenshots or KYC documents;
a description of how you would like your complaint to be resolved.
Stick to the Facts
Try to keep your writing factual. Whilst it’s understandable that you will be very frustrated if you’ve got to the point of writing a complaint, including lots of overly emotive hyperbole in complaints against a casino won’t help your case.
⭐Expert Tip: remember that you want to include all relevant information to evidence your issue but try to keep you submission succinct.
The person reviewing your complaint understands that you feel you’ve been wronged. But padding your complaint in this way can only have two outcomes: at best, it significantly inflates the length of your submission and at worst, it can draw focus away from the actual problems and reduce your chances of getting the outcome that you want.
Our #1 Online Gambling Complaints Service
Our #1 Online Gambling Complaints Service
For players and bettors facing unfair treatment by online gambling operators, we recommend submitting a complaint to the trusted team over at CasinoReviews.com. This free and impartial dispute resolution service will help you reach a fair outcome.
STEP 5: Possible Outcomes
What happens after you submit your complaint? To understand the possible outcomes of your complaint, you again need to read the gambling operator’s terms and conditions, specifically the section on complaints. This will outline the process after a complaint has been submitted.
Generally, this will include a timeframe within which the operator will offer an outcome to your complaint, but what those timeframes might be can vary considerably from operator to operator.
There are a few possible outcomes to your complaint:
the gambling operator confirms the issue and corrects it for you;
the gambling operator offers a compromise solution;
the gambling operator rejects your complaint;
the gambling operator fails to adhere to their complaints policy or fails to respond to your complaint.
💡 What is a good outcome?
Outcome (1) is good news for you and spells the end of your journey through the bookie/casino complaints system. And if the complaints procedure ends with (3) or (4), obviously you want to escalate your complaint. But outcome (2) requires a bit more explanation.
Outcome (2): what to do when an operator offers a compromise solution:
Where the gambling operator offers you a compromise, remember it is an offer, not something that they can force on you. If you are deeply unhappy about what’s being offered, you can reject it. However, you should always consider what’s being offered and the implications if you do decide to walk away.
What do we mean by “implications”? Well, if you decide to decline the offer, your options will vary significantly depending on which license the gambling operator holds.
⭐Expert Tip: When deciding whether to accept a compromise solution: You should always ensure that you understand what next steps are available to you before declining any offer. We will discuss this in greater detail a little further into this article, but you should keep in mind that if the operator is licensed in your country, you will have more and stronger options available to you than if the operator is unlicensed or holds an international license.
Understanding What Comes Next
If, after exhausting your options with the operator, you are unhappy with the outcome of your complaint, you can choose to explore your options and next steps.
⭐Expert Tip: your options will vary significantly depending on the specific license that the gambling operator holds. To understand what options are available to you, you should always read the online gambling license information.
💡 How to Read Online Gambling License Information
To find out what license a gambling operator holds: look at the footer (very bottom) of the homepage of their website. Most regulators will require the operator to display information on their license and a verification seal, which will ordinarily link to a matching license page on the regulator’s website.
And what if there’s no licensing information? If there’s no regulatory information, or the license seal does not link to the license page on the regulator’s website, it’s highly likely that the operator does not have a valid gambling license.
Licensed vs Unlicensed Operator Complaints
So, you've identified what kind of license (or lack thereof) the operator in question holds. But how do you decide which complaint option to pursue next? We break it down below.
Complaints Against Licensed Operators
Complaints Against Unlicensed Operators
Licensed operators are subject to complaints processes built into the regulatory system. You will therefore have access to formal complaint options, which can include taking legal action against an online casino. These options vary for each region. Read our guide to understand formal complaint options available in your country of residence.
If the operator does not have a valid license, it will substantially reduce the options available to you. There are still some options, but they are more limited. These options are also applicable when formal complaint channels cannot manage your complaint OR if you do not wish to pursue your bookie/casino complaint formally.
Explore More Gambling Complaint Options
More About Gambling and Fairness From Our Experts
Formal Gambling Complaints
These complaint channels are built into the regulatory system for each region. Explore the formal complaint options available to you.
Informal Gambling Complaints
Pursuing a gambling complaint through informal channels offers an alternative way to pursue your case against an operator. Learn more here.
Online Gambling Regulators
Online gambling regulators are responsible for ensuring that online gambling is conducted legally and fairly. Learn more in our guide.
Responsible Gambling
These initiatives are designed to protect players from harm and enable informed choices. Find responsible gambling support, tools and resources in your region.
