Payment Complaint troubles with the Virtual group

[SMaster]

Soon will be a year since I requested withdrawals from several casinos of Virtual group. 15-20k in total.

Virtual Group just avoids to withdraw.
They initiated "game check" for "near up to 2 months" period, but this so called "check" lasted over a half year.
Just warning to any potential gamblers. They may avoid payments without ANY reason.

In fairness, I would like to inform that until I had several unpaid delayed withdrawals, this casino group regularly paid me according to my requests.

Complaint didn't help at all. As for Casinomeister's PUB I'm greatful to them, but the fact- near to zero help at this time (this situation soon will be another thread's theme) appealing to so called "industry standards" that casino's check can last even more than a half year... Veeery passive position of a Mediator / Arbitration, that speaks about big problems in "industry"... + we don't even know for sure if did they finish so called checks or no. I think this is strange and alarming.
Virtual group Representative first responded couple times, but now she ignores my messages. So Virtual Group management also excelled in courtesy and tact. Not responding to a client who has over 15k balance to be withdrawn for 10 months is just "top-notch service" in the "industry"...

I'm sure the "checks" have been completed long ago and no violations have been found (since I know for a fact I haven't violated anything), but since they don't want to fulfill their obligations, they're simply keeping quiet. For how long? That's the question.

 

[maxd]

Hello @SMaster ,

Firstly let me say that if you are going to complain in public about issues that have been explained to you many MANY times you might at least have the courtesy to speak truthfully about the circumstances.

The truth is we’ve handled quite a few cases for you over the past year or so, and yes some of those were for the Virtual group. At no time did we ever say that we were in love with that group or their casinos. The troubles with that group date back a LONG time — admittedly less so at times and more so at others — and you just happen to have encountered them recently. May I suggest you do a little research to find out what you’re dealing with here.

Now, to your cases: when you submitted your Virtual cases we were immediately informed by the rep that the game provider was investigating you across their entire network and that was going to have a detrimental effect on your cases. Specifically we told you very clearly that when a provider is investigating a player they hold all the cards and that nothing will happen at the casino or with your complaints until they are finished and release the cases back to the casinos.

We told you this and explained it to you more times than I can count, not to mention the rep having done the same. And why did we have to do that? Because you simply ignore whatever it is that you don’t want to hear and bang on about “standards” and “industry corruption” and a lot of other stuff that has no effect on casinos with weak or non-existent licenses.

You say "Virtual group Representative first responded couple times, but now she ignores my messages.” Yes indeed, and so would we if you ignored every word we said, paid no attention to the explanations given, and repeated the same insulting attacks day after day after day, as you have done with the rep in question. At some point anyone in their position would conclude that since you have no respect for the time they take explaining things to you they simply won’t bother anymore and do the only thing that makes sense: end the conversation.

Above you say that we took a "Veeery passive position of a Mediator / Arbitration”. Again, we explained the situation to you many times: we are not the police, we are not the courts and we are not The Global Force Against Bad Things Happening. We are arbitrators and what we do in the PABs is “arbitrate”:

arbitrate,

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

​

: to act as

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

upon (a disputed question) : to settle (a dispute between two people or groups) after hearing the arguments and opinions of both.​

In other words to do what we do we need to hear from both parties, if one party does not provide their arguments there is nothing to arbitrate. Since the provider made it clear that they’d respond to the relevant casinos in their own time — a month, 6 months, a year if that’s what they decided to do — then you, us, and anyone else involved can either wait it out or take the matter into their own hands as best they could. The fact that you chose the latter path is your business but please spare us the defamatory comments when there was clearly no path available to us for proceeding with the arbitration of your issue.

In a situation where all your issues are in the game provide's hands you, we and anyone else in the case simply has to sit on their hands until the provider is done whatever it is they are doing. You complained bitterly about this, even to the point of doing so here, but when we asked you what you might suggest we do over and above what we were doing — because we knew full well there was nothing we could do to force your issues to conclusion — you had nothing to say. Obviously that would've been your response because there is nothing to be done in that circumstance: the providers work beyond the control or influence of pretty much anyone, unless you want to take your chances and try to pursue them in court.

So we flatly reject your criticism of our arbitration process. In fact I’ll point out that you’ve had no less than 6 PABs with us over the last 18 months; all casinos with fake licenses or unlicensed, and exactly the success rate with those that you might expect: zero. To put it bluntly “that’s a you problem”: pick better casinos and your chances of having satisfactory resolutions to your cases will increase dramatically.

That said, given your disparaging attitude toward us after our many hours of working on your cases, we will no longer be accepting PAB complaints from you and all your cases that were in progress are hereby closed. No doubt you’ll find somewhere else that suits you better and good luck to you with that.

Regards,

Max Drayman
Complaints & Player Arbitration (PAB) Team Lead

 

[SMaster]

Hello @maxd

First, I must confidently deny that my statement in my previous post about "passivity" in any way implied "corruption". It also in no way related to previous cases. Since we're talking about previous cases, I'll explain a bit, otherwise it might create the mistaken impression that I'm ungrateful and even a simple-minded amateur. Besides Virtual Group Casino, there were only four of them – and two of them eventually paid out (which I notified PAB about), despite the cases already being closed. One of them didn't even respond – the casino was in a slightly complicated situation, clearly misinterpreting its own rules to its advantage, and I was skeptical about that case from the start. And here's the fourth case: Electricwins – they're clearly scammers with a fake license and numerous complaints about scams and even fake games. But there weren't any complaints back then – it was a new casino, and of course, it was my choice and my mistake. Except for the last one, all of them had licenses and fairly high "ratings" on some websites. In any case, I was sincerely grateful to PAB (which, by the way, I always reported) for their work and time, regardless of the case's outcome. Of course, I appreciate the advice on choosing better casinos, but considering I've played at dozens of casinos and my monthly deposits and withdrawals often exceeded several tens of thousands, these cases represent a very small percentage (well, with the exception of Virtual Group, which doesn't pay me for several casinos at once).

About the Virtual Group case.
-The casino refuses to pay an amount close to 20,000 for over 10 months.
-The casino has been reporting third-party (provider) checks since September last year.
-The casino's rep does not responded to my inquiries 2 months.

-I was informed by PAB, that there are no time limits for third-party checks according to gambling industry standards.

This situation may look like a deadlock, which could actually give the casino an advantage. Therefore, given that almost nothing depends on the PAB in this case, I admit that my criticism of passivity was subjective.
Was it subjective or may be even totally wrong opinion, but it's far to be called called "disrespect" or even more "slander" here.
So repeat: I didn't mean PAB "inaction", "casino favoritism", moreover "corruption".

In any case, the lack of deadlines in any process is a major problem and a clear flaw in the industry. In fact, I know firsthand that clearly fraudulent casinos with fake licenses exploit this—they don't block you or withdraw funds from your balance for a long time, but they can cite audits as justification for their fraudulent actions for years—that's a fact. I think I'll name two that might be useful: Ocean-breeze-casino and Electricwins. I wouldn't like to compare Virtual Group, with its million-strong customer base, with fraudulent sites, but sadly the situation is very similar.

Just to be objective and I don't wish any user take my posts wrong. So I appreciate the work PAB does- be it for me ir for another gambler. I see that PAB helps many people to receive their money, even in situation when they don't have much instruments. Some cases are really hard to review. F.E. I saw some cases concerning self exclusion- to my surprise I found out that PAB was able to help people to receive money that gambler with addition problem lost playing- I guess that's at least worth something.

Regards