Path A — Complaints About Our Site
Our complaints procedure covers anything we published or did: a factual error in a figure, a review you consider unfair or biased, a missing affiliate disclosure, a bonus described in a way that understated what it costs, safer-gambling language that fell short of our own standards, or how we handled your personal data.
To complain about a review or anything else here, write to [email protected] or use Contact Us. Send four things: the page URL, what specifically is wrong, any evidence, and the outcome you want. That last one matters, because a correction, a note and a removal are different remedies.
The timings we hold ourselves to:
- Acknowledgement within two working days of receipt;
- A substantive reply within ten working days, saying what we found and what we are doing about it;
- If you are unhappy with that reply, escalation to Emma Wiggs MBE, our responsible editor, who issues a final internal decision within twenty working days.
Where a complaint is upheld we correct the figure and mark the page, add a clarification note, remove the content, or change a process so it does not recur. Every material change is logged rather than quietly edited, under our Corrections & Updates Policy. Where we conclude the page was right, we say so and explain why.
Path B — Disputes With a Bookmaker
If your problem is with an operator rather than with us, the UK escalation ladder is the thing to use, and it works differently depending on who licenses the bookmaker.
Step 1: complain to the bookmaker in writing. Use the complaints procedure published in its terms, say explicitly that you are raising a formal complaint rather than asking a question, and keep the reference number. For a Gambling Commission licensee this starts a clock: the operator has eight weeks from receipt to investigate and give you a result. It can end sooner if the operator resolves the matter or issues a final position, sometimes called a deadlock letter.
Step 2: escalate to the operator’s ADR provider. Once you have a final response you disagree with, or eight weeks have passed without resolution, a UKGC licensee must offer free referral to an approved ADR provider and must name the one relevant to your dispute, so check its terms rather than guessing. IBAS handles the large majority of gambling disputes in Great Britain, and eCOGRA and Pegasus ADR are also approved. ADR gambling referrals cost you nothing, and you cannot use one without completing step 1.
Step 3: report conduct to the regulator. This is where most readers are misled, so it is worth being blunt. The Gambling Commission does not decide individual disputes and will not get your money back. It regulates operators, and it wants to hear about conduct: a licensee ignoring its own complaints procedure, marketing aimed at self-excluded people, or a breach of its licence conditions. That report can lead to enforcement action against the operator, but not to a decision in your case. The consumer guidance is at gamblingcommission.gov.uk. The split is roughly this: an ADR looks at whether your individual bet, bonus or payout was handled correctly, while the Commission looks at whether the company is behaving properly in general.
Offshore operators are a weaker route, and we will not pretend otherwise. The ladder above rests on UK licence conditions, so none of it applies to an operator licensed in Curaçao or Anjouan. There is no free UK ADR referral, no eight-week obligation behind your complaint and no UK adjudicator whose decision binds the operator. What exists is the licensing regulator’s own complaint channel, which varies in responsiveness and offers no guarantee of an outcome or a remedy. This is one of the main reasons our main ranking contains Gambling Commission licensees only, and why offshore operators appear on separate, labelled pages.
| Step | UKGC-licensed bookmaker | Offshore bookmaker | Typical timeframe |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Complain to the operator | Formal written complaint through its published procedure; keep the reference | Same route, but no licence condition sits behind it and procedures are often thinner | Up to 8 weeks, or sooner on a final response |
| 2. Escalate | Free referral to the operator’s named ADR provider, such as IBAS, eCOGRA or Pegasus ADR | No UK ADR route exists; the licensing regulator’s own channel is the only option | Commonly 8 to 12 weeks at ADR |
| 3. Regulator | Report conduct to the Gambling Commission; it acts on the operator, not on your case | Report to the Curaçao or Anjouan authority; no individual remedy and no guaranteed response | No case-specific outcome |
| 4. Tell us | Send the reference and your evidence; we log it and can raise it with a partner operator | Same, though we have no leverage where no relationship exists | Acknowledged within 2 working days |
What we can actually do sits in row four. For an operator we have a commercial relationship with, we can forward your case to our contact and record the outcome, which sometimes moves a stalled case faster than the formal route. For everyone else we log it. A confirmed pattern of non-payment, rather than a single case, triggers a full re-review and can end in delisting.
A few practical things make any bookmaker complaint stronger:
- Screenshot the bet, the balance and the message you received, with the timestamps visible;
- Save a copy of the terms as they appeared when you placed the bet, since operators update them;
- Keep every reply from the operator with its date, and put your complaint in writing even if you also phone;
- Do not close or delete the account while a dispute is open, because it can complicate access to the records;
- Keep the language factual, because an ADR panel will read the whole exchange.
How We Use Complaint Data
Reader complaints do not move a score on their own. One account’s experience is not evidence about an operator, and our Fact-Checking Policy says unverifiable reports never become published facts, which has to apply here too.
What complaints do is tell us where to look. A cluster of reports about the same operator and the same problem triggers a re-test and a fresh read of its terms and licence record, and what then moves the reputation score is what we can verify: a regulatory finding, a term that contradicts the marketing, or a licence change. How that criterion is weighted sits in How We Rate.
Safer-Gambling Concerns
If your complaint is really about harm rather than about money, please treat this section as the important one. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133, free and confidential, and GambleAware offers free advice and support. GamStop lets you self-exclude across every UK-licensed site at once at no cost, and every Gambling Commission licensee must also offer you deposit limits, loss limits, time-outs and self-exclusion without charge.
If you have self-excluded and an operator we list has let you bet anyway, tell us: that is a licence condition breach, it is exactly the kind of conduct the Gambling Commission acts on, and it is a delisting trigger here.