The tools every UK operator must give you
Deposit limits, reality checks, time-outs and self-exclusion are licence conditions, not favours. Knowing that changes how you ask for them.
Deposit limits, time-outs, reality checks and self-exclusion are not customer service gestures. They are licence conditions. Knowing that changes how you ask for them.
Deposit limits
Every licensed operator must let you set a limit on what you can deposit, and must make it easy to find. The asymmetry is the important part: a decrease takes effect immediately, an increase must not. An operator that applies an increase instantly, or buries the control several menus deep, is not meeting the standard.
Time-outs
A short break, locked in. Operators must offer time-outs of twenty-four hours, one week, one month and up to six weeks, and must not let you back in early. No explanation is required and you should not be asked for one.
Reality checks
A periodic on-screen interruption telling you how long you have been playing and what you have spent. You can usually set the interval. It is deliberately a break in flow — that is the point, and an operator cannot make it disappear quietly.
Self-exclusion
A minimum of six months, and it must cover the operator's other brands. For an operator running twenty-seven of them, that single request should close all twenty-seven. Nationally, GAMSTOP does the same across every licensed operator at once.
What has been taken away entirely
- Credit cards — prohibited for gambling in Great Britain since April 2020.
- Autoplay on slots — banned, along with features that speed up or celebrate losses as wins.
- Spin speed — a single slot spin cannot take less than 2.5 seconds.
If an operator will not play
These are requirements, not favours. If a licensed operator makes a limit hard to set, applies an increase instantly, or discourages you from self-excluding, that is a matter for the operator's complaints process, then its ADR provider, and the Commission wants to know about patterns of it.