I will get naked and run through the center of my town if Unibet finds more than one account with my personal details and from my IP
 Croatian punter Ivanco says in one of the web’s more popular casino forums!
As it is often the case, his story is difficult to verify; the forums are full of nebulous accusations, and commentators often contribute to the general mess of an issue by adding their ten cents-worth to every detail presented. On top of that, even the impartiality of the forums themselves is often questionable. In quite a few cases, the aforementioned included, the reaction of the moderators is to defend the accused — it has to be, in fact, as they’re affiliates of the criticized operators themselves!
Payment in…two weeks
One reason why Unibet gets a lot of negative reviews seems to be their attitude to payouts. Indeed the author of this editorial came across no fewer than 12 complaints on the matter — in the first five minutes of researching the issue. Even more interesting is the fact that there is agreement as to how long it usually takes them to get themselves to actually make the payment: Two weeks. This time span is mentioned so consistently that one could begin to think it’s a hidden policy of the site.
Another reason why this particular casino is so widely detested seems to be the way in which they achieve this sorry state. Although there isn’t a sufficient number of similar cases to clearly identify a trend or common practice as above, the list of excuses made to players is impressive, not to mention creative.
We tried to get in touch, but you weren’t home
Let’s start with a line that is and has long been extremely popular with utility companies around the world: “We tried to get in touch, but you weren’t home”. In the cases reported, what happened was that users were told they’d be contacted, and then didn’t hear from them for days, in some cases weeks. When they reiterated and demanded an explanation, they were told that the Unibet customer service had repeatedly tried to reach them, but that they didn’t respond. It goes without saying that the users hadn’t received any calls or e-mails.
We’ll continue with another age-old howler, a non-existent address. In more than one case described online, the user was asked to write down an address and make a “formal complaint” to the office of Unibet in Malta. The catch: The address either didn’t exist at all, or belonged to somebody else — in one of the cases the Malta Union of Professional Psychologists, no less.
Other episodes include Unibet’s customer service blatantly accusing members of having tried to defraud the site. In at least one incident, Unibet produced supposed proof that a member had set up 22 different accounts from one and the same IP address. All well and good except when one discovers that said member was using a dynamic IP address which means that it changed every time he went online, a common security measure which an online casino, of all types of organizations, ought to be aware of. Pointing this out to customer service agents provoked no further reaction.
Easy to deposit, harder to withdraw
We’ll round off this list of woes with a seemingly unique anecdote. One user made a deposit to Unibet with Moneybookers, the global secure money transfer service now known as Skrill, played until he had met the wagering requirements, won some money and wanted to make a withdrawal. In the options offered to him to make a withdrawal, Moneybookers had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from the list. Settling the matter, as you might have guessed by now, took exactly two weeks.
Is Unibet to blame for what’s obviously been going wrong? Reports and accusations keep coming up, which makes it hard to accuse the dozens of punters that have posted complaints about Unibet in the past of libel. It’s difficult to say what’s going on — either they have to work on their manners, or they have to get their customer service employees under control.