Europa Casino Misleading Marketing

[Madnesz]

Take a look at this for yourself and tell me if you think this is not misleading:

- First take a look at this promotional banner: http://online.europacasino.com/promo...ZUlkPTM4MDgx==

- Then take a look at the bonus terms at http://www.europacasino.com/bonus.html#generalterms

Pay special attention to the following sentence: Bets placed on all versions of Baccarat, all versions of Roulette, all versions of Sic Bo, all versions of Darts, Heads or Tails, all Video Poker games, Blackjack Switch, Blackjack Surrender, Pontoon, and Craps will not be counted toward wagering requirements.

Now I believe that the banner implies that the $2400 bonus offer can be used to play roulette, but this is not true according to the bonus terms. I believe this to be misleading, and don't want to refer my visitors to some fake bonus offer. I believe in ethical behaviour, even in the casino industry, and therefore do not understand why Europa Casino would want to use such misleading marketing materials.

[thepokerkeep]

It looks like the folks in the design/art department didn't read the bonus terms.
It certainly is misleading and needs to be rectified.

[joeyl]

It looks like that needs changing yesterday

They already get to advertise it's "free" when it's not free atall.

They don't get to take the michael on top of the accepted industry standard mickey take..

[casino2k.com]

Thank you Madnesz for pointing this out, I have some roulette and craps banners with the bonus in them, I'll change immediatly!

[EP Relations]

Hey All,

Sorry for the delayed response. We wanted to check this issue thoroughly before responding. After looking into it, you guys are right and we will work on deleting the existing banners and ordering new ones that do not promote the welcome bonus together with the mentioned games.

Thanks again for pointing this out.

Regards,
Robin

[Madnesz]

Good to see EuroPartners is working on this.

Another thing: Bonus terms say that a player must wager at least 20 times the deposit plus bonus amount in the casino, before being able to withdraw it. This is common rule in the casino industry, in order to avoid fraud. But the following term at Europa Casino puzzles me:

"We reserve the right to enforce players using the English or Dutch Language to wager their deposit and play bonus forty (40) times and players from Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Romania, Hungary, Thailand, Malaysia, Latvia, Slovak Republic, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Costa Rica to wager their deposit and play bonus thirty (30) times, or twenty (20) times for the High Roller Bonus before reaching the minimum wagering requirements for withdrawal. Players from Brazil are not eligible to receive any bonuses."

What does the players language have to do with the wagering requirements? I mean, I can think of some arguments for different rules based on nationality (extra costs in customer support, foreign exchange costs), but for the English language? Could you explain me the purpose of this footnote?

[EP Relations]

I will look into this as well.
Hope to have an answer for you by Monday.

Regards,
Robin

[universal4]

I caution you to rethink the idea that you can just delete the banners.

Does your code not allow affiliates to let you host the banners?

If so, then deleting the banners without replacing them with suitable banners (BY THE SAME NAME) is a dis-service to affiliates.

By deleting the banners, you will be causing websites accross the globe to not show artwork where there should be a creative hosted by you.

I personally always server my own creatives to always avoid this situation, but there are plenty of affiliates that use your coide as-is and that means they are under the impression that those banners will ALWAYS be available from your banner servers.

Rick
Universal4

[LiveCasinoPartners]

I agree. It does sound like there's some confusion there.

Here's my opinion on the "state of bonuses" with wagering requirements.

I see a lot of emails coming in from players at LuckyLiveCasino.com. I see that the majority of the issues are players that accepted the bonus and can not cash out due to pending wagering requirements. Sometimes, the players did not understand the terms when accepting the bonus even though they are clearly stated. For example Baccarat, video poker, and Early Payout blackjack are excluded from the bonus wagering requirements due to the high payout ratios ( > = 99.4%).

Why focus on these bonuses? It's the industry standard to offer high percentage bonus where the player has to meet a moderate to high wagering requirements in order for the player to theoretically not "cost" the casino or the affiliate revenue. The general idea of the bonuses is that the player can try out the casino games while mitigating the risk of losing. I get it. I truly do.

The industry as a whole made migrated towards these promotions where the majority of the players who take them really don't understand the game exclusions. It sometimes generates unsatisfied expectations and ultimately a higher risk of the player not being satisfied. On our program the bonus requirements are not hidden, they are clearly and boldly exposed in order to decrease the chance of a player being "annoyed" at not being able to withdrawal funds.

We are currently trying to offer better retention and conversion efforts without depending on bonuses with wagering requirements. The idea on our end is to offer other promotions and increase game quality and customer service as a player retention and conversion tool.

As a side note, I've noticed that the high rollers usually do not take the bonuses. They deposit large amounts and withdrawal without hassle as will.

[Madnesz]

The industry as a whole made migrated towards these promotions where the majority of the players who take them really don't understand the game exclusions. It sometimes generates unsatisfied expectations and ultimately a higher risk of the player not being satisfied. On our program the bonus requirements are not hidden, they are clearly and boldly exposed in order to decrease the chance of a player being "annoyed" at not being able to withdrawal funds.

Couldn't agree more. What I don't really get is why this is so different in poker. The rakeback/loyalty programs implemented by many poker rooms don't experience these problems, as players see them as a bonus at the end of the month. Giving customers the deposit bonus instantly (as casinos do) is nice because they can instantly play with them, but makes them believe the funds are already theirs.

I see a huge potential for cashback bonuses in casinos. Let's say a customer makes a deposit of $200. After a bit of playing he loses his funds and has the risk of taking his business to another casino to try his luck there. What would be a greater retention tool then providing this customer at the end of the month with a 10% cashback bonus? The player will log into your casino again, starts gambling with the $20 he just received and be tempted to make another deposit. I believe this to be a lot more effective than these instant deposit bonuses, that have to come with such complicated rules in order to avoid fraud, that no player really understands them anymore.

[universal4]

Great post Wagerx.

The poroblem as I see it is that the few programs that have been talked about recently among the forums (public and private) are clearly NOT the only ones that create banners this way.

I encourage ALL programs to take a look at their banners, and if they mention video poker, blackjack or any other game, then please make sure the bonus listed on the creative is allowed on that game, or don't list the bonus, or at least try and make it clear.

Rick
Universal4

[joeyl]

Automate it, or close it by 2011, because you've lost your license to trade. That's the message from your local, faroff, friendly, player centric licensing authority..

No unwanted bet should ever be accepted in the Virtual environment.

If the software can't deal with bet limits and bonus credit requirements, it's getting old.

[Puma]

"We reserve the right to enforce players using the English or Dutch Language to wager their deposit and play bonus forty (40) times and players from Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Romania, Hungary, Thailand, Malaysia, Latvia, Slovak Republic, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Costa Rica to wager their deposit and play bonus thirty (30) times, or twenty (20) times for the High Roller Bonus before reaching the minimum wagering requirements for withdrawal. Players from Brazil are not eligible to receive any bonuses."

lmao at that and the banner. It wasnt a mistake trust me. They want you to send players and have them play roulette thinking it all counts toward wager requirements. Lets be serious here.

[EP Relations]

Hi all,

We have reviewed your issues in this thread and here are our findings.

Regarding regional wagering requirements, these are in place to avoid bonus abuse. This is a reserved right and not necessarily applied - in the event of any doubt we invite our players to contact our support department in order to find out what are the WR for applicable bonuses.

Furthermore, the banners that were created mixing bonuses with games not applicable for the bonuses were an honest mistake that we are rectifying now - as soon as we were made aware of the issue.

Hosted banners will not be deleted from the servers and left blank. We are now compiling a list of banners that need to be removed from our Marketing Tools and there will be a backup solution for the cases were affiliates are currently displaying hosted banners on their site.

If you have any further questions or issues to be resolved related to this thread (or any other issues for that matter), we invite you to write us directly on helpme@europartners.com instead.

This address was setup today and will be monitored and handled by senior management in an attempt to avoid future misunderstandings and errors.

We hope that this has answered the topic of this thread.


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IN SUMMARY: We are taking care of this issue and the banners will be removed - thank you for bringing it to our attention.
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Best regards,
Robin

[Madnesz]

Regarding regional wagering requirements, these are in place to avoid bonus abuse. This is a reserved right and not necessarily applied - in the event of any doubt we invite our players to contact our support department in order to find out what are the WR for applicable bonuses.

That's what I stated in my post. I can imagine the regional wagering requirements to avoid abuse. My question was about the language of a player, in this case Dutch or English, what does that have to do with it?

If you have any further questions or issues to be resolved related to this thread (or any other issues for that matter), we invite you to write us directly on helpme@europartners.com instead.

This address was setup today and will be monitored and handled by senior management in an attempt to avoid future misunderstandings and errors.

I (and I guess other GPWA members) like to share information regarding this, so we can explain bonus information to our visitors. Discussing it here at the forums seems more appropriate to me.

[universal4]

For some reason some affiliate programs just never grasp why it is easier for ALL affiliates to see and be involved in such discussions and they feel instead it is better to have some affiliates possibly not understand a term or issue.

Personally if I have an issue that could easily be discussed in a public (or semi public avenue like the private forums here) and I am then immediately directed to handle it ONLY in private (even though my fellow affiliates may benefit from the discussion) I sometimes wonder if I want to proceed with the discussion.

I never thought that EuroPartners were attempting anything underhanded with the promos and banners as such, and in fact we see this same issue at other groups, and I will also point out that I am happy they they have decided to immediatly look into solutions for this....

....BUT....too often we have been asked by EuroPartners to take discussions private that deserve to be out in the open so that ALL affiliates large and small may benefit.

Rick
Universal4

[EP Relations]

Dear Madnesz,

In response to your last post:

That's what I stated in my post. I can imagine the regional wagering requirements to avoid abuse. My question was about the language of a player, in this case Dutch or English, what does that have to do with it?

This is based on statistical data showing that players using these languages in the casino platforms have been abusing bonuses more than others. We wanted to continue offering good bonuses to all players and in order to protect the program and our affiliates our Analysis team put in place stricter wagering requirements for languages being abused. So far this has proven effective and we hope that you can understand the value of this to you as an affiiate.

I (and I guess other GPWA members) like to share information regarding this, so we can explain bonus information to our visitors. Discussing it here at the forums seems more appropriate to me.

We are happy to continue discussions here in the forum. We just wanted to provide you guys an alternative channel to speak directly to upper management.

Best
Robin