Schuetz: One Customer’s Maddening Story, Several Lessons For Gaming Regulators

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Let’s call him Adam. That keeps it simple for the purpose of this story.

Adam contacted me back in late September. He was confused because he was denied a betting account. He knew of me through X (formerly Twitter) and BetBash. What puzzled him was that he had numerous other betting accounts within his state, and he had never had an issue with anything involving those accounts.

He used the same information on this account as his others and funded it from the same bank account. 

What was particularly curious was the reason given to him for the denial. He was told, “Due to the nature of your business, the decision has been made to close your account with immediate effect.”

Adam is a data engineer for a large technology company.

When Adam established his account, he was sent a welcome letter and several bonus offers. When he tried to log in and use one of the bonuses, he was denied access because of a “password error.” He tried several additional times with the same response. He then reset his password with the same password and was able to log on. He then began building a bet using one of the bonuses and was told that he may not be within the state’s boundaries. He was.

He then refreshed the page and tried to log in again. This failed three times. He then reset the password (again to the same as before) and engaged a chat line to ask what the problem was. He was told that his account was “under review.” He mentioned that he wanted to bet NFL the following day and asked how long the review would take. He was told he would have a response in 24 hours.

The following day, Adam woke up to a message that his account was closed due to the nature of his business, as quoted above. It instructed him on how to withdraw his funds. He contacted customer support and was told there was nothing they could do. They did refer him to a section of their terms and conditions, which are many, many pages of fine print. He mentioned to the support person that he had never had a problem with any other books in the state, and they indicated they would escalate his review to a higher level. 

The days and weeks tick by …

After several days, Adam had heard nothing and contacted me. I recommended that he contact the regulator and provided him with a link he could use for that purpose. The link offered an email contact, and he wrote out his issues and forwarded them to the regulator. After four weeks, he had heard nothing back.

During a Zoom call in late October, I suggested that he call the regulator. He did this and was instructed on how to forward his written complaint. On Nov. 1, he received a note from the regulator that his complaint had been sent to the operator.

On Nov. 4, he received a note from the operator suggesting that he could have an account and even utilize the bonuses he was offered back in September. 

This is a very strange way to run a business. None of these activities served the state well nor spoke well of the competence of many of the betting ecosystem participants. It basically was a waste of time and seemingly unnecessary.

During his last lecture, cancer victim Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, made the statement: “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted.” In that spirit, I thought I would outline what we can all learn from Adam’s experience.

1. The regulatory agencies need to do a better job of letting betting consumers know how to utilize the agencies to resolve complaints. In the same way that the operators are required to post problem gambling messages and contact points, they also need to inform their customers that the state regulators can help with complaints that cannot be resolved through the operator. The regulatory helpline should not be a mystery or something that has to be hunted down.
2. As an aside, if the regulators are to offer a feature on their websites, like a helpline, they should monitor it to ensure that it is working. I sent two questions to the Nevada Gaming Control Board last summer and never heard a peep in response. All of you heads of regulatory agencies should test this today. Get a friend to send in a question and find out how long it takes to get a response. You may not know what bad service you offer if you do not test your systems.
3. The regulator must cause the operator to log all calls to the operator’s helpline, define the issue, and detail the time it took to resolve the complaint. (The operator should be doing this anyway.) These reports should then be provided to the regulatory agency in a timely manner. The regulators could then see where bottlenecks are developing and monitor the different operator’s ability to resolve issues quickly. 
4. Operator terms and conditions are vague, excessive, and often far beyond the legal comprehension of the typical betting consumer. One can walk into a casino and bet thousands of dollars on a table game without being confronted with a document that may exceed 100 pages of small print. Yet, one cannot make a 50-cent wager on a sports betting platform until one has signed off on these often massive documents. This process is nonsensical and appears designed to intimidate the bettor from complaining. Terms and conditions are something of a joke, and create a very un-level playing field.
5. When an operator takes action against a bettor, the reasons for the action must be clearly explained.

The delivery of sports betting through internet applications is still a relatively new thing in the United States. It has spread like wildfire, and it is being regulated by people who are still struggling to understand both betting and the many nuances of internet gaming applications. 

Moreover, the regulatory attention in the state needs to be better focused on the experience of the consumers of the product, and the regulatory entities should be aggressively working to understand the reality of the consumer’s experience.

The operators and their many co-dependent shills in the industry cannot be trusted to always do right, and the regulators need to aggressively work to understand what is happening with the betting consumer.

After all, the consumers are the regulator’s real constituency.

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Richard Schuetz entered the gaming industry working nights as a blackjack and dice dealer while attending college and has since served in many capacities within the industry, including operations, finance, and marketing. He has held senior executive positions up to and including CEO in jurisdictions across the United States, including the gaming markets of Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno/Tahoe, Laughlin, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Louisiana. In addition, he has consulted and taught around the globe and served as a member of the California Gambling Control Commission and executive director of the Bermuda Casino Gaming Commission. He also publishes extensively on gaming, gaming regulation, diversity, and gaming history. Schuetz is the CEO American Bettors’ Voice, a non-profit organization dedicated to giving sports bettors a seat at the table.