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BetOnline / SportsBetting.ag - Should You Worry About The Stiffing of Tourney Prizes?
I have had an account at BetOnline for more than 15 years and have been extremely disappointed in how they have handled things in the past year. I had previously made a posting called "BetOnline / Sportsbetting.ag Refusing to Pay Me $44,400+ in Casino Tournament Wins". Unfortunately SBR had decided to reclassify that to the casino forum where it has remained in relative obscurity. Hopefully SBR will not reclassify this posting as the behavior I describe is an indicator as to how BetOnline operates as a whole and BetOnline intersects sports, poker, casino and racing.
I regularly play in the cash buy-in blackjack and slots tournaments at both BetOnline (BO) and SportsBetting.ag (SB). The tournaments are shared between the two sites and I routinely place in the money. The tournaments pay casino bonuses as prizes. The process by which those bonuses are paid is not done automatically by the computer system. Instead it appears to be done manually by support within 48 hours of a tournament's finish. This process is prone to errors. Most people would probably be fine. However if you finish in lots of tournaments or have finished in the same tournament on both a BO and SB account (when it was legal to do so) or win multiple bonuses of the exact same amount in a short time frame you start seeing problems. On a number of occasions I have been forced to contact support, which is shared between BO and SB, to get tournament wins credited and the support I have gotten has definitely been lacking.
This paragraph might sound like a rant but I want to emphasize that it is not hyperbole. I've been forced to spend quite literally dozens of hour dealing with customer service. To cut costs, BO/SB hire reps from Panama where English is not the natural language. As a result it is not uncommon to get responses which make it clear the reps struggle parsing through the finer parts of the language. They latch onto keywords but can get confused with what you are saying. This is compounded by the fact they are forced to deal with multiple customers simultaneously. The result is that I have seen way too many confused responses. Reps will look up the wrong tournament, give errant or irrelevant answers, escalate vague or inadequate tickets, punt you around endlessly to other operators who are no more qualified and keep you waiting forever. They will claim you've been credited bonuses you haven't and respond poorly to screenshots proving them wrong. I will show screenshots of bugs in the tournament software and get ignored. I will get told a ticket's been escalated only to follow up days later to learn that a ticket was not escalated and that a ticket will definitely be escalated this time only to follow up again to be told a ticket was not escalated that time either. My emails/tickets are frequently not responded to. It seems to me reps are trained to handle common problems but do not work well outside a limited box. Even when I get a response from a "specialist" the responses are liable to be outright wrong or don't really address the issue. The technical people administering the bonuses will insist a bonus has been credited, get baffled when you show a screenshot proving otherwise, and then perhaps weeks later finally contact you with a fix to whatever glitch was responsible only to have the same process start again weeks later. Long story short, there are still a number of tournament finishes which BO and SB have not and refuse to credit. I have pasted a list below. Ironically the real list is slightly longer but BO/SB are both sloppy enough that I have actually been credited with prizes I have never even earned and took some entries off to compensate.
Uncredited Tournaments (SportsBetting.ag):
"2 Hour Daily Freeroll BJ Tournament" 7/18/20 14th place 3124 chips $200 bonus
"2 Hour Daily Freeroll BJ Tournament" 7/20/20 1st place 5275 chips $750 bonus*
"4 Hour Daily Freeroll BJ Tournament" 7/22/20 12th place 3625 chips $200 bonus
"$25,000 Wednesday 24hr Blackjack Tournament" 7/22/20 2nd place 8998 chips $3000 bonus"
2 Hour Daily Freeroll BJ Tournament" 7/24/20 9th place 1502 chips $100 bonus*
"$12,500 Winners Tournament" 7/21-7/22/20 2nd place 9050 chips $2000 bonus"
2 Hour Daily Freeroll BJ Tournament" 7/25/20 8th place 1060 chips $100 bonus*
"3 Hour Daily Freeroll BJ Tournament" 7/25/20 4th place 5850 chips $750 bonus*
"2 Hour Daily Freeroll BJ Tournament" 7/27/20 4th place 1600 chips $200 bonus*
"$10,000 Blackjack Tournament" 7/24-7/27/20 2nd place 10500 chips $2000 bonus
"12.5K Free ENTRY Tournament" 7/27-7/28/20 9th place 4275 chips $300 bonus*
"$25,000 Wednesday 24hr Blackjack Tournament" 7/29/20 2nd place 10200 chips $3000 bonus
"$12,500 Winners Tournament" 7/28-7/29/20 3rd place 6150 chips $1500 bonus
"$12,500 Winners Tournament" 8/04-8/05/20 3rd place 1525 chips $1500 bonus
"$25,000 Wednesday 24hr Blackjack Tournament" 8/5/20 5th place 2300 chips $1000 bonus
"2 Hour Daily Freeroll BJ Tournament" 8/7/20 10th place 642 chips $100 bonus
"$12,500 Free ENTRY Tournament" 8/11/20 12th place 1424 chips $200 bonus
"$50,000 Slots Freeroll" (ending 10/27/20 12:00 am) 17th place 1868 chips $500 bonus
"$10,000 Blackjack Tournament" 11/20-11/23/20 2nd place 6069 chips $2000 bonus
"$12.5k Free ENTRY Tournament" 11/23-11/24/20 1st place 5952 chips $3000 bonus
"$12,500 Winners Tournament" 11/24-11/25/20 1st place 10750 chips $4000 bonus
"$25,000 Wednesday 24hr Blackjack Tournament" 11/25/20 6th place 950 chips $1000 bonus
"$50,000 Black Friday Slots Tournament" 11/27/20 10th place 2973 chips $1000 bonus
"$25,000 Wednesday 24hr Blackjack Tournament" 3/3/21 2nd place 13900 chips $3000 bonus
"$12,500 Winners Tournament" 3/2-3/3/21 1st place 15000 chips $4000 bonus
*Also should have paid $11 in poker tournament chips.
Uncredited Finishes (BetOnline):
"$12,500 Winners Tournament" 11/24-11/25/20 2nd place 9278 chips $2000 bonus
"$25,000 Wednesday 24hr Tournament" 3/3/21 1st place 23550 chips $5000 bonus
"$12,500 Winners Tournament" 3/2-3/3/21 2nd place 12575 chips $2000 bonus
If you are wondering why I continued playing in these tournaments when not all of them had been credited just bear in mind that I had a history of eventually getting wins credited, sometimes weeks after the fact, after long fights with support. Also there would be streaks where bonuses would again be credited correctly automatically (sometimes for months straight) even when they weren't being credited at all the week before. Add in the fact I was doing quite well playing these tournaments and that I might eventually get some traction from the complaints I escalated to SBR, OSGA, and Casinomeister and it simply made more sense to periodically invest a few dollars more to grab some of the low hanging fruit in these tournaments to get a litmus test if I would get paid. I got empty responses from SBR, OSGA, and Casinomeister but I did find that, minus a few lapses, BO and SB would resume paying the most recent wins.
As for all the uncredited bonuses prior to 8/12/2020, BO/SB sent me an email openly admitting I should have received those bonuses. However they refused to do anything more than credit my account with a $500 consolation prize. They claimed all those bonuses would have expired by now and pretended that there was nothing they could do and that this was somehow my fault. I told them I refused to accept the $500 as adequate compensation but they refused to remove it from my account.
The reason why I was not credited the final $14,000 in bonuses is a situation by itself. A few hours after the release of $17086 won from a casino bonus prize on 3/3/21, I get an email from BO/SB announcing what they explicitly called a "revision" of their tournament rules. They were now claiming that a player could not play any of their tournaments on both a BO and SB account. This would fall under the clause of utilizing "multiple accounts". They clarified this in the email by saying that BO and SB were the exact same company. Unfortunately I was unaware of this revision until I had checked my email about 20 hours later. After all I do not check my email every 2 seconds and was not expecting anything important. By then I had already completed the "$25,000 Wednesday 24hr Tournament" and the "$12,500 Winners Tournament" both of which ending on 3/3/21. In the case of the "$12,500 Winners Tournament" I had already completed my final scores before the email had even been sent. On 3/6/20, after having observed the new rule change on both 3/4 and 3/5, I learn that BO/SB would be nullifying the $5000 + $4000 + $3000 + $2000 in casino bonus wins I was expecting to receive for the tournament wins on 3/3. The rule they were citing was mentioned nowhere in the tournament rules in real time. This was also a subject on which I sought complete clarification with support on 8/8/20. At the time I was trying to figure out then why I was being shorted multiple tournament wins from back then. Here I was told the exact opposite. Excerpts from that chat:
Max at 18:57, Aug 8:HI. I was told BetOnline and Sportsbetting.ag are two distinct companies right?
Jasper Sullivan at 18:58, Aug 8:Max, yes, they are two distinct companies.
Max at 19:30, Aug 8:My understanding is that you could not play in the same tournament at the same time on both a betonline and sportsbetting.g poker account because of collusion concerns. However are there any restrictions playing on both accounts on the casino tournaments? There are no conflicts of interest as far as I can see.
Jasper Sullivan at 19:46, Aug 8:Max, on regular casino tournaments outside poker, there are no restrictions within the brands.
I had also been told SB was a different company when opening an SB account to begin with. The fact that I was eligible for different promotions at SB reinforced this view. I also want to pointed out that this new rule was being implemented to prevent "abuse". This might make sense on freeroll tournaments where a player could get an additional free entry. However in cash buy-in tournaments I do not see any inherent advantages that you would get on a second entry that you wouldn't get on the first. Actually, unless I am mistaken, it is the opposite. A higher finish on a second entry would just move down your payout on your first entry. You can't collude with yourself and given that the tournament payouts are of fixed size it really just changes who gets the payouts as opposed to how much is paid out. Banning play on both accounts might reduce scores and motivate slightly more players to buy a first entry but it will definitely reduce buy-in revenues from 2nd entries. At any rate buying a 2nd entry certainly shouldn't invalidate both entries and certainly not retroactively before the rule existed.
Incidentally BO/SB is still intentionally avoiding clarification on their new rule. They still only mention "multiple accounts" and do not nothing to clarify that BO and SB are the same company. Most people would think of multiple accounts as multiple accounts at the same site under different names. Otherwise multiple accounts would be known to the parent company and could be corrected. I have exactly one account at each SB and BO under the same name. They have known about this for 10 years and it has not affected any other component of my accounts. There are plenty of sites which pool together casino tournaments and/or progressive jackpots and/or use similar software yet remain distinct companies. That is why such a clarification should be made. From my perspective this all looks like a contrivance to steal back some of the money I have won. This affects all players in both tournaments. If I am being disqualified then every other player in both tournaments should be moved up 2 ranks and receive higher payouts. I really doubt that happened. The same argument should be made for every other tournament I was shorted. If I was disqualified, for whatever reason, in all those other tournaments than every other player below me should complain for the difference in payout.
Finally SB is shorting me another way. I was playing a casino bonus that I won from a casino tournament. I was literally minutes away from completing it for a $2000 max cash out when the bonus unexpectedly expired. The bonus expiration date had been mislabeled. The bonus was clearly stated to expire 11/20/20 yet it expired on the 19th. Rollover was more than 98% complete. SB refuses to do anything despite the fact that I showed them a clear screenshot of the bonus expiring at a balance of $3500.50 with another screenshot showing how little playthrough remained and the expiration date. This issue was escalated as a complaint to SBR who escalated it to SB. SB never assigned any blame to me but refused to do more than issue a "replacement" $1000 casino bonus with $50000 in playthrough remaining. Since only slots really contributes to playthrough, I am not sure that is even 1/6th fair compensation. I told them it was an unacceptable response and let the replacement bonus expire without play. SB refuses to do anything more.
I want to make one point clear. I am not seeking revenge and I am not seeking compensation for all the hassle. In the interests of being fair and balanced, I have gotten the majority of the prizes owed me. Both BO and SB will pay out the cash portion of your balance quickly and easily and both companies do offer some generous promotions. I am not here to demonize either. I just want to be credited what I am owed and feel I have no other option than to take my complaint public to leverage against them the potential loss of reputation. I have screenshots and chat transcripts to back up my claims. If BO/SB make right I will retract this posting. However if they don't I think players need to understand that, even though both are "A" rated books on SBR, this could be a good benchmark of how they treat the handful of players who actually win a lot of money off of them. It may also be a symptom that they are starting to fish for ways to short players in general. What I fear is that since I have continued playing their tournaments anyhow and that since SBR, OSGA, and Casinomeister have all shown an unwillingness to do anything, BO/SB will just be emboldened to try this sort of behavior in the future.
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Originally Posted by KVB
