I won 1360 at HippoJo casino on 17th May.
I deposited by Credit Card, and when I went to cashout the cashier offered no credit card or cheque option, so I entered my Neteller details and requested two 500 withdrawals (this is the maximum).
I then checked on their site and it says you can withdraw by cheque. This wasn't listed in the software, so I emailed them that same day.
"Hi, I deposited into my account by credit card, and would now like to withdraw 1360 by cheque. I have actually already requested two 500 withdrawals by neteller, but I would prefer it to received the money by cheque, which is not listed in the software, but according to your banking page is possible.
Accordingly, could you please cancel the two 500 neteller withdrawals and send me the whole balance by cheque."
They responded on 23rd May saying that:
"100 was due to be reversed back to your credit card, but I see accounts has cancelled that now and it has returned to your account giving a balance of 460 remaining, with the 900 still pending as a Neteller withdrawal.
I'll forward this onto accounts, however I don't think we can actually send out winnings via cheque at this time - although you can request a cheque from Neteller, is there any reason why Neteller isn't acceptable any more?
Sorry for the confusion."
I replied back saying that Neteller was bad for me, explaining
"Hi, Neteller will charge me fees for converting to US$ (my neteller account is in US$).
According to your website, it's possible to withdraw by cheque. Withdrawing the whole balance to my credit card would be fine too.
Thanks"
On 31st May, they told me
"I've forwarded your request onto our accounts department - who will get back to you when the check is raised and sent."
When I emailed on 5th June, to check up on this, I was reminded that I needed to send them documentation, which they had requested on 22nd May. This I sent the next day, 6th June.
My withdrawal had not yet been processed a week later, when I received this email (13th June):
"Late Tuesday 12th June the HippoJo database servers suffered a hardware controller failure. This hardware item is being replaced now, and afterward RTG will ensure that any databases that may have been impacted are restored properly and player balances are correctly reset to their values immediately prior to the casino becoming unavailable."
So on 18th June I asked what was happening:
"Still no withdrawal???????
One month now, what is going on?"
The next day they paid me a payment of 500 and of 400 by Neteller.
I asked them why this had been done saying:
"The money was supposed to be sent to me by cheque, along with the 460 that remains in my account, as I requested some weeks ago, a total of 1360."
I got a reply as follows:
"Thank you for your email and it has been escalated to me.
I do apologise that you were not paid by cheque. I authorised and processed your payment to Neteller. Your pending withdrawal had Neteller as the chosen withdrawal method, and although their was a customer support notice requesting that your full amount be paid by cheque, this is not a service we currently offer and hence why it is not available in the cashier.
I noticed that accounts had been waiting on documentation from you, and although this was provided earlier in June, our hardware failure last week has put us behind in payment processing. I wanted to ensure that you were paid as soon as possible, and made the decision to pay your pending withdrawal to your chosen withdrawal method of Neteller.
I apologise if this has caused you any inconvenience, but I assure you I made the decision with the best of intentions.
Please feel free to contact me should you require any further information."
I replied the same day:
"I had been told that you would pay by cheque. My Neteller account is denominated in US$, and they charge 1.9% to convert from other currencies to dollars, so I have received 1.9% less than the true dollar equivalent of 900. In addition, to withdraw the money from the account, it will have to be converted back to GBP, so I will pay 1.9% twice, so this has cost me 34.20. I do not think it is reasonable despite the clear statement and agreement not to pay me by neteller, that you have nonetheless done so.
Hi, this is not very satisfactory to me, you accept payment by credit card, and yet I cannot cashout to credit card, as in all other casinos. I don't think you should have broken your agreement with me, and that I should face these costs as a result, and I also think it's ridiculous that there is no way to cashout using normal payment methods (i.e. cheque, bank transfer, or credit card payment)."
I received the reply back swiftly:
"Thank you for your email, I have passed this onto Kathy as she is looking after your payment. She is currently not here at the moment but should be back within the next 2 hours,you should receive a response then."
I had not received any response a week later, so emailed them on 26th June asking for a response.
I finally received one on 30th June, which claimed to have responded on 21st June, although this was definitely not received at my email address, so either it did not get sent, or there is a fault with hippojo's servers:
The Accounting Department has informed me that you have not received my earlier response to you. Please see email sent to you 21 June detailed below:
Thank you for your email of the 19th June where in part you state "Hi, this is not very satisfactory to me, you accept payment by credit card, and yet I cannot cashout to credit card, as in all other casinos. I don't think you should have broken your agreement with me, and that I should face these costs as a result, and I also think it's ridiculous that there is no way to cashout using normal payment methods (i.e. cheque, bank transfer, or credit card payment)."
I am one of the principal owners of HippoJo. I advise that our
policies and actions stand. You did request payment by cheque, but
you also registered a NETeller account with us. We did not agree to pay your withdrawal by cheque. A request by you does not amount to an obligation on our part.
You seem dissatisfied with our services.
Your dissatisfaction stems from NETeller charging you a 1.9% fee and you would have preferred we pay you by an alternate method other than NETeller. You have deposited 100 with us, and withdrawn 900 and NETeller have charged you 34.20. If we had paid you by cheque we would have charged you 20 - please see Outdated URL (Invalid) banking.aspx where it is stated "All cheque withdrawals under / 1,000 will be subject to a processing fee of /20."
So it appears to me your dissatisfaction is about 14.20 (or 1.57% of your withdrawal) being the difference between what you have been charged by NETeller, and the amount we would have charged you. Do I understand your complaint correctly?
If I do understand your complaint correctly, you therefore suggest that to remedy this 1.57% cost imposition on you we provide alternate methods of payments to players. Our merchant agreement does not permit us to to pay winnings to credit card. That is a policy imposed upon us by the credit card association. We do have the facility to do direct bank transfers but again they come with fees, and we offer this service to our established customers who respond diligently to our requests for identification documentation and the like.
We look forward to your continued patronage. Should you not wish to continue with us please let me know in the first instance and I will personally ensure your account is deactivated. In the interim I have instructed our marketing team to not offer promotions or bonuses to you until I receive your response.
I replied on 30th June:
I really do not understand your response.
I informed you on 23rd May that I did not want to withdraw by Neteller:
--quoted emails above explaining that Neteller would cost me money--
There was clear agreement to pay by cheque, and I did explain explicitly why I did not want to be paid by Neteller.
Having clearly agreed that a cheque would be sent and that a Neteller withdrawal would cost me in fees, I don't see how it is reasonable for you to refuse to refund my costs occurred as a result of your breaking the agreement that I would be paid by cheque.
Could you also note that the withdrawal was for 1360 in total, as per the email above, and acknowledged by your support, and that there would not in fact be any withdrawal fee, because the amount was well over 1,000.
I am not sure if it is possible for you to reverse the payments you made to Neteller and to pay out the cheque as agreed, but I would appreciate it if you would make at least some effort to rectify this poor customer service that I have received.
The response of the manager is quite condescending "We did not agree to pay your withdrawal by cheque. A request by you does not amount to an obligation on our part." when it is clearly detailed on their website that cheque payment is an option, and not only that, but I was told they would "get back to you when the check is raised and sent."
I also found the remark "we offer this service to our established customers who respond diligently to our requests for identification documentation and the like." to be extremely patronising, a not-so-subtle reference to the fact that I forgot to respond to their first email asking for ID. It's rather odd that he noticed this fact, amid the 26 emails sent to me by HippoJo, and the 12 I sent to them, but failed to notice that I had requested a withdrawal of 1360, not 900.
It's also a bit strange that I was originally told "100 was due to be reversed back to your credit card", when the manager said that payments to credit card are not possible.
Since replying to their email, last Saturday, I sent an additional email on Wednesday evening to ask if they were going to respond to my email. They have not done so.
The attitude of this casino is extremely diappointing, and it unfortunately comes across as a rather typical RTG casino, in that the poor service is coming not from normal support staff, but from the manager right at the top. This has manifested itself in:
* Unncessary ultimatums/threats - I simply asked to be paid in the manner I requested, and the manager responds with "I have instructed our marketing team to not offer promotions or bonuses to you until I receive your response." There was no reason to say this, and the implication is clear 'I don't care what you think, this is what we've done and if you don't like it, tough'. Similarly, 'Should you not wish to continue with us please let me know in the first instance and I will personally ensure your account is deactivated.' Again, there was no reason to bring this up, I had just sent them one email pointing out that I had asked not to be paid by neteller, and for some reason the response is "If you don't like it, we will close your account."
* Deliberately ignoring my email replying to them - again demonstrating the attitude, "we don't care what you think".
* Poorly managed cashier - cheque payment is pretty much fundamental, but somehow we have had to go through 38 emails, and still not got any cheque. (And note, despite what it says on the website, it is actually not possible to request cheque withdrawal in the software) It would not be so bad, but when you accept credit card as a means of payment, and refuse to pay out to it (most casinos do pay out to credit card in my experience), it's not reasonable to expect people to open a web wallet - given that none of them are especially reliable.
* Not complying with its own website, which says cheque payout is possible, and instead saying "A request by you does not amount to an obligation on our part.", "our policies and actions stand" in other words 'we don't care what you think, we'll do what we like'.
I deposited by Credit Card, and when I went to cashout the cashier offered no credit card or cheque option, so I entered my Neteller details and requested two 500 withdrawals (this is the maximum).
I then checked on their site and it says you can withdraw by cheque. This wasn't listed in the software, so I emailed them that same day.
"Hi, I deposited into my account by credit card, and would now like to withdraw 1360 by cheque. I have actually already requested two 500 withdrawals by neteller, but I would prefer it to received the money by cheque, which is not listed in the software, but according to your banking page is possible.
Accordingly, could you please cancel the two 500 neteller withdrawals and send me the whole balance by cheque."
They responded on 23rd May saying that:
"100 was due to be reversed back to your credit card, but I see accounts has cancelled that now and it has returned to your account giving a balance of 460 remaining, with the 900 still pending as a Neteller withdrawal.
I'll forward this onto accounts, however I don't think we can actually send out winnings via cheque at this time - although you can request a cheque from Neteller, is there any reason why Neteller isn't acceptable any more?
Sorry for the confusion."
I replied back saying that Neteller was bad for me, explaining
"Hi, Neteller will charge me fees for converting to US$ (my neteller account is in US$).
According to your website, it's possible to withdraw by cheque. Withdrawing the whole balance to my credit card would be fine too.
Thanks"
On 31st May, they told me
"I've forwarded your request onto our accounts department - who will get back to you when the check is raised and sent."
When I emailed on 5th June, to check up on this, I was reminded that I needed to send them documentation, which they had requested on 22nd May. This I sent the next day, 6th June.
My withdrawal had not yet been processed a week later, when I received this email (13th June):
"Late Tuesday 12th June the HippoJo database servers suffered a hardware controller failure. This hardware item is being replaced now, and afterward RTG will ensure that any databases that may have been impacted are restored properly and player balances are correctly reset to their values immediately prior to the casino becoming unavailable."
So on 18th June I asked what was happening:
"Still no withdrawal???????
One month now, what is going on?"
The next day they paid me a payment of 500 and of 400 by Neteller.
I asked them why this had been done saying:
"The money was supposed to be sent to me by cheque, along with the 460 that remains in my account, as I requested some weeks ago, a total of 1360."
I got a reply as follows:
"Thank you for your email and it has been escalated to me.
I do apologise that you were not paid by cheque. I authorised and processed your payment to Neteller. Your pending withdrawal had Neteller as the chosen withdrawal method, and although their was a customer support notice requesting that your full amount be paid by cheque, this is not a service we currently offer and hence why it is not available in the cashier.
I noticed that accounts had been waiting on documentation from you, and although this was provided earlier in June, our hardware failure last week has put us behind in payment processing. I wanted to ensure that you were paid as soon as possible, and made the decision to pay your pending withdrawal to your chosen withdrawal method of Neteller.
I apologise if this has caused you any inconvenience, but I assure you I made the decision with the best of intentions.
Please feel free to contact me should you require any further information."
I replied the same day:
"I had been told that you would pay by cheque. My Neteller account is denominated in US$, and they charge 1.9% to convert from other currencies to dollars, so I have received 1.9% less than the true dollar equivalent of 900. In addition, to withdraw the money from the account, it will have to be converted back to GBP, so I will pay 1.9% twice, so this has cost me 34.20. I do not think it is reasonable despite the clear statement and agreement not to pay me by neteller, that you have nonetheless done so.
Hi, this is not very satisfactory to me, you accept payment by credit card, and yet I cannot cashout to credit card, as in all other casinos. I don't think you should have broken your agreement with me, and that I should face these costs as a result, and I also think it's ridiculous that there is no way to cashout using normal payment methods (i.e. cheque, bank transfer, or credit card payment)."
I received the reply back swiftly:
"Thank you for your email, I have passed this onto Kathy as she is looking after your payment. She is currently not here at the moment but should be back within the next 2 hours,you should receive a response then."
I had not received any response a week later, so emailed them on 26th June asking for a response.
I finally received one on 30th June, which claimed to have responded on 21st June, although this was definitely not received at my email address, so either it did not get sent, or there is a fault with hippojo's servers:
The Accounting Department has informed me that you have not received my earlier response to you. Please see email sent to you 21 June detailed below:
Thank you for your email of the 19th June where in part you state "Hi, this is not very satisfactory to me, you accept payment by credit card, and yet I cannot cashout to credit card, as in all other casinos. I don't think you should have broken your agreement with me, and that I should face these costs as a result, and I also think it's ridiculous that there is no way to cashout using normal payment methods (i.e. cheque, bank transfer, or credit card payment)."
I am one of the principal owners of HippoJo. I advise that our
policies and actions stand. You did request payment by cheque, but
you also registered a NETeller account with us. We did not agree to pay your withdrawal by cheque. A request by you does not amount to an obligation on our part.
You seem dissatisfied with our services.
Your dissatisfaction stems from NETeller charging you a 1.9% fee and you would have preferred we pay you by an alternate method other than NETeller. You have deposited 100 with us, and withdrawn 900 and NETeller have charged you 34.20. If we had paid you by cheque we would have charged you 20 - please see Outdated URL (Invalid) banking.aspx where it is stated "All cheque withdrawals under / 1,000 will be subject to a processing fee of /20."
So it appears to me your dissatisfaction is about 14.20 (or 1.57% of your withdrawal) being the difference between what you have been charged by NETeller, and the amount we would have charged you. Do I understand your complaint correctly?
If I do understand your complaint correctly, you therefore suggest that to remedy this 1.57% cost imposition on you we provide alternate methods of payments to players. Our merchant agreement does not permit us to to pay winnings to credit card. That is a policy imposed upon us by the credit card association. We do have the facility to do direct bank transfers but again they come with fees, and we offer this service to our established customers who respond diligently to our requests for identification documentation and the like.
We look forward to your continued patronage. Should you not wish to continue with us please let me know in the first instance and I will personally ensure your account is deactivated. In the interim I have instructed our marketing team to not offer promotions or bonuses to you until I receive your response.
I replied on 30th June:
I really do not understand your response.
I informed you on 23rd May that I did not want to withdraw by Neteller:
--quoted emails above explaining that Neteller would cost me money--
There was clear agreement to pay by cheque, and I did explain explicitly why I did not want to be paid by Neteller.
Having clearly agreed that a cheque would be sent and that a Neteller withdrawal would cost me in fees, I don't see how it is reasonable for you to refuse to refund my costs occurred as a result of your breaking the agreement that I would be paid by cheque.
Could you also note that the withdrawal was for 1360 in total, as per the email above, and acknowledged by your support, and that there would not in fact be any withdrawal fee, because the amount was well over 1,000.
I am not sure if it is possible for you to reverse the payments you made to Neteller and to pay out the cheque as agreed, but I would appreciate it if you would make at least some effort to rectify this poor customer service that I have received.
The response of the manager is quite condescending "We did not agree to pay your withdrawal by cheque. A request by you does not amount to an obligation on our part." when it is clearly detailed on their website that cheque payment is an option, and not only that, but I was told they would "get back to you when the check is raised and sent."
I also found the remark "we offer this service to our established customers who respond diligently to our requests for identification documentation and the like." to be extremely patronising, a not-so-subtle reference to the fact that I forgot to respond to their first email asking for ID. It's rather odd that he noticed this fact, amid the 26 emails sent to me by HippoJo, and the 12 I sent to them, but failed to notice that I had requested a withdrawal of 1360, not 900.
It's also a bit strange that I was originally told "100 was due to be reversed back to your credit card", when the manager said that payments to credit card are not possible.
Since replying to their email, last Saturday, I sent an additional email on Wednesday evening to ask if they were going to respond to my email. They have not done so.
The attitude of this casino is extremely diappointing, and it unfortunately comes across as a rather typical RTG casino, in that the poor service is coming not from normal support staff, but from the manager right at the top. This has manifested itself in:
* Unncessary ultimatums/threats - I simply asked to be paid in the manner I requested, and the manager responds with "I have instructed our marketing team to not offer promotions or bonuses to you until I receive your response." There was no reason to say this, and the implication is clear 'I don't care what you think, this is what we've done and if you don't like it, tough'. Similarly, 'Should you not wish to continue with us please let me know in the first instance and I will personally ensure your account is deactivated.' Again, there was no reason to bring this up, I had just sent them one email pointing out that I had asked not to be paid by neteller, and for some reason the response is "If you don't like it, we will close your account."
* Deliberately ignoring my email replying to them - again demonstrating the attitude, "we don't care what you think".
* Poorly managed cashier - cheque payment is pretty much fundamental, but somehow we have had to go through 38 emails, and still not got any cheque. (And note, despite what it says on the website, it is actually not possible to request cheque withdrawal in the software) It would not be so bad, but when you accept credit card as a means of payment, and refuse to pay out to it (most casinos do pay out to credit card in my experience), it's not reasonable to expect people to open a web wallet - given that none of them are especially reliable.
* Not complying with its own website, which says cheque payout is possible, and instead saying "A request by you does not amount to an obligation on our part.", "our policies and actions stand" in other words 'we don't care what you think, we'll do what we like'.
