People point out that there have been developments in online banking, as well as the developments in the gambling market. 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.
Why didn’t those credit card people phone me up or stop me? Because if they looked at my record, it was completely clean, I paid off regularly every single month, and the most I ever did on my credit cards it was for shopping. So, it was unusual activity even then. It probably sounds bitter and complaining but these are these are things that in my recovery and obviously moving forward are the things that you think about. Why didn’t that happen, you know, why didn’t somebody stop?
I think the banks should form a network of some degree. So, if someone can see irrational actions happening on someone’s account and they’re trying to open another bank account, there should be some flags put up there. And I don’t mean just jumping in and saying what are you doing, but you know, it needs to be done in the right way. But there just needs to be so much more done.
I couldn’t see it. It was just like, you know, paperless so it didn’t feel like it was money. And I think again, I spoke to Nationwide in the middle of the week about having people, you know, even when I went to the bank and if someone had seen that, if someone may have said to me at the point, “Are you Ok? Something seems to being going on here”. But people aren’t qualified to do that, but we need to have someone there who is qualified or have people in these places with lived experience that can help people because was just too easy for me to do it.
There’s a couple of things that changed over time in terms of betting on credit cards. That was ridiculously damaging. I racked up tens of thousands of credit card debt gambling. But, yeah, things like I mean, I’ve never relied on payday loans and things like that. I do have loans, with sort of more reputable companies, but things like that do still exist. There is access to quick money with high interest rates and stuff like that. So as a gambler, there was always ways to get money.
I certainly want the banks to look a bit closer at how people spend their money because they can clearly see that if somebody’s on a low income is depositing a bit of a high percentage of their, you know, maybe over their disposable income, they just need to have a word and intervene. It’s difficult, but I think it’s necessary because they’ve got the overall view. If you know, if I have an account with William Hill, they don’t know how much I spend with Ladbrokes, Coral, Paddy Power, Sky Bet, whoever but the banks do. The banks can see this, so I think the banks could play a big part in that.
I always remember with this IVA group, you had to print screen six months worth or 12 months worth of your bank statements… I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to print screen my bank statements where it wasn’t catching the gambling transactions. The odd one would have it but they didn’t say anything about it because I always remember when I had the meeting on the phone with some supervisor she was like– I said to them, I was honest and I said I was gambling, I couldn’t stop. I ended up taking loans out and they said, right, and there was like, “Well, do you think that’s definitely sorted, your gambling problem?” I was like, “Yes, I won’t be doing that again,” but obviously, I did end up doing that again.