Due to the retirement of one of our longstanding volunteers in June 2020 we’ve had to change the services we offer.
J4P has always prided itself on a personal, responsive service. We can no longer guarantee this, so we’ve decided to use more general written advice on our website and in leaflets to help people get started with their disputes.
We recognise that this isn’t ideal, especially for people who may be or have been vulnerable, but it is better than not meeting a standard people may feel we’ve promised.
After supporting everyone personally who has contacted Justice for Punters (J4P) for over four years, it’s fair to say as volunteers we’d hoped people in paid employment may have decided to complete this very important work, but they haven’t. Perhaps volunteers doing this work has enabled officialdom to be complacent, e.g. The Gambling Commission and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport? J4P will continue to pester them regularly to set up a free dispute service for people who’ve potentially been exploited by the gambling industry.
The following is a link to our leaflet entitled ‘gambling – have you been exploited’. It outlines what is required in order to start to build a case against a gambling company you think has exploited you.
In the leaflet there is a link to our subject access request template. The leaflet makes it clear how important a subject access request is. Just in case, here is this link again: subject access request.
J4P’s new service approach doesn’t mean we’re not there to reply to emails using info@justiceforpunters.org, but it does mean we may not respond quickly. It also means we will have expected people to have done some work on their dispute themselves before we can offer assistance.
We do hope people can understand that volunteering for an average of 20-30 hours every week couldn’t continue forever?
All the best with your dispute and don’t forget how difficult gambling companies can be; they hate being challenged, are often obstructive, frequently try to deny peoples’ legal rights and disappointingly often lie.
Try to keep positive, stay calm and here is the link to the leaflet again ‘gambling – have you been exploited’.
