Dormant Account Fee (Casino)

Many gambling operators include a dormant or inactive account fee clause in their terms of service, deducting a flat amount or percentage from a player's balance each month once the account has gone unused for a specified period, typically framed as covering account maintenance costs. Where disclosed clearly and applied at a reasonable rate, this is a standard (if player-unfriendly) industry practice rather than a scam. It becomes scam-adjacent when the fee is buried deep in lengthy terms never meaningfully disclosed at signup, set at a rate designed to fully drain small balances within a few months, or applied retroactively to a much longer inactivity period than actually occurred once a player attempts to withdraw or reactivate.

Players who deposit funds and then step away from a site for an extended period — including after supposedly quitting or self-excluding — should be aware that a nonzero balance can be reduced to zero by dormancy fees well before they return, and that the specific fee schedule is set unilaterally by the operator and rarely negotiable after the fact.