Tex Rees, the fair gaming advocate for player protection and standards body eCOGRA, has released her report for 2007, showing that the majority (68 per cent) of legitimate complaints handled by her office were settled in favour of the player.
eCOGRA oversees the online gambling activities of 120 tier one online casinos and poker rooms owned by some of the biggest and most established operators on the internet, and makes available a dispute resolution service to players at those sites which have been awarded eCOGRA’s Safe and Fair seal.
In 2007, the group received 783 complaints from players. However, 93 of these could not be dealt with by eCOGRA, as the sites involved did not carry their seal. An additional 43 cases did not have enough information to warrant further action.
Settlements in favour of the player were reached in over 68 per cent of the remaining 645 valid and legitimate complaints, with the main causes listed as: payout problems (47 per cent); bonus issues (28 per cent); locked accounts (21 per cent); and miscellaneous (four per cent).
The average dispute per site per month remained at less than one half of one per cent.
