Majority of complaints resolved within 72 hours!

The 2011 half-year dispute statistics released by eCOGRA Fair Gaming Advocate Tex Rees this week show once again that eCOGRA-accredited operators maintained a remarkably low complaint ratio under 0.5 percent per site on average each month over the first six months of 2011.

The majority of valid complaints received by the independent player protection and standards body were resolved within 72 hours.

"e;Operators have responded in a fast and cooperative manner to those cases where I have requested information and explanations, and have been quick to respect my findings in each case,"e; Rees reported, adding that it had been noted that a small percentage of players still tried to circumvent terms and conditions governing play and payouts.

"e;This small category of players has become more creative in their tactics, but the operators have developed correspondingly improved methods to identify and then lock them out,"e; she said.

eCOGRA oversees the online gambling activities of some 145 tier one online gambling sites owned by some of the biggest and most established operators on the Internet, and makes available a free dispute resolution service to players using those sites which have been awarded eCOGRA’s "e;Safe and Fair"e; seal.

During the first 6 months of 2011 a total of 475 complaints were received, 57 of these being in respect of sites outside the eCOGRA sphere of influence and therefore not accepted. A further 60 were invalid due to insufficient information or irrelevant enquiry.

The 358 valid and legitimate complaints accepted by the FGA featured cash-in problems (41 percent), bonus issues (23 percent) and locked accounts (21 percent) as the main disputes, with an average complaint rate of 13 per week across all 145 accredited operations.

The number of valid disputes resolved in favour of the player dropped to 40 percent, a decrease of 3 percent on the 2010 figures, Rees reported.

"e;This decrease is attributed to a number of gambling syndicates breaking the terms and conditions that were uncovered by operators through the application of increasingly sophisticated tracking techniques"e; says Rees. "e;The use of multiple account and fraudulent documents are being picked up on a much more regular basis"e;.

Tex Rees, the Fair Gaming Advocate at the independent player protection and standards body eCOGRA, has released statistics for the year 2010 on disputes involving online gambling sites accredited by the London-based company.

The report reveals that certain complaints submitted to the FGA came from a player syndicate fraudulently manipulating bonuses, which an in-depth investigation uncovered.

"Security considerations prevent the disclosure of the location and modus operandi adopted by the swindlers, who were all subsequently discovered and blocked," Rees recounts.

A total of 846 disputes (2009: 826 complaints) were submitted online to eCOGRA throughout 2010, an increase of 10 percent over 2009. 67 of these concerned companies not accredited through eCOGRA and therefore outside the ambit of the FGA’s authority.

A further 125 were found to be invalid, being fraudulent, non-specific or abusive and anonymous in nature.

The remaining, or valid, 654 disputes (2009: 628 complaints) concerned cash-in problems (44 percent); Bonus issues (25 percent); and Locked accounts (19 percent).

12 percent were categorised as ‘other’ and involved software fairness, responsible gambling and spamming allegations.

Over the 12 months, an average of 43 percent of disputes was resolved in favour of the player.

"The small decrease in the percentage of disputes resolved in favour of the player, and a corresponding increase in allegations of unjust bonus disqualification have been proved through detailed investigation to be connected," Rees reports.

"A fraudulent player syndicate was caught out by sophisticated security systems, resulting in its members submitting allegations which subsequently proved to be false, but had to be painstakingly followed up."

The free eCOGRA disputes resolution service has been in operation since 2004, and has handled a total of almost 4 500 disputes over that period. Almost 49 percent of these were resolved in favour of the player.

The level of disputes per accredited eCOGRA site was again remarkably low for the volumes of business transacted, with a typical accredited site delivering only 0.38 disputes on average per month throughout the year (2009: 0.37).

Fair Gaming Advocate’s latest report shows that disputes per accredited operator remain impressively low.

The independent player protection and standards body eCOGRA has released its latest report on remote gambling disputes handled by the organisation’s Fair Gaming Advocate, showing remarkably low levels of player disputes at online gambling sites (Dispute Statistics) bearing the eCOGRA Safe and Fair seal of accreditation.

Online gambling sites bearing the seal are the subject to constant monitoring and annual inspections and reviews by the London-based non-profit organisation, now in its seventh year of operations. One of the requirements for accreditation is an operator’s commitment to work with eCOGRA in the event of player disputes.

Fair Gaming Advocate Tex Rees reports that over the first half of 2010 there were a total of 376 complaints submitted to eCOGRA, 33 of which were at non-accredited operations over which eCOGRA has no influence, and therefore cannot mediate. A further 56 of the complaints were declared invalid due to insufficient detail, irrelevance, abuse or anonymous origin.

The remaining 287 disputes – 76 percent of the total received – were resolved by the Fair Gaming Advocate normally within 48 hours, with 47 percent settled in favour of the player.

“These numbers are similar, and in fact compare favourably with last year’s numbers, despite the fact that eCOGRA now has 11 more accredited venues than last year,” Rees reports. “We have actually seen a decrease in dispute mediation requests.

“We can attribute a portion of this drop in disputes to the fact that we have now been working with many of the Seal operations for several years and as a consequence a number of policies and procedures have been developed that translate to less cause for disputes. Our operators are also better equipped and motivated to deal with disputes at the operator level, which results in eCOGRA receiving fewer complaints.”

Rees detailed Cash-in (43 percent), Bonus issues (21 percent) and Locked Accounts (21 percent) as the principal causes for dispute, with the number of cash-in complaints easing from last year’s 51 percent.

“We dealt with an average of 11.03 disputes a week in the first half of 2010,” Rees revealed, adding that this represented an average dispute rate per Seal operation per month of 0.34 disputes – slightly lower than last year’s 0.37 disputes.

“This level of performance is satisfactory and well within the standards we have set for our operators,” she commented. “Viewed against the very high number of transactions these well established, tier one online gambling venues experience on a daily basis, the number of disputes continues to be remarkably low.”