Send us a line

1

What is most useful to send, and how to send it

Four kinds of message are worth more than any other, and all four are about the counting rather than about the writing. A figure that cannot be rebuilt out of the assumptions printed beside it is the first, and the quickest version of such a message names the page, quotes the figure, and says what it should have been. A row counted that nobody actually has to take is the second. A step everybody has to take that no sheet here carries is the third, and it is the most valuable of the four, because a missing row shortens a sequence and shortening a sequence is this publication’s most flattering possible error.

The fourth is a term that has moved. Every guide prints the day its terms were read, and a multiple, a condition or a ceiling can be rewritten the week afterwards without anybody being told. A note saying what a term says today, with the address it says it at, puts a page right faster than anything else that arrives.

What helps in any of those is the page and the figure. What does not help is a screenshot without an address, because a figure with nowhere to check it against cannot be acted on and this publication is not in the business of printing numbers it cannot source.

2

Three things nobody here can do for you

Nobody here can get anybody paid. This domain holds no balance, has no relationship with the counter at the far end of any sequence it counts, and no way of asking one to reconsider. A message about a withheld payment is read with sympathy and is then forwarded nowhere, because there is nowhere for it to go from here.

Nobody here can look into an account. The figures on these pages are arithmetic over published wording, and nothing on this side of a link can see what any particular account did, when, or why something was refused.

And nobody here can take a complaint about an operator on somebody’s behalf. That is not modesty about resources, it is a description of what this publication is: a publication rather than a representative, with no standing anywhere and no process to put a complaint into.

3

Where a complaint against a licensee actually goes

Where a business does hold a British licence, there is a published route and it is worth knowing in outline. The complaint starts with the business itself, which has eight weeks from the day one lands to get through the whole of its process, internal escalation included off the rule sheet, claim 39. Six months after whatever it is about is the very least a complaint may still be brought in, and a term purporting to shut that window earlier does not hold off the rule sheet, claim 40.

When a business closes a complaint, the letter doing so has to give the reasoning, make clear that nothing further will happen there, and say how an independent adjudicator can be reached instead off the rule sheet, claim 42. Those adjudicators are not chosen freely: a licensee may use only a body the regulator has approved, and the approved ones differ from each other in which parts of the trade they cover, so the one named in a letter about an online casino will not be the one named in a letter about a shop off the rule sheet, claim 44. The regulator’s own page states the duty narrowly, which is that an approved entity has to be used rather than any particular one off the rule sheet, claim 45.

None of that route exists at the end of a sequence of the kind counted here, and saying so is the point of including it. An eight-week ceiling, a six-month window and an approved adjudicator are three things a licence buys, and a reader can see what their absence is worth by reading what their presence requires.

4

The limit the regulator puts on itself

It is worth printing the limit the regulator puts on itself, because a reader turned away by a business and then by this publication will often try there next and be disappointed for a third time. The regulator rules itself out in a single phrase, saying that it is not an ombudsman, and then spells out the consequence: resolving a complaint, recovering anybody’s money and seeing inside an account are three things it declines on the ground that it cannot off the rule sheet, claim 46. Where it sends a player instead is back to the gambling business, as the first move rather than the last off the rule sheet, claim 47.

Read together with the part above, that leaves the honest answer. On the licensed side of the line a complaint runs through the business and then to an approved adjudicator, with the regulator standing outside the dispute throughout. On the far side of that line there is no process to describe and this publication will not invent one.

5

Replies, and what gets kept afterwards

Messages are read by a person and not by a filter. A correction that turns out to be right is acted on, and the page it concerns changes with its reading date; a correction that turns out to be wrong gets an answer saying why, because a reader who took the trouble is owed the working. Anything commercial gets a shorter reply.

What becomes of the correspondence is on What we keep about you, and the short version is that a message is kept because a reply cannot be written without it, is used for nothing except answering, and is deleted on request from whoever sent it.