Write to the sheet

1

What this page is for

The route for correspondence is published alongside this page rather than written into it, because an address set in prose goes stale and a reader then writes to nobody at all. What this page can be exact about is what belongs in a message and what happens to it afterwards.

Three kinds of message are genuinely useful, and all three are about figures. A figure that is wrong. A figure that was right and has since moved. A figure that is missing where the arithmetic plainly needed one. Anything else will be read, and most of it will not produce a change to a page. This is a publisher of arithmetic, and the only thing it can put right is arithmetic.

What follows is written as a limit rather than as a disclaimer. A site that promises to look into anything ends up looking into nothing, and a reader who has been told what this one will not touch can take that matter somewhere it will actually be dealt with. Part 4 names those places.

2

What belongs in the message

Every sheet on this site carries three things in the line above its heading: a reference, a revision number and the date the figures were last checked. Quote all three and a correction can be placed on the exact line it belongs to. Without them a message about, say, a forty times multiple could belong to any of dozens of pages, and the reply will be a request for the reference, which wastes a week.

Then the substance, in the shortest form that carries it. Say which figure is printed, say which figure you believe is right, and name the source the second figure comes from. A correction that arrives with a primary source attached is acted on quickly. One that arrives without a source has to be researched before anything moves, which takes longer.

Sources are read strictly here, and it is only fair to say so in advance. A regulator’s own page, a statute, an official register, a scheme’s own site or a regulator’s published policy will settle a point. A trade publication, a law firm’s note, an industry blog or another affiliate site will not, however plainly it states the thing, because a figure this site cannot trace to a primary source is a figure it will not print.

An operator’s own terms are the operator’s to explain, and nothing printed here displaces them. Where a page models an offer and the live conditions differ, the live conditions win, and Terms of use puts that in plainer language.

3

What a correction looks like when it lands

One promise, and it is the only one worth making: a figure shown to be wrong gets corrected, and the correction is stated rather than slipped in. The revision number goes up by one, the checked date moves, and where the figure fed an arithmetic line every total below it is worked out again and reprinted.

That last clause is the part that takes the time. A single assumption on these pages can carry four or five totals behind it, so moving one input means recomputing the lot and redrawing anything that was plotted from it. A page whose multiple changed from forty to ten is not a page with one new number in it. Where a claim turns out to have had no source behind it, the claim comes off the page instead of being softened.

What will not happen is a quiet edit. The ruled reference line exists so that a reader can tell which version of a page they are looking at, and that is worth nothing if the revision number stands still while the text moves underneath it. The arithmetic itself, and the assumptions shared by every page, are written out on How a receipt is struck.

4

What is declined, and where to take it instead

This site will not approach an operator for a reader. It will not chase a withdrawal, query a closed account, or ask for anybody’s balance to be released. Nor will it advise on an individual dispute, and the reason is not reluctance. A dispute has a procedure with dates in it and this site is not a step in that procedure.

The procedure, in order. Complain to the operator first, inside six months of whatever happened. Acknowledgement is due in three working days; a cashier trading at all hours owes it within one day. The whole of the operator’s process, escalation included, has eight weeks from the day the complaint landed. The letter that ends it must set out the decision and the route to an independent adjudicator approved for the purpose. The regulator does not adjudicate either, and says as much: it is not an ombudsman and recovering a reader’s money is no part of what it does. Those timings, and what the adjudicator is for, are set out at greater length on Staying in control.

Four further things are declined, each for a plain reason. A bonus code will not be supplied, because codes expire and a code printed here would be wrong within weeks. Whether a particular reader qualifies for a particular offer is a question only the operator holding that reader’s account can answer. Nobody here will say which offer to take; the arithmetic is published so a reader can decide that themselves. And a request to be let out of a self-exclusion early cannot be handled here, nor would this site pass one on. Only the scheme itself can act on its own registrations, and it will not end one before the minimum term has run.

Harm is the one subject where this page has a number instead of a procedure. GamCare takes calls on 0808 8020 133 at no charge, and somebody answers whatever the hour. Data a reader holds about themselves is dealt with on Privacy, which also says plainly where that sheet cannot be specific. Commercial approaches go unanswered where they arrive dressed as a correction, and the terms on which this site is paid at all are set out at How this sheet is paid.