Want to extract £1600 bonus balance from Royal Panda, but account restricted
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I’ve been matched betting for just over a month now, and have made almost £700, with no issues whatsoever. However, this changed when I signed up for Royal Panda’s £100 welcome bonus. When trying to bet away the money on there and win it back by laying it on Smarkets, I accidentally won a couple of high odds bets on Royal Panda and ended up with a £1600 promotional balance.
As a result, they decided to limit my account to bets of no more than a pound or so on sports events and told me that I should just use my promotional balance for casino games instead. I thus now have £1600 trapped on Royal Panda that I can’t practically get back without having to place thousands of bets and lay them all on Smarkets.
I have tried initiating a complaint but have just been bounced around several departments who send me their standard copy-and-pasted response. I’m currently waiting on a review by management, but I doubt that they’ll do anything. Is there any way I can easily get the limits lifted and/or get my money back? I was thinking my best bet would be to make a complaint with the relevant regulator, but are there any valid grounds on which I can base this?
+0October 31, 2017 at 9:32 pm
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I’m kicking myself now for not reading online reviews before signing up for the bonus. Someone on Trustpilot – https://uk.trustpilot.com/users/597cdb460000ff000ab52d5f – had exactly the same experience as me earlier this year.
+0Hi Jonny, I posted on another thread on this forum about Royal Panda before. The term that states bets placed with bonus money does not contribute to wagering requirements is totally unfair in my opinion. I was in a similar boat, thought I had completed wagering but in fact was only 10% through. Ended up depositing again and placing a couple of large bets to complete wagering without any more fuss.
In your position, I would argue it’s unreasonable to have to complete £1000 wagering when your bets are so limited. This actually worked for me with another betting site and they paid me in cash without completing wagering, but of course no guarantee it will work out here.
My second plan would be to progress as far as possible through wagering with small bets close to the minimum required odds (those bets will be where you can get the highest stake on). You’ve got a long time to complete wagering so it’s probably feasible although very tedious. You could even lay these bets on Smarkets if you wished!
As others said already, definitely stay away from casino. Their sports welcome bonus is actually separate from the casino offer, so it makes no sense for them to steer you towards that.
And I would advise against betting on even higher odds selections next time for other bonuses. Because that is just a recipe for having the same thing happen again (speaking from experience). Much better to stick with lower odds and use the underlay method IMO. And if the wagering requirements are ridiculously high to start with, the potential profit from the offer is probably not worth the risk of getting into such a situation.
Anyway good luck hope it works out for you soon.
+0Do you know what else they wanted which Ive never known in 4 years and over 40 different firms?
A photo of the long number embossed from the front on the BACK of the card……with numbers from the LONG number covered (aswell as the CVC, which they had no interest in)…..so they wanted a photo of the long numbers on the front AND the long numbers backwards on the back!!…….needless to say it wast clear for 3 submissions!
They are as close to rogue as could be for a UK regulated book!+0I ended up depositing £400 and placing hundreds of small bets repeatedly to meet the withdrawal requirements (I decided not to wait for a response to my complaint – I just want to get (most of) my money back sooner rather than later really), and have put in a withdrawal request for around £1700. Once the rest of my small bets have settled, I’ll be able to withdraw the remaining £300 (or what’s left of it), and hopefully overall I shouldn’t have a lost an entirely ridiculous amount of money. It’s probably safe to say I’m never giving Royal Panda my custom again!
+0I don’t mean to sound harsh but that probably suits them too! You’re only interested in making cash off them so you’re not their ideal customer
I have issues with these companies enforcing such ridiculously low bet limits to anyone who may win – but they do, and that’s a risk if you approach a sign up in an aggressive manner. You see plenty of ‘I arbed a high odds horse’ and bust out success stories, but variance says some will win and the nature of the bet means stake restrictions are an immediate risk.
+0*sigh* You’re probably right, betman. I’m going to be approaching bonus offers a lot more cautiously from now on.
The one thing I was and still am confused about is why I was limited in the first place – I would have thought that having seen the bets I had placed (on pretty high odds) with both my real and bonus cash, they would have celebrated having bagged another reckless punter who tends to wager lots of money on high odds outcomes and thus lose most of it in the long term. Or is this a completely naive view of things?
+0But you’d found high odds with close matches or even arbs – this would often shortened further so you’d maybe backed a 12-1 horse that started 8-1 and been seen a sharp bettor. Or some companies are just twats and don’t like winners, so you could backed an 8-1 horse that went off 12-1 like a true mug and only won due to a freak occurrence with the favourite…. but they have a strop regardless as you won!
I mostly approach rollovers with football and close a match to minimum odds possible. Mainstream non arbing favourites in football seems a mug style bet most companies are happy with, you’ll almost never bust out but I’ve never been restricted doing a rollover that way (although I’ve not done certain rollovers I know are dodgy… I skipped winners and still got account closed after 1 bet)
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Having been in a similar situation what I now tend to do with this type of offer is back something at longish odds (around 10-1) and underlay substantially.
If the bet loses you bust out and make a quick £30-£40 to the exchange… if it wins you have “won” £400-£500 to work with going through the rollover.
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Yep Bbobb that’s the way with these cowboys. Use their bonus as a punt on a close match around 4 -5.Football draws are a good one. Underlay to get your deposit back if you lose or if you win you’ll have a bigger amount to play with for the RO.
Royal Panda reviews are dire. Seems they ask for Notorised documents to withdraw – anything to avoid paying.
Another suggestion maybe to take them to small claims court for an unfair contracr. Doesnt cost much to put the claim in your home town. They have to then defend themselves so maybe they will find it cheaper to just pay up. Citizen’s advice Bureau may help here – especially with all the bad publicity going round about bookies and slots.
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Matt – get rid of these cowboys
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Sorry to hear of your troubles @jonnyboy.
I’ve added a warning to the Free Bets page and also to the Royal Panda guide page. I’ve not removed them completely as I still think the offer has value and may appeal to some people, but obviously it’s important that they have all the facts so that they can make an informed decision on whether or not to get involved.
+0I agree, there is no way Royal Panda should be promoted at all on this forum!
There are always ways to embarass them: Plaster over QPRs twitter and social media about them and write a copied in to them letter to QPR explaining that they are sponsored by crooks…..it helped with the TGP Cheltenham fiasco a couple of years ago.
+0Royal Panda got back to me with a so-called resolution to my complaint, and after “careful deliberation”, they say their management decided to keep the limits in place on my account and to also ban me from using any of their bonus offers in future.
Though now that I’ve gotten my money back (most of it at least), I really don’t think it’s worth going to any more trouble just to try to embarrass them or to try and get what will probably be meagre compensation, but thanks everyone for the suggestions.
I think from now on I’m gonna go with the underlay method with bonus offers. I’ve added another sheet to the ever-expanding Excel book I’ve got going with a calculator just for this, and running it with the typical bonus offers I’ve seen gives me a guaranteed profit of at least half of the bonus amount, which is more than good enough for me.
Matt, thanks for adding the warning to the site. (I can’t actually see it on the guide page for some reason though)
+0It’s been said before on here but the whole “know your customer” verification process bookies insist on has nothing to do with preventing fraud and everything to do with avoiding paying out. How come you can deposit with ease but as soon as you want to withdraw it becomes an issue? You can also go to shop and place £100 stakes without any ID at all. If a company in any other industry behaved the way some bookies do they would be hit with heavy fines by the regulator.
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