PrizePicks DFS site rips people off with misleading promos

[Dan Druff]

PrizePicks is a large Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) site. Its main competition is DraftKings and Underdog.

They run small promos 1-2 times per week in most cases, where you can place up to a $20 ticket and they will give you BACK your losses in freeplay. Obviously not big money, but I do it sometimes for fun.

Anyway, I have uncovered a really nasty way they screw people out of actually having to honor these promos, and they do it in a way where support blames you if you complain.

Here's what happens:

First, you get an email trumpeting the promo for the day. The email has "Opt in required" both in large print and small print. See today's example below (the red arrows were added by me):




You go over to PrizePicks and click on the Promotions tab (or just click the "Your Promos" button above), and you see a page like below. Notice the big OPT IN button!




That should be it, right? You are opted in, right?

Once you click "Opt In", the button turns into a message saying either "PLAY NOW" or "BUILD LINEUP", obviously implying you have the promo.




However, you don't actually have the promo at this point, and if you lose, they will NOT give you the promised promotional freeplay!

This is because you have to engage in a very obscure, counter-intuitive, and HIDDEN SECOND OPT-IN, in order to get the promo activated. Note that the fine print of the e-mail does NOT say anything about this second opt-in, nor do you learn about it if you click the "Learn More" box on the Opt In page! You're just supposed to somehow know it. And if you don't do it, you get stiffed out of the promo money, which you only realize after you lose!

The second opt-in is below. You have to click that small "$25 Protected Play" checkbox, in small print, sandwiched within much bigger print/boxes surrounding it. Shady, huh?





So what if this happens to you, and you message customer support? Surely they will be sympathetic, and apply the promo to you, at least the first time this happens, right?

WRONG!

They blame it on YOU, and absolutely refuse to give you the promo money.

Read on...

[Dan Druff]

No matter what you say to support, they will refuse to credit you.

In my case, they admitted I opted in (just as the e-mail instructed), but refused to honor it because I didn't click on the mostly hidden checkbox, which they purposely don't inform you beforehand that you have to click!





They proceed to blame you, and tell you that you didn't follow terms and conditions. They ignore your statements that nowhere on their site does it tell you that you have to do this during the Opt In process, nor does the e-mail's terms say it. They just keep repeating that you're wrong.

They then send you this obnoxious video to "learn" about it, which of course doesn't help you, because you can't go back in time and fix your mistake. Note that this video is NOT prominently featured anywhere on the site, nor in the promotional emails.

[Dan Druff]

This is all on purpose.

Underdog does not operate this way.

Draft Kings does not operate this way.

Only PrizePicks does this shit, so they can entice you to deposit and take advantage of their "protected bets", and then not end up getting the promised freeplay.

There is absolutely no reason to force this double opt-in.

There's even less of a reason to NOT state it after you press the Opt-In button, or when you click on "Learn More" regarding the promo.

There's even less of a reason for this NOT to be listed in their terms and conditions in the email.



Shaaaaaaaaaaady.

I can only imagine how much money they've stiffed people out of in this fashion. Probably hundreds of thousands, at least.

[desertrunner]

Druff- Hope you can get some traction on this and hurt them.

[go_buccos]

The check box is there because the promo only applies to one entry per promotion. Obviously many people enter more than one pick set so they have to choose the one they want the promo to apply to. The check box does that. It makes sense. How else would prizepicks know which pick set to apply it to?

That said, it should absolutely be disclosed in the promo rules.

[Dan Druff]

The check box is there because the promo only applies to one entry per promotion. Obviously many people enter more than one pick set so they have to choose the one they want the promo to apply to. The check box does that. It makes sense. How else would prizepicks know which pick set to apply it to?

That said, it should absolutely be disclosed in the promo rules.

I've seen this defense on Twitter, but it doesn't really add up.

First off, this doesn't really make sense. If you're getting BACK $20-$25 for losing, who cares which play it's applied to? But if people really want to choose which one, the checkbox should be CLICKED BY DEFAULT, and then the user can unclick it. It shouldn't be a second opt-in.

Second, the checkbox is tiny compared to the rest of the print and display, and that's no accident.

Third, as you pointed out, it's not disclosed in the promo rules, nor is it disclosed when you click "Learn More" or "Opt In" on the promo, which is horrible.

Fourth, it does NOT work this way on DraftKings or Underdog. It is very easy to create a promo to where this doesn't happen.

Finally, support REFUSES to credit the freeplay amount when this occurs, even for new users who are understandably tricked by this. They take a hard line NO approach, which shows that this is intentional.

This is intentionally deceptive, and they're hiding behind the "You gotta apply the promo or we don't know where you want to use it, bro!" excuse.