My wonderful son Jack took his life in 2017 after he had been drawn into a gambling addiction. Soon afterwards, I visited William Hill’s London office with my husband, Charles. We were more naive back then; they’d just admitted shortcomings and we wanted to warn people and thought they would listen. Jack had started gambling online with William Hill, and did so, on and off, until he died.
We requested a meeting with the chief executive, but instead met with the director of sustainability and our calls for further measures were dismissed.Soon after we were escorted out of the building, quickly and rudely.Yesterday’s news that the company has been fined a record £19.2m for multiple failings did not surprise us. The list of failures is extensive, including allowing obviously addicted customers to lose tens of thousands of pounds in minutes, even after they’d tried to self-exclude.
