Casinos licensed in the UK are required to cooperate with one of the Dispute Resolution (ADR) services approved by the UKGC regulator. This is a limited number of selected companies that must follow the rules set by the regulator. In the past, ThePOGG were among the approved services, but on their own initiative they resigned this authority. Why?
Since January 2016, ThePOGG has been working as the official arbitration in the UK. But it ended at the end of June 2017. Moreover, this was not a punishment of the regulator for any violations. ThePOGG themselves decided so.
Despite the fact that ADR services are free for players, the companies do not work for free, they are paid by the casino. So the reason for the refusal of the status of an approved ADR service cannot be a financial component. It turned out that ThePOGG's disagreement with the UKGC policy on some points was to blame.
They were worried about the fact that cheating players needed to be explained how the casino had identified their fraud. And in response to this, scammers will simply improve their ways of staying undetected. ThePOGG said they couldn't work that way to encourage illegal activities. They tried to convince the UKGC that cases of player cheating should be dealt with on a different basis. However, this did not give results. Below is the part of the post in which they announce their decision to step down from the approved ADR:
The decision has been made after many months of discussions with the UKGC regarding how to deal with complaints that are related to fraud and the opening of multiple accounts by the same player under different names. We strongly disagree with the policy that the UKGC applies in such cases and do not believe that we can implement it in good conscience.
We believe that the current ADR expectations will likely result in operators being much less likely to engage in an open dialogue when considering complaints filed by scammers; it will also teach those involved in illegal practices how to cover up cheating in the future, all of which will eventually lead to less attractive bonus conditions for normal players.
UKGC's current position is that in all cases with complaints, ADRs must provide both parties with all the evidence on which the verdict was based to ensure that it is consistent with the key goal of the Gambling Act 2005 “to ensure that gambling is conducted in a fair and open manner”. ThePOGG generally supports and approves of this policy, but when it comes to illegal activities on the part of the referred player, we believe that this policy is detrimental to both normal players and the industry as a whole and is contrary to another fundamental principle of the Gambling Act 2005 "to protect gambling from to become a source of crime or disorder, to be associated with crime or disorder, or to be used to support crime.”
In their explanation, they also cited reasons why this practice is not appropriate:
According to ThePOGG, from October 2016 (probably to May 15, 2017, the date of the article's publication), almost 1 in 5 complaints they have received while operating internationally have involved some form of player cheating. They also said they are aware of at least four online communities, some of which have thousands of members, that target the UK market. These communities are discussing strategies that allow you to create multiple accounts without being discovered. They also teach how to use ADR services to manipulate the system and force payments or at least find out how they were calculated.
