Over the course of the 20th century, view of the Canadian law on gambling changed from time to time. It started off with gambling being completely banned and they slowly eased their standpoint. At first, they allowed bingo halls and horse racing, finally passing the jurisdiction to individual provincial and territorial governments. The government realized how much money there potentially was in running a state lottery. After all, a large part of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal was covered by the money made off of people gambling.
When the internet became a widespread system, it was only a matter of time before online gambling hit it big. Indeed, in 2017, the online gambling industry was worth $47 billion. Estimates say that, in the next five to six years, it will cross the $100 billion line.
As you’d expect with numbers like these, it’s only logical that there are plenty of online casinos around. In fact, there are thousands of them! But, over the years, the internet has garnered a lot of skeptics when it comes to online transactions. At times, they’re right to be skeptic, as you can easily be conned if you’re not careful enough. Let’s check out how you can learn to distinguish a reputable online casino from a scammy one!
Casino Reviews
The first thing you should reference is casino reviews. There are plenty of online portals that specialize in writing online casino reviews for their reading community. You shouldn’t just skim over these, as they contain invaluable information you won’t be able to find on the website itself. Casino reviews are there to give you an insight into what being a member of one is really like. Is their customer support responsive on live chat? What’s the general gaming experience? How long do players generally wait for payouts? You’ll find answers to these and many other online casino gaming questions in these reviews.
Another thing of importance are online complaints. If a casino has accrued a plethora of complaints from other players, what are the chances of them being respectful towards you? That’s right, pretty slim! The majority of online complaints revolve around late payments and payment methods, which brings us to...
Payment Methods
When choosing an online casino, you have to consider their payment methods. Casino sites can offer instantaneous Bitcoin transaction which is all fine and dandy, but of little use if you’re not a Bitcoin user. Before you sign up, check out if the deposit and withdrawal methods available suit your needs and preferences.
When you’re willing to make a deposit with real money, it’s not insane of you to demand quality service, especially concerning getting money back. Many Canadian online casinos fail to obtain a respectable reputation due to their payout times being unacceptably long. Players who don’t do their homework end up in a casino where they need to wait for weeks (and months, even) to get their withdrawal processed.
Casinos often send large sums of money in installments, making the process even more tedious. Unless you like the frustration of it, you should avoid having to deal with this. You shouldn’t be okay with any waiting time above seven business days.
Terms and Conditions
The terms and conditions section of an online casino is the one that should be the most important to you. Yes, it can be monotonous, but you need to go through them in order to know what you’re signing up for. There are a lot of industry-standard clauses, but in between them, you can stumble upon some predatory clauses which are there to take advantage of you. This is why you ought to read through them with focus.
You should be on the lookout for any type of vagueness in their terminology. They try to make their clauses with unclear circumstances so that they can make different interpretations of them from case to case. For instance, if you see a clause containing “at our sole discretion” or suchlike phrases, you should be extremely wary of those. There are also clauses which state that they can make adjustments to the T&Cs without notice, so you ought to re-read them consistently.
Bonuses
Bonuses are a major party of virtually any online casino. While this shouldn’t make them a priority, they should definitely be a factor in your decision-making. Online casinos use promotions and loyalty programs in order to attract players to join their casino (instead of going somewhere else). They’re the result of a huge competition there is on the market, and you, as a player, should profit off that.
Bonus offers, in essence, represent free money. Casinos will often provide great welcome promotions, such as giving you a 100% or 200% match deposit bonus on your first transaction. However, you ought to read the terms that they come with. Every promotion has wagering requirements or WRs. The WRs represent how much money you need to wager before you can ask for a withdrawal. Some casinos offer mouth-watering bonuses, but they often come with WRs so high that it becomes pointless claiming them. No-deposit bonuses, expectedly, have higher WRs than deposit bonuses.
You should also check out which games they’re tied to, as you can have promotions where only table games or online slot games count towards completing the playthrough.
Time to Choose
There you have it! Those are some of the essential aspects of online casinos you have to go through before you decide to sign up. A good indicator of how well a casino is run is their licensing information. If they have obtained a license from a lax licensing commission (such as Costa Rica or Panama), it’s probably due to the fact that it gives them space to exploit the players. You should look at casinos that have more reputable licenses, such as the one that Curaçao and Malta give out.
All in all, you can easily run into a scam on the internet if you’re not careful enough. But if you do a bit of research, you will come across hundreds of reputable online casinos which provide great service and are tons of fun!
