What is Alternative Dispute Resolution?

An Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service is an impartial third party that seeks to provide consumers an affordable alternative to legal action where they have a complaint against a trader, whether within their own country or across borders. An ADR is generally approved by the regulatory body that issues the operator’s license and can provide legally binding rulings on disputes. 

If you have been an online gambler for a while, chances are you are familiar with several services offering to mediate disputes between players/bettors and online gambling operators. There are two basic ‘types’ of service helping players with complaints: informal complaint management services and ADR services. Let’s take a closer look at the differences between them.

Informal services do NOT have any legal authority to compel gambling operators to accept any verdict they reach on any given complaint. They rely on the operator desiring the traffic they can send enough to treat players fairly. This is true of CasinoReviews whenever we are managing complaints outside of our ADR remit.

ADR services are a far more formal affair. They serve as an alternative to the small claims court systems and are officially appointed under one of a number of licensing systems. Within those systems, gambling operators are required by their license to engage with an ADR when a player dispute arises. In turn, ADRs can, where they have appropriate agreements in place, issue rulings on disputes that are legally binding in nature. This means that the operator has to comply with the ruling given or they may potentially face regulatory sanction. 

CasinoReviews is the only affiliate complaint service that is approved to act formally as an ADR for the online gambling industry. 

This means that whereas other online casino affiliates may offer online casino reviews while managing players’ complaints, unlike CasinoReviews, they do not have the formal ADR authority to issue legally binding rulings against any online gambling site. Meanwhile, CasinoReviews can act in an official regulatory capacity when managing complaints against UKGC and MGA licensees that engage our ADR service, and all other complaints we manage informally. 

In other words, we provide legally binding rulings for those operators that use our ADR service for their UKGC or MGA license, and non-binding rulings in all other claims. If you have a complaint against a UKGC or MGA licensed casino that engages our ADR services, our Dispute Resolution Team has the same ADR authority to manage your claim as all official trusted ADRs (e.g.: IBAS, eCOGRA, MADRE, Pardee Consulta). 

For players/bettors who submit a complaint against a UKGC or MGA licensed gambling site that engages our ADR services, this means that if the case is resolved in the player’s favour, then the operator is legally bound to pay out the settlement outlined in the final ruling. 

There are some limitations on where and when CasinoReviews can provide legally binding rulings.

Firstly, for our service to be empowered to act an an ADR, the licensee must have engaged our service for this role. To determine whether the operator uses our ADR service, look at the operator's terms of use and look for the section on disputes of complaints. Within this section you should find a link and other contact details for our service. If another ADR's information is provided in this section we're happy to try to assist you informally, but will be unable to act formally as an ADR.

Secondly, there are value restrictions on the claims that can be managed in a legally binding fashion.

For players from the UK claims where we can act as an ADR, claims of £10k or less are legally binding in nature. Rulings given on any claim over £10k are not legally binding.

For players from any other country, where the MGA license applies, and we can act as an ADR, claims of €5k or less are legally binding. Rulings for claims of a higher value are not legally binding.

Whether or not the rulings we issue are legally binding, it should be noted that in practical terms this does not make a great deal of difference to the outcome of the complaint management process. This service has been acting as an ADR since 2016. We have managed thousands of claims as an ADR. We could count on one hand the number of cases, regardless of the size of the claim, where the licensee failed to comply with our ruling. This mean that our compliance rate is very close to 100% even where our rulings are non-binding in nature.

To learn more about our recent compliance rates and lots of other interesting data, review our ADR Reports which we publish periodically.

Apart from the difference between formal and informal services, it’s also important for players to know how the content of a complaint is managed all the way from the submission stage to the final ruling. 

The internal policies for managing the content of casino complaints may differ depending on the site. ADRs by and large will manage complaints completely behind closed doors (i.e.: private communication chains between the player, the ADR and the operator). CasinoReviews takes this approach to complaint management both when managing complaints formally as an ADR and informally outside of our ADR remit.

At CasinoReviews we are committed to prioritizing fairness and transparency while protecting your privacy at all times. For this reason, our dispute team aims to manage complaints in private whenever possible for the duration of the dispute. 

The final outcome of every complaint is published in our complaints archive, where the name of the operator is made public, whereas the personal details of the complainant are redacted. This balanced approach allows us to maintain a healthy and cooperative relationship with gambling operators as we investigate your complaint, while supplying an impartial public track record of an operator’s reputation with players. 

To understand the difference between the way CasinoReviews handles the content of informal and formal complaints, please see the table below. If you have other questions about how we manage complaints, please read the FAQs at the bottom of this page and visit our dedicated FAQ page for a comprehensive overview of common questions.