People point to how quickly their child or partner were able to spend large amounts of money in a very short period. The ease and speed with which people can make online payments and access credit to gamble has added to the harm they can experience. They say banks have the data to see when someone is getting into trouble with gambling and should have responsibilities to help them. Also, sometimes debt management services did not understand gambling addiction.
At that time, he was able to bet on credit cards… He did have about two occasions where I think he lost on one occasion under £10,000 and on one occasion, just about the £10,000. So again, I spoke to him, but they were literally blips that had happened over like two or three days that money had gone.
I think they need to have some experience with gambling-related debts because and sort of like the things that you need, you know, the blockers on your accounts and those kinds of things. Because your general debt advice services, I don’t think have all that knowledge or have the experience to be able to provide you with that support.
Did you know you can’t stop a business card being used for online gambling? While Barclays, Santander, etc, they all bang on about, “Look what we’re doing to stop personal gambling.” I’ve tried with Barclays to put it on Gamban. I’ve tried to– In a personal banking app, you can go into it, and actually not be able to gamble using your personal bank card, but you can’t do it with a business card… Also, he didn’t have to verify. He’d memorized the number and didn’t have to do any verification at all. He just inputs the information. There needs to be more due diligence.
Other spoke about how people would take loans or borrow money from payday loan companies to gamble. Taking out payday loans or other forms of credit compounded the harm that people experienced.
He had his own self-employed company, he borrowed, took out a £10,000 Lloyds loan for something to do with the car and he just took it and gambled it.
He had several loans and all of this is because of the gambling. Then he had payday loans, and you know how payday loans work. They were even worse than the gambling.
I remember looking at some of those things when [my brother] died. I was like, my goodness, you know, you must know how much, and I looked. It was one of the most sobering things actually, his bank statements because I was frustrated with the level of overdraft he’d been allowed to get compared to his salary.
Gambling companies offer sophisticated ways to deposit money that may bypass existing restrictions. An affected other who was managing the family finances talked about the many ways that people are now able to deposit money to gamble. Their partner did not have access to their card details but managed to work around this by gambling using their phone bill.
I think it was like an American site he went on. I only found out about this after the fact. I think you just put your phone number in and they’ll charge it to your phone bill. Rather than you actually having to have your bank account, that’s another way you can do it because obviously, if he doesn’t have access to his card details or his bank, that’s another way around it because he has a contract phone. You just give the phone number and it charges it to your bill.
Affected others said they were surprised and distressed at how much money it was possible to spend in one gambling session or over time.
I’ve gone through his banks all the way up to June and it was between £300 and £900 a time that he was gambling. He’d go and get £300 out of the ATM and then an hour or two later he was doing it again. I thought I’m missing something. It never occurred to me that somebody could put £900 into a fruit machine in one sitting.
I asked for his bank statements, and as the executor, I could have them. It came in, and it was only two years’ worth of bank statements. You think about a piece of paper, it came in three separate packages, and the packages were this thick each. Literally, you would have minute-by-minute, by minute-by-minute pages of gambling. Then you’d get some payments in, and you can see how it would be just one more go, just one more go. Oh, I’ve won £50 pounds, then it’s gone again, and more when that’s gone. That was one of the most, I think, distressing things.