My 13.02 BTC and 157 ETH complaint against Stake.com

[coin.princess]

To summarize: Did you really lost 13 BTC from deposits or was 13 BTC the amount of bets you placed?
If you deposit 1 BTC and make 13 wagers, then you did not lost 13 BTC
Or play with 1 BTC and make it to 13 and then lost the 13 BTC is also another story.

[sempak]

Consider: if Stake does return any amount, you have just carved out a new niche for people to exploit. What a lovely precedent! Think about it, too, as it's a conflict of interest for the casino - of course they would want you to revoke the self-exclusion - easy 'free bets'.

It's an unfortunate situation but I simply do not see any reasonable way you will get your money back.

What is this for nonsense reply?
Stake violated the rules and they should block and close the account, since he requested this.
What has this to do with exploiting?

[notblox1]

I think you should go and see a medical professional asap and you should accept responsibility for your actions.
I don't know what you expect from Stake or any other betting website, as they can't protect you from yourself if they enable you to use only sports betting and restrict access to casino and everything else.
People lose or win money on all games and not just in casinos, for example tonight Barcelona lost at home in Champions League from PSG and so many people got rekt except bookies, so you need to learn money management and self control when betting and only bet with money you are willing to lose.
I wish you all the best and get well soon.

[Stakefast]

To summarize: Did you really lost 13 BTC from deposits or was 13 BTC the amount of bets you placed?
If you deposit 1 BTC and make 13 wagers, then you did not lost 13 BTC
Or play with 1 BTC and make it to 13 and then lost the 13 BTC is also another story.

I can assue you the totals I have posted are losses in the casino after the permanent self casino ban,   not total wagers.

Here are my total wagers,  I know the difference ...


https://prnt.sc/zs0jbi

Okay, I see you really have a gambling problem. However. You can't just beg the owner of the casino to unlock your account again, get into your habit once again and piss away a million dollars and expect a refund after you got broke.

Its not how the gambling world works. Not even if they shouldnt unban your account. Its your fault and you need to face it like a man.

[magneto]

I do think that Stake is somewhat at fault here for revoking a clearly permanent ban. And I do think that they should at least take some responsibility for that.

However, from a more pragmatic standpoint, as actmyname said it is very unlikely that you're going to see your BTCs back any time soon.

Perhaps you should negotiate for a partial settlement, but that is likely the best-case outcome here. And by partial I don't mean half of the lost amount, probably way less.

[Cacingkemi]

He clearly stated to the site that he had a gambling addiction and that the site should block his account. this MUST respect the site and if a player requests this self-exclusion then the site must comply. His account should never be reopened, and Stake must pay back the money he lost after requesting the connection. I think you can also email the licensee about the situation.
Stake.com has had issues with its license 2 months ago, probably due to fraudulent activity through its site. Stake.com is therefore on the radar of the gambling committee in Curacao. I would work on it if I were you, it is a lot of money.

Stake.com is 100% wrong here, as they reopened the account, which is forbidden to do when its closed for gambling addiction.

[Haunebu]

I sympathize with op here. Stake is clearly at fault here based on the proof that op provided. It's like the casino ripped off a drunk customer and aren't claiming responsibility.

This is really unfortunate for op considering the fact that he lost huge amounts overall. I feel that he should be reimbursed the entire amount since it's Stake's fault. Next best option is to reimburse 50-75% of the amount.

Either way, op isn't at fault here. I hope Stake looks into this matter seriously and rectifies it by providing an appropriate solution asap.

[OgNasty]

To summarize: Did you really lost 13 BTC from deposits or was 13 BTC the amount of bets you placed?
If you deposit 1 BTC and make 13 wagers, then you did not lost 13 BTC
Or play with 1 BTC and make it to 13 and then lost the 13 BTC is also another story.

I can assure you the totals I have posted are losses in the casino after the permanent self casino ban,   not total wagers.

Here are my total wagers,  I know the difference ...


https://prnt.sc/zs0jbi

The ultimate question (besides my curiosity of how someone who would gamble away 13 BTC could have amassed such an amount) is if you were to have won dozens of BTC after your self casino ban, would you have been OK with Stake.com refusing to pay out the winnings because you should have been banned? I suspect your answer would be no. Certainly in that situation you would have a much better argument that would lead to more people supporting you.

The best thing you can do is chalk it up to a learning experience and seek help for your addiction before it destroys your life beyond the loss of some crypto. If I’m wrong and you have a legitimate case then I wish you luck in whatever outcome is deserving.

[OgNasty]

To summarize: Did you really lost 13 BTC from deposits or was 13 BTC the amount of bets you placed?
If you deposit 1 BTC and make 13 wagers, then you did not lost 13 BTC
Or play with 1 BTC and make it to 13 and then lost the 13 BTC is also another story.

I can assure you the totals I have posted are losses in the casino after the permanent self casino ban,   not total wagers.

Here are my total wagers,  I know the difference ...


https://prnt.sc/zs0jbi

The ultimate question (besides my curiosity of how someone who would gamble away 13 BTC could have amassed such an amount) is if you were to have won dozens of BTC after your self casino ban, would you have been OK with Stake.com refusing to pay out the winnings because you should have been banned? I suspect your answer would be no. Certainly in that situation you would have a much better argument that would lead to more people supporting you.

The best thing you can do is chalk it up to a learning experience and seek help for your addiction before it destroys your life beyond the loss of some crypto. If I’m wrong and you have a legitimate case then I wish you luck in whatever outcome is deserving.

Interesting point.  Take a look at this.    They say if you evade a self exclusion/ ban,   they have the right to keep the wager amount and any winnings.

So,  their position is, they wont be responsible for losses if you evade  (which I did not do)   and they wont pay winnings either.

Pretty advantageous terms for them.


https://prnt.sc/zs5a2m

That is indeed an interesting point. They excuse themselves from a lot of responsibility in the event that you gamble again with a different account, which from this screenshot alone looks like they do not address their liability in a situation where you are able to wager again through their inability to enforce the ban. While I don’t think that makes them liable, I guess that gives you an angle to try and justify a settlement. I suspect any payment would be made to show their commitment to address gambling addiction and not because they are at fault in any legal sense, which I don’t believe them to be. At best you could say their system malfunctioned and allowed you to gain access to wagers again leading to your losses, but I don’t think that excuses your personal responsibility. They could even argue you were taking advantage of a website malfunction and in essence hacking their system to try and profit.

[Stakefast]

From a gamblers perspective this would also be unfair to other gamblers on stake because you could also just won 100btc and be gone... the whole thing you are doing could be planned from the very beginning since you took all those screenshots of conversations with the support from the very beginning. I find it hard to believe that somebody would do this on a simple question, you didn’t had any problems back then with the support I guess.

Im not saying you did this on purpose but it kinda seems to me that way.

My guess is you lost a lot more before and you tried to either win it back or loose it all and plan a accusation like this.

[Stakefast]

Yikes if you think this would be a plan.   Quite a risky plan to lose a lot of money and hope and pray to get it back to break even.    Not a great plan


Also , I took screenshots now.   Support chats are kept on site.  You can scroll through all your chats.  



As a “stake player”   Seems like you should be aware of that

Im in the wrong then with the screenshots, sorry to accuse you with that but I am trying to understand why you wouldn’t stop earlier and invest the funds to be able to live off it completely passively for the rest of your life instead of just throwing it into a gigantic money shredder.

I guess it was needed to create yourself a lesson.

Or the money wasn’t acquired the „right“ way and you felt it has to go.

[Stakefast]

Yikes if you think this would be a plan.   Quite a risky plan to lose a lot of money and hope and pray to get it back to break even.    Not a great plan


Also , I took screenshots now.   Support chats are kept on site.  You can scroll through all your chats.  



As a “stake player”   Seems like you should be aware of that

Im in the wrong then with the screenshots, sorry to accuse you with that but I am trying to understand why you wouldn’t stop earlier and invest the funds to be able to live off it completely passively for the rest of your life instead of just throwing it into a already gigantic money shredder.

Consider yourself lucky to not understand gambling addiction , I envy you.  

I am still addicted and lost around 20,000$ (This was everything I had back then) on stake a year ago and it was devasting to me. Today I store my money at a very trustable business partner I worked a long time with. Since then I got more control over myself.

I am still gambling sometimes and I fall right into my habits again of firstly thinking „I can loose this money without the need to win it back if I do loose it“ but if I do actually loose it I still deposit again until my wallet is empty...

It’s not over yet for me but my friend helped me, without his help I’d be broke again a while ago already.

What also helped me was when I found out about different investments where my investment withdraw is freezed for atleast 72 hours. It’s like a barrier because even if I want to withdraw I need to wait 3 days, this often makes me overthink it when I am tempted to „throw“ everything I have into keno.

Everytime I got a win I am partly throwing some into such investments. Some of them are bankrolls of crypto casinos or streaming platforms such as Dlive with daily dividends.

[carlisle1]

Sorry if I wasn't clear,   there was a lot of info to share.


TL:DR

-I followed protocol and requested permanent self casino block via live chat - request was approved and casino was blocked

- Stake Owner removed permanent casino block after 1 TG message to him

- I again requested permanent casino block this time directly to owner,  and he blocked it

-Stake Owner again removed permanent casino block

- I lost a fuck ton more money in the casino

You are blaming them because you Lose a lot ? as they did not Banned you permanently ? is this what your claims means?

For me personally ? you must not blame anyone from your own mistake and addiction , it is you who asked several times so that means in your faith that they allow you to play again.

Just Move on man and better to try change your account password and recovery details using a very Hard to memorize one , then forget everything , so from then you can only play creating new account ( in which bannable offence) or never play at all.

Sorry for your sad story but we as gamblers has our own bad side also.

[purpleleaf]

The issue here isn't what OP would have done had the ban was not revoked. Would he have created another account, or would have gambled at some place? Those points are really moot. Its about what happened, and not IFs and buts.

Point is, Why was their "Permanent Casino Ban" revoked in the first place? When it was supposed to be permanent?
Gambling addiction's  real... And In this case it has really hurt op despite him doing the right thing, and asking for "Permanent ban".

And, its true, lot of places refuse the winnings if they find out you had requested a ban and came back to gamble again under an alt or something.

Instead of saying op was looking for free bets... What if it was Stake? They would have been protected by their TOS and could have rightly refused the winnings, and if he kept sinking the money and losing the money there's no question of payout.


All my sympathies to you OP, Hopefully you can settle this amicably with stake.

Its one of the good books out there, at least I think so. And where my major action's at anyways.

[Stunna]

Stakes position is that they “used poor judgement and should have served me better”   but there will be no compensation.  

I expect that from a shady casino like cloudbet not stake.  

I’m still hopeful someone at stake will look at the entire picture of what happened and reconsider.  

It seems contradictory to say they made poor judgement but are keeping all the proceeds from that poor judgement

This is definitely not a good look for Stake but I do think the complaint being laid out here is quite biased as well. This user first off lost the vast majority of those funds sportsbetting which they did not request a block from and almost all if not all the funds were earned from the stake affiliate program They were on a number of occasions encouraged to stop betting and stick to referring players to the casino but did not agree with doing a self exclusion. 

I find this claim a bit questionable given both the amounts claimed and because they were messaging me anonymously trying to build up this argument while continuing to bet under the impression that they would get reimbursed. If you were to make an unbiased claim you would have suggested that it would be the amount of money that you lost on the casino after this restriction was removed. It is very convenient but unfair argument to look at crypto prices being what they are and demanding all your historical losses back over the past year or two.

Last year this player specifically asked to have just the casino blocked, instead of your account fully restricted/banned. (full self exclusion). This was just a simple flag added to your account to block access to the casino.  Then they went to their VIP manager directly who you had a unique relationship with as a major affiliate and asked him to remove the flag.  Since this is not a self exclusion and has no surrounding protocol, he reluctantly obliged under pressure.

There was no ill intent here, even in your conversations you sent me you are repeatedly encouraged to stop spending all your affiliate earnings on Stake. Clearly some poor protocol and judgement on our side. With our self-exclusion system any player who goes through the correct process will never have their account unrestricted. As I stated in my previous messages to you, I recommended you cease gambling entirely when you told me you had issues with the casino only but were still sports betting, self exclusion really only works if a player is ceasing all gambling. This whole 'block casino only' thing was really just a incentive provided to the player when they asked. This however did not fall under the umbrella of the self-exclusion program which is perhaps an oversight.

Please see https://stake.com/policies/self-exclusion it was poor judgement on our side that we did not sooner ban your account when you were displaying issues with gambling, at many points you were encouraged to control your betting, it is obviously a challenging situation for both sides because you did not want to stop and would not have reacted well to having your account banned at that point.

There has already been an internal convo regarding all of this and we will make improvements to our protocol and we sincerely apologize for not serving you better. The decision to make is whether or not to weave blocking one part of the website into self-exclusion protocols or whether to just encourage full self exclusion only.

[Stunna]

Stakes position is that they “used poor judgement and should have served me better”   but there will be no compensation.  

I expect that from a shady casino like cloudbet not stake.  

I’m still hopeful someone at stake will look at the entire picture of what happened and reconsider.  

It seems contradictory to say they made poor judgement but are keeping all the proceeds from that poor judgement

This is definitely not a good look for Stake but I do think the complaint being laid out here is quite biased as well. This user first off lost the vast majority of those funds sportsbetting which they did not request a block from and almost all if not all the funds were earned from the stake affiliate program They were on a number of occasions encouraged to stop betting and stick to referring players to the casino but did not agree with doing a self exclusion.  

I find this claim a bit questionable given both the amounts claimed and because they were messaging me anonymously trying to build up this argument while continuing to bet under the impression that they would get reimbursed. If you were to make an unbiased claim you would have suggested that it would be the amount of money that you lost on the casino after this restriction was removed. It is very convenient but unfair argument to look at crypto prices being what they are and demanding all your historical losses back over the past year or two.

Last year this player specifically asked to have just the casino blocked, instead of your account fully restricted/banned. (full self exclusion). This was just a simple flag added to your account to block access to the casino.  Then they went to their VIP manager directly who you had a unique relationship with as a major affiliate and asked him to remove the flag.  Since this is not a self exclusion and has no surrounding protocol, he reluctantly obliged under pressure.

There was no ill intent here, even in your conversations you sent me you are repeatedly encouraged to stop spending all your affiliate earnings on Stake. Clearly some poor protocol and judgement on our side. With our self-exclusion system any player who goes through the correct process will never have their account unrestricted. As I stated in my previous messages to you, I recommended you cease gambling entirely when you told me you had issues with the casino only but were still sports betting, self exclusion really only works if a player is ceasing all gambling. This whole 'block casino only' thing was really just a incentive provided to the player when they asked. This however did not fall under the umbrella of the self-exclusion program which is perhaps an oversight.

Please see https://stake.com/policies/self-exclusion it was poor judgement on our side that we did not sooner ban your account when you were displaying issues with gambling, at many points you were encouraged to control your betting, it is obviously a challenging situation for both sides because you did not want to stop and would not have reacted well to having your account banned at that point.

There has already been an internal convo regarding all of this and we will make improvements to our protocol and we sincerely apologize for not serving you better. The decision to make is whether or not to weave blocking one part of the website into self-exclusion protocols or whether to just encourage full self exclusion only.

#1  The amount listed is the amount I have lost on the casino side since the first permanent exclusion.   It does not factor in sportsbook losses during this period.       So,  that's not biased at all.  Please run your numbers and verify.  I welcome it.  My claim is for casino losses only.    


#2  Where my funds came from is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.    It's as if you are saying my earned affiliate money is somehow exempt from rules  and shouldn't be treated as seriously as cash from another job?   I am under no obligation to deposit my affiliate cash and play,   nor was it the only source of deposited funds.  


#3   You said it was removed "under pressure"   that is blatantly false.   With your permission I will post the private telegram message showing my request to the owner as proof.


#4   Thank you for mentioning I was repeatedly advised to stop gambling.    I am glad to see you recognize my problem was known,  even before the permanent casino exclusion requests


#5  It is curious that my issues and requests were not taken seriously until this week when I finally raised a dispute


#6  You stated I did not want to stop.    Thats an odd thing to say to someone who multiple times requested a permanent casino ban.    As mentioned above,  it was finally taken serious this week after I raised a complaint and my account has been fully locked.    Since then,  I havent wagered a dime at stake or anywhere else.    


#7  You seem to imply Staked asked me if I wanted a full self exclusion.   That did happen one time,  this week,  after i raised my complaint.   NEVER happened prior to that.



When I approached Stake this week about my concerns,  I did not make a specific demand,  I laid out the situation of events,  told them of the struggle ive been going through.   I did not have specific expectations.  I was immediately dismissed,  basically told to get lost.

You raise some fair points, the crux of all of this is that we need to make improvements to our exclusion system and make it simple and straightforward. The only aspect of this I did not appreciate is the way you handled the actual complaint process where you apparently deleted your record of telegram messages and then sent me anonymous messages trying to pre-meditate this claim. Otherwise it would have been handled more amicably from my side. I will personally see that changes are made and update you on my progress.

[Stunna]

Stakes position is that they “used poor judgement and should have served me better”   but there will be no compensation.  

I expect that from a shady casino like cloudbet not stake.  

I’m still hopeful someone at stake will look at the entire picture of what happened and reconsider.  

It seems contradictory to say they made poor judgement but are keeping all the proceeds from that poor judgement

This is definitely not a good look for Stake but I do think the complaint being laid out here is quite biased as well. This user first off lost the vast majority of those funds sportsbetting which they did not request a block from and almost all if not all the funds were earned from the stake affiliate program They were on a number of occasions encouraged to stop betting and stick to referring players to the casino but did not agree with doing a self exclusion.  

I find this claim a bit questionable given both the amounts claimed and because they were messaging me anonymously trying to build up this argument while continuing to bet under the impression that they would get reimbursed. If you were to make an unbiased claim you would have suggested that it would be the amount of money that you lost on the casino after this restriction was removed. It is very convenient but unfair argument to look at crypto prices being what they are and demanding all your historical losses back over the past year or two.

Last year this player specifically asked to have just the casino blocked, instead of your account fully restricted/banned. (full self exclusion). This was just a simple flag added to your account to block access to the casino.  Then they went to their VIP manager directly who you had a unique relationship with as a major affiliate and asked him to remove the flag.  Since this is not a self exclusion and has no surrounding protocol, he reluctantly obliged under pressure.

There was no ill intent here, even in your conversations you sent me you are repeatedly encouraged to stop spending all your affiliate earnings on Stake. Clearly some poor protocol and judgement on our side. With our self-exclusion system any player who goes through the correct process will never have their account unrestricted. As I stated in my previous messages to you, I recommended you cease gambling entirely when you told me you had issues with the casino only but were still sports betting, self exclusion really only works if a player is ceasing all gambling. This whole 'block casino only' thing was really just a incentive provided to the player when they asked. This however did not fall under the umbrella of the self-exclusion program which is perhaps an oversight.

Please see https://stake.com/policies/self-exclusion it was poor judgement on our side that we did not sooner ban your account when you were displaying issues with gambling, at many points you were encouraged to control your betting, it is obviously a challenging situation for both sides because you did not want to stop and would not have reacted well to having your account banned at that point.

There has already been an internal convo regarding all of this and we will make improvements to our protocol and we sincerely apologize for not serving you better. The decision to make is whether or not to weave blocking one part of the website into self-exclusion protocols or whether to just encourage full self exclusion only.

#1  The amount listed is the amount I have lost on the casino side since the first permanent exclusion.   It does not factor in sportsbook losses during this period.       So,  that's not biased at all.  Please run your numbers and verify.  I welcome it.  My claim is for casino losses only.    


#2  Where my funds came from is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.    It's as if you are saying my earned affiliate money is somehow exempt from rules  and shouldn't be treated as seriously as cash from another job?   I am under no obligation to deposit my affiliate cash and play,   nor was it the only source of deposited funds.  


#3   You said it was removed "under pressure"   that is blatantly false.   With your permission I will post the private telegram message showing my request to the owner as proof.


#4   Thank you for mentioning I was repeatedly advised to stop gambling.    I am glad to see you recognize my problem was known,  even before the permanent casino exclusion requests


#5  It is curious that my issues and requests were not taken seriously until this week when I finally raised a dispute


#6  You stated I did not want to stop.    Thats an odd thing to say to someone who multiple times requested a permanent casino ban.    As mentioned above,  it was finally taken serious this week after I raised a complaint and my account has been fully locked.    Since then,  I havent wagered a dime at stake or anywhere else.    


#7  You seem to imply Staked asked me if I wanted a full self exclusion.   That did happen one time,  this week,  after i raised my complaint.   NEVER happened prior to that.



When I approached Stake this week about my concerns,  I did not make a specific demand,  I laid out the situation of events,  told them of the struggle ive been going through.   I did not have specific expectations.  I was immediately dismissed,  basically told to get lost.

You raise some fair points, the crux of all of this is that we need to make improvements to our exclusion system and make it simple and straightforward. The only aspect of this I did not appreciate is the way you handled the actual complaint process where you apparently deleted your record of telegram messages and then sent me anonymous messages trying to pre-meditate this claim. Otherwise it would have been handled more amicably from my side. I will personally see that changes are made and update you on my progress.

In other words,  sorry we made mistakes and used poor judgement,  but we will be keeping all proceeds from these mistakes

I'm unable to even be more thorough in my correspondence and even make a fair argument because you have screenshotted what you wanted and then deleted all other logs.

[Stunna]

You did not self-exclude from the website.

You turned down the self-exclusion program and asked support to basically have the casino inaccessible to you which is not apart of self exclusion. Then you went directly to your VIP manager to have that flag removed in the future. Stake has never had any formal protocol around this block casino flag that was asked for by a few sports players. Our self exclusion policy can be found here. https://stake.com/policies/self-exclusion We do not differentiate sports betting & casino betting as different forms of gambling. If you have a problem then both should be avoided.

Also I've identified that you had been using multiple accounts on casino the entire time even recently so I do not see how even if we had done this readily if it would have been preventative enough. What is clear to me is that the entire self-exclusion process should be a self-service system and involve a ban of the entire platform.

[RHavar]

I guess the part I struggle with, is assuming stake (incorrectly) allowed you to gamble again ... does that really make them responsible for the (direct) course of actions that happened after (i.e. you losing your money)?

I honestly don't know, I feel like I can make a strong argument both ways. But I don't really think a public forum is an ideal way to solve an issue like this. I notice in Stake's Terms of Service they offer the option to seek arbitration with the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre.  If you can't reach an amicable solution, it seems like it might be best to let a 3rd party decide?

[Haunebu]

They could have made a good faith offer of a small percent of the casino losses back, both sides admitting some responsibility and mistakes and they still would have profited an obscene amount off of this ordeal ,  but no.  

In the end I’m powerless.  But I honestly expected way more from stake and the people behind it.

It's disappointing to see one of the top Stake gamblers being treated like this despite the proof that you provided. I expected them to return a portion of your funds at the very least, but I was wrong clearly.

I still like Stake, but this case made me lose a good deal of respect for them. I advise you not to trust gambling sites regarding anything blindly. Instead, focus on trying to control your own gambling addiction.