Customer Care Duty Changes for UK Casinos

The UK Gambling Commission have been making a slew of changes in recent months aimed at keeping online casinos as safe and fair for players – the most recent changes to come in to play were outlined in a recent post looking at the advertising changes that will be put in place before the end of the year to prevent sports stars and celebrities from appearing in advertisements for online betting and gambling, but new customer care duties are expected to come a bit sooner with September 12^th being the date suggested and outline some more criteria to be met.

These new customer care duties are once again aimed at keeping the most vulnerable players safe by identifying them earlier particularly through the registration process with underage players being a particular target, but also hoping to reduce the number of at risk players from being able to access these sites too, these new customer care duties have been outline through a belief that there have been continued failures by licensed operators despite the large amount of documentation that has been put in place to follow over the past year or two in particular.

Alongside the new customer care duties, the UKGC have also issued a warning suggesting that operators who choose not to stick very closely to these new measures will face harsh penalties – there are already quite substantial fines outlined for marketing blunders and for those that don’t uphold the current restrictions including licensing being put at risk, and whilst measures haven’t been outlined just yet for potential restrictions following these customer care updates, it’s expected to be more of the same if not a bit more harsh than what some already face.

With online gambling and betting emerging in a big way in other countries around the world particularly across the US with more states passing legislation to allow for commercial options to grow, it does show the large differences between the gambling markets – it’s still an unknown whether markets like the US will follow a similar approach in restricted advertising and including different care duties for the same purpose, but with states being afforded the opportunity to make rules and laws on a case by case basis it may be much more difficult to police than in the UK which has a very centralized gambling commission to manage all of the different services.

More details will be released closer to the September date, but players who prefer UK based online casinos may expect to see a large number of changes coming to terms and conditions in the very near future and may have to seek out casinos that accept non-uk players to find the same experiences they’re currently used to.