Online Poker site and NT support issues - does it ever end?
in Online Poker
Does anyone else have these kinds of problems? I decided to try some new sites and their bonus offers in January, and it's been a never ending series of problems that have seen me dealing with customer support with every site I have dealt with. I’m not sure what the point of this post is… it’s not so much to bitch, but I guess I’d like to hear if others experience this many headaches when dealing with their online poker accounts. Is this normal?
1) Neteller - I registered an account a while back, but only tried to make a deposit this month. It was a nightmare. Credit card deposit - declined. Linking my bank account took forever. I was on the phone a bunch with them but finally they figured it out and got my account up and running.
The one thing that is annoying the hell out of me is that my NT account is in Can $. I noticed already that I'm losing a bit on the transfer of funds from Can$ to US$ and vice versa. I asked and they said I can change this, but I would need to open another account and then call them to manually close my CDN$ account and activate the US$ account (since you can only have one account, they would otherwise automatically block the US$ account from being accepted). I dunno... I have spent so much time with this it would be a pain, and on top of it I think doing this would create serious cashout problems when I try to cashout to a different NT account than the one that I used to fund my initial deposit to one of the poker sites I play at currently.
2) Gaming Club - opened my account and couldn't log in a day later. Emails were never returned about the issue. Their phone support is good though. They told me I had an "inconsistent IP" address, but after a little discussion they said they would fix it for me. They put me on hold and a few minutes later I was up and running. I never did get any emails from them, even though the CSR on the phone said they had sent emails to me about this issue.
A little less than a month later I tried cashing out. I made the request on a Saturday at 11 p.m.. By Wednesday afternoon I was getting a little concerned that something was amiss, so I called their support line. Once again I have to say the person was professional and helpful. He explained that the same problem that caused my account to be frozen initially was also causing problems with my cashout. The CSR said he would handle it personally and said the money would be in my account within 48 hours. It actually was there about 24 hours later.
3) Party Poker - opened an account there but did not deposit for a while because of the problems I was having with Neteller. Finally I deposited using one of the many bonus codes they had sent me via email. I used the 50% bonus up to $100, with a deposit of $200. They only credited me with $40 in bonus though?!? They even sent me an email about the $40 bonus. I emailed back about the offer I had signed up with. They responded that the deadline was Jan X. I had to email them back to let them know that, according to my calendar, it was still not Jan X. They finally credited me the $100 bonus instead of the $40 they had originally given me.
Now I'd have to say that they were very prompt and their emails were surprisingly well written, since I have read in the past that their support was pretty bad. Overall it was okay, just a pain in the ass considering that I would think they could figure out that the offer was valid since they quoted the date it was good until in their emails.
4) William Hill – opened an account, but my deposit from Neteller would not go through. When I looked at my Neteller transactions, I could see the declined transactions from William Hill. One thing that bothers me a bit was that the amount of the declined transactions (I tried 3 times) was more than what I had tried to deposit to William Hill, although only by $10 US. I double checked to make sure it wasn’t due to some minimum deposit requirement, but I was definitely putting in more than their minimum. I called their support line and spoke to someone who put me on hold for quite a while. She came back on the line and said there was a problem affecting all their deposits, their payment processing department was aware of it and was working on it, that I should try again another day as it was not likely to be worked out that day.
I guess it could be worse. All my issues (except the William Hill one, but that should get worked out) got resolved, and the customer support personel everywhere was alright I guess. The thing that bothers me is how many hoops I had to jump through just to set up 3 poker accounts and a Neteller account. Are issues like this typical, or was I just unlucky? Either way, I hope the online poker industry can do something to work out these sorts of things, because I spent a helluva lot of time on these issues. I have to wonder how many people would have been as persistent as I was in getting these issues resolved, and how many people would have just switched over to another site.
1) Neteller - I registered an account a while back, but only tried to make a deposit this month. It was a nightmare. Credit card deposit - declined. Linking my bank account took forever. I was on the phone a bunch with them but finally they figured it out and got my account up and running.
The one thing that is annoying the hell out of me is that my NT account is in Can $. I noticed already that I'm losing a bit on the transfer of funds from Can$ to US$ and vice versa. I asked and they said I can change this, but I would need to open another account and then call them to manually close my CDN$ account and activate the US$ account (since you can only have one account, they would otherwise automatically block the US$ account from being accepted). I dunno... I have spent so much time with this it would be a pain, and on top of it I think doing this would create serious cashout problems when I try to cashout to a different NT account than the one that I used to fund my initial deposit to one of the poker sites I play at currently.
2) Gaming Club - opened my account and couldn't log in a day later. Emails were never returned about the issue. Their phone support is good though. They told me I had an "inconsistent IP" address, but after a little discussion they said they would fix it for me. They put me on hold and a few minutes later I was up and running. I never did get any emails from them, even though the CSR on the phone said they had sent emails to me about this issue.
A little less than a month later I tried cashing out. I made the request on a Saturday at 11 p.m.. By Wednesday afternoon I was getting a little concerned that something was amiss, so I called their support line. Once again I have to say the person was professional and helpful. He explained that the same problem that caused my account to be frozen initially was also causing problems with my cashout. The CSR said he would handle it personally and said the money would be in my account within 48 hours. It actually was there about 24 hours later.
3) Party Poker - opened an account there but did not deposit for a while because of the problems I was having with Neteller. Finally I deposited using one of the many bonus codes they had sent me via email. I used the 50% bonus up to $100, with a deposit of $200. They only credited me with $40 in bonus though?!? They even sent me an email about the $40 bonus. I emailed back about the offer I had signed up with. They responded that the deadline was Jan X. I had to email them back to let them know that, according to my calendar, it was still not Jan X. They finally credited me the $100 bonus instead of the $40 they had originally given me.
Now I'd have to say that they were very prompt and their emails were surprisingly well written, since I have read in the past that their support was pretty bad. Overall it was okay, just a pain in the ass considering that I would think they could figure out that the offer was valid since they quoted the date it was good until in their emails.
4) William Hill – opened an account, but my deposit from Neteller would not go through. When I looked at my Neteller transactions, I could see the declined transactions from William Hill. One thing that bothers me a bit was that the amount of the declined transactions (I tried 3 times) was more than what I had tried to deposit to William Hill, although only by $10 US. I double checked to make sure it wasn’t due to some minimum deposit requirement, but I was definitely putting in more than their minimum. I called their support line and spoke to someone who put me on hold for quite a while. She came back on the line and said there was a problem affecting all their deposits, their payment processing department was aware of it and was working on it, that I should try again another day as it was not likely to be worked out that day.
I guess it could be worse. All my issues (except the William Hill one, but that should get worked out) got resolved, and the customer support personel everywhere was alright I guess. The thing that bothers me is how many hoops I had to jump through just to set up 3 poker accounts and a Neteller account. Are issues like this typical, or was I just unlucky? Either way, I hope the online poker industry can do something to work out these sorts of things, because I spent a helluva lot of time on these issues. I have to wonder how many people would have been as persistent as I was in getting these issues resolved, and how many people would have just switched over to another site.
Comments
The individual results are sort of a mixed bag in terms of being typical. Being bunched together like you described is probably the more atypical thing, but it may make some sense to have a large number of mix-ups since you are opening several new poker accounts and a new "meta-account" (i.e. Neteller) at the same time.
1. Credit card transactions directly or indirectly related to online gambling are often declined by credit card companies. Very typical.
2. The not well established sites, being relatively "young", have normally not worked through a lot of the basic technical problems their various customers might have. Somewhat typical.
2'. There is also one well established site which never struck me as overly competent at running an online poker room either.
3. Linking Neteller to a bank account can take a long time. Presumably they need to do a lot of verification/authentication before being authorized to access your bank account. Typical.
4. First time cashouts from new accounts can take much longer than usual. Cashouts from not well established sites can take much longer than from the well established sites. Typical.
As usual, this kind of stuff is IMO & "your results may differ".
ScottyZ