is a casino responsible for technical issues affecting communication?

i’m sharing my experience with an online casino to seek advice or hear from others who may have faced something similar.

i deposited €300 and played, eventually increasing my balance significantly. at this point, my balance exceeded the daily withdrawal limit, so i attempted to contact support to ask for guidance on how to proceed with a withdrawal. 

suspicously, every attempt to contact support via email failed, as my emails continually bounced back. after numerous failed attempts, one email finally went through, but i never received a response to it. 

i later investigated the issue with my email provider and discovered the problem was due to the casino’s email server configuration (issues with dns and mx records). these issues were only resolved after i reported them by contacting through another email. despite this, the casino refuses to acknowledge the problem or take responsibility, resulting in unfortunately losing the winnings in a matter of a few minutes.

their terms include a clause about not being responsible for communication failures outside their control, but in this case, the issue was entirely within their systems. i have documentation proving this. is it the casino’s responsibility to maintain reliable communication channels? would this situation be considered a breach of contract? what would you have done?

thanks

Any failure in communication, especially when the technical problem was on the casino's side, should be a problem of the casino not the player.

Let's be frank, it seems that the casino tries to find a loophole to avoid any communication with the players, especially when they will come knocking on the door for issues with winnings/withdrawals. I'd suggest you file a complaint here, and contact the license authorities if the casino has a license.

Hi, my first question would be you said you sent them emails, is live chat not available in the casino? The second is, what casino are you referring to? 

As for you losing money, if that's the case, even though the casino didn't communicate with you, I wouldn't say that's exactly their fault. I know you wanted to inquire and if the casino doesn't say anything it's sad, but the fact that a player loses his money probably doesn't go to them and I don't think complaint or the authorities would help you.

If they have a withdrawal limit and you see in the Terms what it is, I would start by asking for the amount you see there, so if they have a daily of say 500, I would ask for a withdrawal of 500. No more than that because you probably wouldn't be able to get it there. And then I would wait and see what happens. If you wanted to enquire, that's fine, but losing money on that is probably not really what would be relevant in this case, because I guess even the licence would tell you that it's basically your decision. 

If, on the other hand, you waited an extremely long time for a reply, I don't know, maybe two weeks, and nothing happened, the situation might be a little different, but still, if you didn't submit a withdrawal, then there probably wouldn't be a problem again.

That's how I see it. 

hi all,

thank you all for your inputs. i agree with the points made by both of you.

to respond to you jaro, live chat is sadly not available on this casino – due to privacy concerns, i'm currently unwilling to disclose the exact casino at this time, though it is legal and licensed in my location. i was merely just curious if this situation has ever happened to anyone, as it seems very unlucky.

in regards to requesting withdrawal, my problem the whole time was that even on the withdrawal limit (let's say 500 euro per 24 hours), i was still instructed to contact their customer support – customer support which was not reachable due to the errors. i will mention that in the terms, it mentioned that they (the casino) can "at its own discretion choose to pay out larger amounts and winnings to the player per day." which made contacting them a necessary step to hear more about this option anyway. you are correct that losing money in connection with my inquiry is not relevant – the terms do indeed state that playing is my own responsibility.

response time with this casino usually has not been an issue though – 10 minutes in some cases. it just seemed suspicious that with a big withdrawal, they would seemingly blacklist me from contacting them, presumably while hoping that they could avoid paying me out. at the time of my formal withdrawal request, it had been more than 3 days before i became suspicious, which led me to contact them by other means.

i'm still trying to at least get an acknowledgment from the casino that the error occurred on their side, instead of being manipulatively blamed that i didn't empty all my options (which was the reason i had been trying to reach out the whole time) 🙂

I clearly understand and thank you for your reply. So when something changes, could you let me know please? I'm quite interested and when you're ready and able, let me know what casino it was. 

I'll be waiting impatiently. 🙂