Gambling company withholding free bets

TN50

Not sure if this is the right place for this but couldn’t really find anywhere better. 

I signed up to a new betting company that is offering a “refer a friend, you both get £10 in free bets’ promotion.

The promotion only requires them to sign up via the link and to place the bet for you to get the £10 free bet for the referral.

I have had 3 friends sign up on the same day via my referral link. These 3 x £10 free bets were awarded to me, but then I received an email saying I’ve been banned from the companies promotions. I presume this is because I’ve referred a lot of people. 

They won’t let me use these free bets I’ve earned now, despite the fact they’ve been applied to my account.

im pretty certain the gambling commission have covered this when they say:

“An operator must not enforce an account restriction if a player has qualified for a free bet promotion, before being notified of the restriction”

As I’ve completely satisfied the terms of their promotion (I sent a referral link, my friends signed up, placed a bet and I was awarded my free bet)

Surely they cannot take these away as I satisfied the terms of their promotion before they informed me that I was now banned from promotions?

Thanks for any assistance!

Keep_pedalling

Which company is this? What do the terms and conditions say?

TN50

A company called Dabble.

The terms say:

4.1 Referral must place at least 1 bet to activate the £10 referral bonus.

4.2 This will be credited as Free Bets, and show within the Free Bet Balance within 2 hours.

4.3 Free Bet funds must be played through (1x) at minimum odds of 1/2 (1.5) before they can be withdrawn, stake not returned.

4.4 Free Bets will expire 7 days after being credited to your account.

No mention of a limit to how many people you can refer 

powerful_Rogue

Full T&C's

https://helpdesk.dabble.co.uk/en/articles/11430072-dabble-promotional-terms-and-conditions

Alderbank

TN50 said:

I signed up to a new betting company that is offering a “refer a friend, you both get £10 in free bets’ promotion.

I’ve completely satisfied the terms of their promotion...

My reading of their terms is that you can refer one friend and you both (ie, each of the two of you) get £10 free.

If it had said, 'refer lots of friends and you all get £10 free' that might have been different.

TN50

Alderbank said:

TN50 said:

I signed up to a new betting company that is offering a “refer a friend, you both get £10 in free bets’ promotion.

I’ve completely satisfied the terms of their promotion...

My reading of their terms is that you can refer one friend and you both (ie, each of the two of you) get £10 free.

If it had said, 'refer lots of friends and you all get £10 free' that might have been different.

I had already referred 3 other friends before this and received my free bets with no problems a couple of days before.

no mention of there being a limit 

TN50

In addition to this, under the part where you can copy your code to send to people it says:

”get your friends to paste the code above into the code field when creating their account”

the use of ‘friends’ implies you can do it more than once 

Aylesbury_Duck

On the face of it, you appear to have met the terms, and the three 'prizes' earned before the ban are rightfully yours.

Is there anything in 7.4 that covers your situation? Anything that might be "contrary to the spirit of the agreement"?

Ultimately, assuming everything is above board and you're not running some sort of organised recruitment scheme that might fall foul of 7.4, I guess you could sue them.  How that works I don't know, because your loss isn't £30, it's basically a load of raffle tickets that might be worthless or of significant value.

TN50

Aylesbury_Duck said:

On the face of it, you appear to have met the terms, and the three 'prizes' earned before the ban are rightfully yours.

Is there anything in 7.4 that covers your situation? Anything that might be "contrary to the spirit of the agreement"?

Ultimately, assuming everything is above board and you're not running some sort of organised recruitment scheme that might fall foul of 7.4, I guess you could sue them.  How that works I don't know, because your loss isn't £30, it's basically a load of raffle tickets that might be worthless or of significant value.

I can’t see how anything I’ve done could be against the spirit of the agreement. 

I’ve basically signed up 10 or some of my friends - Im not using the free bets for any kind of ‘low risk’ strategy (aka matched betting) so I can’t see this being an issue.

I’ve submitted a proper complaint to their email, I believe the next steps are to take it to a dispute resolver once they’ve said their decision is final  

TN50

They’ve denied my complaint and given me some dribble about ‘eligibility criteria’ and ‘intended use of promotions’.

I’ve asked for them to provide me with a deadlock letter and the contact information of the Alternative Dispute Resolution provider that they use. 

sheramber

From Promotional Terms and Conditions link above

4. Promotion Communications

4.1 Unless otherwise indicated in the Promotion Communication, participation in each Promotion is open to all Dabble account holders but is limited to one entry per person, family, household, address or organisation. We may restrict participation in certain Promotions to players who fulfil specific selection criteria. Where a Promotion Communication permits multiple participants, we may limit the number of participants or entries per participant or both – and will make this information clearly available in the Specific Promotional Terms.