Babysister,
I've been following this thread, and have felt very bad for you, and also felt a bit guilty - the problems with Firepay have existed since Firepay first started, and those of us who figured out they didn't pay any money BACK to users probably didn't do enough to make a big stink about the problem. There are too many complicated issues surrounding online gambling for any problem to ever be simple, and the problem of Firepay has been compounded by the problem that it has been used and viciously defended by the majority of online gamblers who have to be considered gambling addicts (please understand I'm not accusing all Firepay users of being gambling addicts, and am only saying that unfortunately, it became a favorite of a number of gambling addicts, and that group of people abusively attacked anyone who complained about not ever being paid back the money they had in Firepay, until we got tired of trying to warn others - keep in mind that the problem here is that most addicts don't ever make withdrawals, especially from an account like Firepay or PayPal, and so they abusively attacked people who complained, calling them liars, troublemakers, & far worse (lol), even though most of them admitted, upon pressure, that they had never even attempted to withdraw their money - many of them did and continue to consider any online gambler who actually expects to cash out money to have no place gambling at all, and the abusive statements got ugly - most of us quickly backed off so that the message boards weren't used in such a verbally abusive and completely useless manner). Unfortunately, by backing off the issue, it's likely that Casinomeister and some of the other advocacy groups have never been fully aware of how serious the problem with Firepay has been all along. Most of us were careful w/Firepay in the beginning, and therefore found out they didn't pay back anything before we had large amounts of money involved, and there was a period of time, about 6-10 months ago, when casinos were dropping Firepay like crazy, because of the very problems you've complained about. Other casinos that kept Firepay as an option seldom actually paid winnings back to Firepay unless we requested it, and a number of us, myself included, managed to get most of our money out of Firepay by depositing to those casinos, and then having them pay our winnings to our PayPal accounts or by check. I'm sorry that we failed newcomers to the industry by not making sure they knew of the problems, but the issue became so charged that most of the message boards would have been destroyed if we hadn't stopped writing about the realities of Firepay (I have continued to occasionally post statements, primarily aimed at Americans, explaining that Firepay is a business located in Spain and run under Spanish laws, which don't provide the protections Americans are used to having in consumer and financial matters, and trying to make sure Americans understood that they had few or no legal rights if something went wrong with Firepay because of that, but even those statements tended to bring very abusive responses from the people who hadn't ever tried to withdraw from the Firepay accounts, but insisted Firepay paid everyone who asked because they feared the downfall of Firepay would mean they'd have no way to feed their addictions). I don't know what has happened since Firepay began requiring users to link their bank accounts (except I'm aware that Firepay has been frequently accused of initiating withdrawals that users didn't authorize, with the money going to Firepay and not the person's Firepay account - and since it's a Spanish company, unless an individual's bank was willing to reimburse the money, the person had no ability to get the money back), but before Firepay initiated that system, I never heard of a single person who was ever paid anything when they requested a withdrawal from their Firepay account - there might be a few people who did get paid, but large numbers of us discussed it quite a bit for a while, & no one out of those hundreds of people had ever received a dime in response to requests for withdrawals, even though most of us had tried. Firepay completely ignored our requests, as though we never made them. That's when some casinos started dropping them and others began to help us get our money by accepting Firepay deposits, but paying us winnings thru other means (that's how I got my money out). That approach might still work for people with money stuck in Firepay who haven't had their accounts locked, but I'm uncomfortable listing the casinos' names in an open forum, because of some peculiarities in how Firepay operates that could cause problems for those casinos (many are on Casinomeister's recommended list, tho).
Most of us considered Firepay very dangerous long ago, and quit using them nearly a year ago except to get our money out safely thru casino deposits. I hope that people reading about your problems will realize that U.S. laws are NOT the norm when it comes to consumer protection, and always be cautious about Firepay and any other non-U.S.-based financial option (find out about the laws and regulations that govern them - and read the info at the sites like Firepay - Firepay's regs used to say pretty clearly that they could refuse to pay for their own reasons, which was a huge warning sign to those of us who read the info).
Please don't feel I'm blaming you for what happened, because it's NOT your fault when a fraudulent business takes your money - and most of us have been taken advantage of more than once in this industry for significant amts of money. What I want to do is warn everyone that the dangers of Firepay ARE serious, that most of us probably weren't tied into Casinomeister and similar sites enough to report our own problems when we had them so Casinomeister never realized the full extent or seriousness of the problems, and remind everyone to be aware that the laws of their own country aren't the same as other countries, and when they deal with a business in a different country, the laws that count are the ones where the business is.
I hope Casinomeister can help those people who have lost money recently and have no way of getting it back any other way. But I have to warn you that Casinomeister cannot always help, because some businesses simply don't care if their reputations are finally given the appropriate negative statements they deserve, because they figure plenty of gamblers will continue to use them anyway. And in this industry, until players are willing to refuse to use casinos and financial agents that are KNOWN to be dishonest (and blacklisted casinos continue to have plenty of users, which is ridiculous), we will all continue to suffer and the industry won't improve. Firepay's behavior is another indicator that unless players finally start to band together for a greater good and demand honesty, the industry will continue to be filled with dishonest and fraudulent businesses. You shouldn't lose your money, and Good As Gold IS a good casino - but start to prepare yourself for the unfortunate likelihood that you won't get your money back from Firepay. I'm truly sorry, and I promise to be far more proactive about reporting such problems, and hope others will do the same - that's how we will improve this industry. (sorry this is so long, lol)