How to complain about a delayed bookmaker payout

How a payout complaint works in Great Britain

A complaint about a delayed or disputed withdrawal goes through three stages, in order.

1. The bookmaker. The Gambling Commission says to complain directly to the gambling business first, follow its complaints process and check the terms linked to your account or transaction.¹ Every gambling business must publish its complaints procedure.² Licence rules require that procedure to explain how to complain, the timescales for responding and how to escalate.³ The Commission’s list of things you can complain to a business about includes how much you have been paid, the way your payments were managed, ID verification and the closure of your account.⁴
2. Eight weeks. The business has 8 weeks from receiving your complaint to resolve it. When it has finished, it will tell you the result and what happens next.¹
3. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR). If you are not satisfied with the result, after 8 weeks you can take the complaint to an ADR provider, a free and independent service. You must have been through the business’s own complaints procedure first.⁵ Licence rules say ADR must be free to the customer and available where you have cooperated with the complaints process in a timely way.³

Licence rules also say businesses must not use terms that restrict your right to bring court proceedings.³

Which ADR provider to use

Use the ADR provider your operator names. The Commission says the business should be able to tell you which provider to use and give you its contact details, and may give you a “deadlock letter” confirming you can take the complaint to ADR.⁵ bet365, Betfred and William Hill, for example, name the Independent Betting Adjudication Service (IBAS).⁶⁷⁸ LiveScore Bet, Virgin Bet and Unibet name eCOGRA, and Sky Bet names both IBAS and eCOGRA.^9101112

We do not give a list of “approved” providers because the official lists currently disagree. The Commission’s approved ADR providers page, last updated 15 January 2025, lists ADR Group, Pegasus ADR Service, Blexr Limited, CEDR, eCOGRA, IBAS, ProMediate and Tattersalls Committee.¹³ Licence rules now define an ADR entity as one accredited under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, and the Commission says the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) approves and oversees ADR bodies under that Act.³¹⁴ CTSI’s own list includes gambling entries for ADR Group, eCogra, IBAS, ProMediate and Tattersalls Committee, and says the trader must give you the name and web address of an accredited ADR body.¹⁵ Until the lists match, the provider named in your operator’s complaints procedure is the one to use.

What the Gambling Commission does and does not do

The Commission is a regulator, not an ombudsman. It says it does not have the powers to resolve individual gambling complaints or help consumers get their money back, and gives problems with withdrawals as an example.¹⁶ It does not have access to customers’ accounts.¹⁷ It does record every complaint made against a gambling business, and information suggesting a breach of its rules informs any regulatory action it takes.¹⁶ The Competition and Markets Authority advises contacting the company first, and says you can also tell the Commission, contact Citizens Advice or seek independent legal advice.¹⁸

Step by step: from first contact to ADR

Exceptions and limits

• What ADR will not take. ADR providers will not accept complaints about a customer service issue, or about a business refusing to accept a bet or your custom.⁵
• Time limits. Under the grounds in the Commission’s ADR list, a provider may refuse a complaint not brought within its own time limit, which cannot be less than 12 months from when the business told you it could not resolve the complaint.¹³ IBAS says it may decline a dispute if more than a year has passed since you last tried to resolve it.¹⁹ Operators can set limits too: Kwiff says it only handles complaints raised within 6 months of the incident.²⁰
• How IBAS works. IBAS says its service is free, that it typically takes 8 to 10 weeks to reach a decision, and that it can only look at a dispute once the operator’s own complaints process has finished. It says the Commission requires gambling businesses to follow its rulings up to £10,000.¹⁹
• Resolver. You can use the free Resolver tool, but businesses do not have to accept it, so not all will.¹
• Northern Ireland. The Commission does not regulate remote gambling provided in Northern Ireland, and it has no role there in resolving complaints about payments; check the operator’s website for any ADR it offers.²¹²²
• When the problem is the payment firm. If the delay sits with a payment provider rather than the bookmaker, that firm’s own complaints route applies. Trustly, for example, says UK users unhappy with how it handled a complaint may be able to refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service.²³

Contacting the bookmaker and keeping records

Each operator sets out its own stages and response times. For example:

• bet365 says it will try to respond within 48 hours, and that if you disagree with its final response, or it cannot resolve the complaint within eight weeks, it will issue a Complaint Reference so you can go to IBAS.⁶
• BetVictor says it acknowledges complaints within 24 hours and aims to resolve them within 8 weeks, and asks you to request a referral number from it before going to IBAS.²⁴
• Coral’s terms describe a staged process that ends with escalation by email to its Complaints Team, with a final position within eight weeks.²⁵
• William Hill lets you escalate to a second-opinion address before seeking free external adjudication through IBAS.⁸
• Betdaq, which is closing, currently runs an email-only service and says it hopes to resolve queries within 48 hours.²⁶²⁷

The Commission advises telling the business all the information about your complaint, including dates, times and amounts, sharing supporting evidence and keeping a copy of everything you tell it.¹ Save the withdrawal status, emails and chat transcripts in the same place as your checklist. Do not post account details, documents or card numbers on social media or forums, and send documents only through the operator’s own secure channels if it asks for them.

After ADR: appeals and the courts

If you are unhappy with an ADR provider’s final adjudication or appeal, the Commission says you may decide to take your case to the small claims court, after getting your own independent legal advice.⁵ IBAS says you can appeal its decision within 40 days, but only if there is a mistake in the decision or you have new evidence.¹⁹ The Commission cannot get involved in an ADR provider’s decision or ask it to reconsider, and CTSI cannot investigate individual complaints or overturn an ADR body’s decision.¹⁴

What BookiePayout cannot do

BookiePayout is an independent publication, not a regulator, ADR provider or claims service. We cannot take on, assess or escalate your complaint, contact a bookmaker for you or recover money, and we will never ask you to send us account documents, card numbers or passwords. The rules and operator procedures on this page were checked on 19 October 2026 from Gambling Commission, CTSI, IBAS and operator pages, and any of them can change.