eCOGRA, the eCommerce Online Gaming Regulation and Assurance,
published its half year report and found that there have been fewer complaints
regarding bonus issues overall.
The Fair Gaming Advocate of eCOGRA, Tex Rees, said that the majority of
eCOGRA approved online casinos were starting to realize the importance of
creating bonus promotions that were fair and easy to understand. As such,
improvement can be seen on this front by the drop in complaints about online
casinos to eCOGRA.
"The indications are that the decrease in bonus complaints has been primarily
the result of greater care in the construction of promotional offers by eCOGRA
accredited operators," noted Rees. "This has been an area that eCOGRA review
teams have stressed to operators is of significant importance."
Another area that saw a change in statistics from the last report has been in
the case of locked accounts. Online casinos customers lodged a number of
complaints that sites had blocked access to their sites, and had eCOGRA
investigate the issues.
"The increase in locked accounts can probably be attributed to the
introduction by many eCOGRA operators of more sophisticated anti fraud and anti
collusion measures," said Rees.
All in all, out of the 342 valid complaints investigated by eCOGRA in 2009,
186 were resolved in favour of the online gambling consumer.
"Resolution time per issue averaged 72 hours," said Rees, summarizing the
half yearly report, "and the average number of complaints per month per eCOGRA
accredited venue was a credible 0.41 percent and thus well within the parameters
regarded by eCOGRA as acceptable at operations handling tens of thousands of
transactions per day."
