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Thread: Colorado Sportsbettor gets screwed by William Hill, gaming commission won't help

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Colorado Sportsbettor gets screwed by William Hill, gaming commission won't help

    Read this thread: https://twitter.com/capjack2000/status/1374397790898384900

    Or for more info, you can read this article about it: https://www.cobets.com/william-hill-parlay-void/

    If you don't feel like reading it, I'll summarize it for you.

    A sportsbettor in Colorado signed up for online legalized betting site "William Hill", which is huge and operates a lot of the sportsbooks in the US, both online and in-casino.

    As a new customer, he received a deposit bonus of $500 on an initial deposit of $500, making his balance $1000, of which $500 was bonus money.

    He then made a $500 parlay bet which paid $2537.19 total, and it won. So now his balance was $3037.19.

    He went to withdraw money, and was told he could withdraw the whole balance, so he submitted that. However, his withdrawal was denied, his bonus $500 was confiscated, his winning bet was voided, and his balance was back down to his original $500 deposit! They also suspended his account!



    Well, it turns out that, like most sites, you can't withdraw funds until you've rolled over the bonus sufficiently (that is, bet the required amount on their site). However, the industry standard is to simply deny the withdrawal, and then inform the customer to keep betting the amount necessary! They don't confiscate the winnings and snatch away the bonus!

    These sounds like the actions of a shady offshore sportsbook, not a legalized and regulated Colorado book!

    However, after a 3-month investigation, the Colorado Gaming Commission denied his request for help, stating that the William Hill terms and conditions noted this potential consequence. Therefore, as he violated the "early withdrawal" term, he must forfeit everything!

    Is this bullshit, or what?

    The terms state:

    A Participant who requests a withdrawal without first wagering the Deposit Match Bonus associated with the Qualifying Deposit may have that Free Bet voided at the sole discretion of William Hill.

    So there's no question that he broke the terms, but so what? These are stupid and industry non-standard terms, and they can't expect the average sportsbettor to go through all the fine print. There needs to be some leeway which both protects the site and avoids screwing the bettor.

    It seems likely to me that this dude was just a novice bettor who didn't understand that you always have to rollover bonus money. A sports advantage player or bonus whore would never make this amateur mistake. This was just a guy who was enticed by the bonus, got lucky, and wanted to lock up a $2500 payday.

    While the site had every right to deny the withdrawal, confiscating the money was a complete joke, and shouldn't have been allowed.

    This is the problem with all of these new states legalizing sportsbetting so quickly. Many of these gaming commissions don't understand the industry well, and make nonsensical rulings often unfairly favoring the sportsbook.

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    Jesus... this is horrible.

    I linked to this on a sports betting forum I frequent. We'll see if we can get some social media shaming going. May not matter at this point, but can't hurt to try.

    http://forums.eog.com/index.php?thre...-this.7468638/

    Keep in mind that this is the same Colorado Division on Gaming that actively prosecutes casino patrons for innocently playing slot machines with abandoned credits on them. (in some cases under a dollar.) You can't make this up, folks.

    https://kdvr.com/news/problem-solve....-slot-credits/
    Last edited by go_buccos; 03-29-2021 at 08:29 AM.

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    I would like to comment on the Colorado sportsbettor story that is on the PFA 4/4/21 podcast at the 2:36:18 mark.

    What is fishy about this story is that at William Hill new user promotion (to earn free bets) have the following stipulations in their terms and conditions:

    5.Risk-Free Wager: Within 7 days of opening a William Hill CO Account, Eligible Patrons must place their first real money sports wager (“Qualifying Wager”) via the William Hill mobile app or desktop site to participate in this Promotion (“Participant(s)”). If their Qualifying Wager is graded as a Loss (defined below) by William Hill, the Participant will earn a one-time Free Bet token equal to the lessor of: 1) The full value of the Qualifying Wager or 2) $2,021 (“Free Bet(s)”). A Qualifying Wager that returns $0.00 is defined as a loss (“Loss”).

    Anotherwords, as it currently stands William Hill won't allow you to bet with the "free credit bet" until you have earned it by losing your initial cash bet. Perhaps they had different promotions and promotion rules when this bet was made. The software may not have reflected the rules allowing the bettor to use the free bet award before placing the qualifying cash bet. So there is something about this story that isn't passing the "smell test" for me.

    I'd be interested in anyone's comments on this.

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Break Even View Post
    I would like to comment on the Colorado sportsbettor story that is on the PFA 4/4/21 podcast at the 2:36:18 mark.

    What is fishy about this story is that at William Hill new user promotion (to earn free bets) have the following stipulations in their terms and conditions:

    5.Risk-Free Wager: Within 7 days of opening a William Hill CO Account, Eligible Patrons must place their first real money sports wager (“Qualifying Wager”) via the William Hill mobile app or desktop site to participate in this Promotion (“Participant(s)”). If their Qualifying Wager is graded as a Loss (defined below) by William Hill, the Participant will earn a one-time Free Bet token equal to the lessor of: 1) The full value of the Qualifying Wager or 2) $2,021 (“Free Bet(s)”). A Qualifying Wager that returns $0.00 is defined as a loss (“Loss”).

    Anotherwords, as it currently stands William Hill won't allow you to bet with the "free credit bet" until you have earned it by losing your initial cash bet. Perhaps they had different promotions and promotion rules when this bet was made. The software may not have reflected the rules allowing the bettor to use the free bet award before placing the qualifying cash bet. So there is something about this story that isn't passing the "smell test" for me.

    I'd be interested in anyone's comments on this.
    Hi. I moved your thread over to this existing discussion topic about the matter. I see this is your first post in your 7 years here! Welcome!

    That is an interesting find on your part, for sure. However, the screen shot seems to show that the guy really placed a $500 free bet which paid $2537. So I'm not sure what happened here.

    As you said, perhaps this was different back in December, and perhaps this change was made exactly because of the issue here! Maybe that was their way of doing away with rollover. Instead of dealing with teaching players about rollover and having controversies like this come up, they simply made the freeplay only trigger when the bettor loses.

    As it stands, I still believe the story.

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    Cubic Zirconia
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    Thank you for moving my post to the appropriate place and thanks for you welcome message. I have enjoyed your podcasts for a long time now. Keep up the great work!

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