Joe Fortune Casino - Aussies be careful.

[ladyhawke]

I guess it is because I am used to playing at highly reputable/regulated casinos that this one caught me by surprise.

As Australia is on a downward slide regarding online gambling, I thought I would give this one a go. No bonus involved, but I wish I had done more research before depositing. Reasons as follows:

1: Deposit methods are limited to Debit/Credit card, and Bitcoin.

2: Deposit by Debit card incurred a 2.5% fee. No mention anywhere that I could see - in T&C's or on the deposit page itself - that this would happen.

3: Withdrawals - only by Bitcoin, Bank Wire or cheque.
Bank Wire - minimum w/d of $1500 (yes, you read that right).
Cheque - minimum w/d of $100, and will incur a $50 charge.
Bitcoin - minimum w/d of $20, but other than that can't comment as I don't use Bitcoin.

You are allowed one free withdrawal a month, then the $50 per transaction applies. Punitive!

4: Withdrawal remains in your actual playable balance until it is approved - which can take up to 48 hours. If you continue playing, and your balance goes below your withdrawal, the withdrawal is automatically cancelled, and you have to start the whole process again.

5: To receive funds for a bank wire will take up to 10 days. Ditto for a cheque, but with a cheque you then have to bank it, and wait for it to clear so it could be close to 3 weeks before you actually are able to access your funds. Bitcoin is virtually instant.

6: For any type of Responsible gaming - deposit limits, TAB or SE - you have to contact support, who are only online for a limited number of hours daily. I am not sure how quickly they would respond to an email request.

7: They are licensed in Curacao.

8: When playing any Rival game, after about 8 spins, you will be disconnected, and have to log back into the game. If a game takes a while to load due to the files it requires, then the very first spin will kick you out. This problem only occurs with Rival, none of the other providers, but when I contacted support, it was the usual story - it is not us, it is you. I tried with Chome, Firefox and Edge, all with no joy.

9: On the plus side, they do have an interesting selection of games from varied providers - MG, RTG, Rival, iSoftbet. However for many of the games I couldn't find any provider info, e.g. Cats gone Wild, Eat them All, Terracota Wilds, etc. Some of the games are fun, and pay well, but others? Win 10x your bet, and the screen fills up with a BIG WIN banner, and a very shouty voice congratulates you on your BIG WIN. A $9 win from a 0.90c bet is not my idea of a BIG WIN.

Perhaps if you use Bitcoin, this casino may be for you. But for anyone using a Debit/Credit card, and if you are not a high roller - or are happy with smaller withdrawals - then this casino might not be a good fit.

 

[KasinoKing]

Thanks for the very extensive review - very interesting and helpful!

Everyone should note that they will be forced to drop MG games when all the other MG casinos are forced to leave Aus.

KK

 

[lnspin]

Start using bitcoin, you will be better off.. No fees and a lot of casinos are doing instant payouts with bitcoin

 

[rena35]

Start using bitcoin, you will be better off.. No fees and a lot of casinos are doing instant payouts with bitcoin

What bitcoin wallet do you use that has no fees? I use coin base and they charge me to buy and charge me to send

 

[ladyhawke]

Just to add to this - and this I find unpleasant and disturbing.

When depositing by debit card, you are actually depositing in euros, not AUD.

However, there is no mention of this anywhere including the Online Deposit page when making the actual deposit. So totally unbeknown to you, you are accumulating bank charges for a non-AUD transaction. I only found out by accident, and support told me "It is because they are an International company". That is all well and good, but surely something like this should be stated very clearly?

A very dishonest practice IMHO.

 

[KasinoKing]

When depositing by debit card, you are actually depositing in euros, not AUD.

Thanks again for the valuable feed-back

I have this casino on my new Australian website, but I was not aware of some of the issues you have raised, especially this currency one!
I have written to the operator to ask about 5 of the points you have raised - I will report back with what they say.

KK

 

[ladyhawke]

Thanks again for the valuable feed-back

I have this casino on my new Australian website, but I was not aware of some of the issues you have raised, especially this currency one!
I have written to the operator to ask about 5 of the points you have raised - I will report back with what they say.

KK

I didn't even realise you had an Australian website. I think I definitely need my eyesight tested. Perhaps though it is just as well, bearing in mind the issues I have highlighted. You have really dodged a bullet here as I could win a gold medal for whingeing.

I have attached some entries from my NAB bank statement. Although only one AUD $50 transaction is showing, there were actually four, but the other three deposits are on the previous statement page, and I had trouble incorporating them into this screenshot, so I gave up.

However, notice that the deposit of $50 changed into a debit of $50.85. Joe Fortune support advised me they don't charge fees on deposits, and this must have been a fee imposed by the bank, but this is incorrect. NAB only charges a foreign currency fee in a separate transaction, so this extra amount had to be from the casino itself - probably due to the AUD to Euro to AUD transaction.

Also, there are four foreign currency transaction fees - the reference numbers match that of all the deposits - even though as far as I was aware, I was depositing in AUD. But no - apparently I was actually depositing in Euros.

I have now closed my account as there are simply too many issues/complications for me to feel comfortable playing there.

I will state however - if you are a Bitcoin user, this casino could well be good fun and worth considering. But only if you use Bitcoin.

 

[lnspin]

What bitcoin wallet do you use that has no fees? I use coin base and they charge me to buy and charge me to send

I use blockchain.info for my bitcoin wallet. i mean the fee to send is like 30 cents miners fee. I buy from local bitcoins when i find a good deal listed there.. Also buy from friends, and when i request payouts from casinos or affiliate income i get it in bitcoin

 

[KasinoKing]

However, notice that the deposit of $50 changed into a debit of $50.85. Joe Fortune support advised me they don't charge fees on deposits, and this must have been a fee imposed by the bank, but this is incorrect. NAB only charges a foreign currency fee in a separate transaction, so this extra amount had to be from the casino itself - probably due to the AUD to Euro to AUD transaction.

These are the answers to the questions I asked the operator (in Blue):

When depositing by debit card, you are actually depositing in euros, not AUD.However, there is no mention of this anywhere including the Online Deposit page when making the actual deposit. So totally unbeknown to you, you are accumulating bank charges for a non-AUD transaction. I only found out by accident, and support told me "It is because they are an International company". That is all well and good, but surely something like this should be stated very clearly?
The casinos have to use multiple global providers to ensure they can process deposits for players. Some Credit Cards will work with our AUD providers and some cards would need to be routed to our global providers to ensure that the players deposit is able to be processed. This is quite normal in unregulated markets such as Australia. We’ve however passed along your feedback to the payments team to have this added to the deposits page to ensure players are aware.

Deposit by Debit card incurred a 2.5% fee. No mention anywhere that I could see - in T&C's or on the deposit page itself - that this would happen. The website does not charge any fees for players to deposit to the website however, the players credit card issuing bank may charge a fee for international transactions or cash advances, these fees are collected by the banks themselves and are not passed back to the casino, they do not benefit from the fees.

Withdrawal remains in your actual playable balance until it is approved - which can take up to 48 hours. If you continue playing, and your balance goes below your withdrawal, the withdrawal is automatically cancelled, and you have to start the whole process again.
When a player requests a withdrawal, it has to be reviewed and processed by the payments team. During this review time if a player elects to play with their funds and the amount dips below the amount requested in the withdrawal request, it will cancel the pending request as the amount requested is no longer available to be processed. This is conveyed to the player when they make their withdrawal request. Players are also able to contact our customer service group 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via e-mail, telephone or live chat and as to have their account restricted until their withdrawal has been processed, this is to help fend off the temptation of playing their funds back.

For any type of Responsible gaming - deposit limits, TAB or SE - you have to contact support, who are only online for a limited number of hours daily. I am not sure how quickly they would respond to an email request.
Our support group offers 24/7 support across e-mail, telephone and live chat. Players can contact via any of these methods to reach the support team.

When playing any Rival game, after about 8 spins, you will be disconnected, and have to log back into the game. If a game takes a while to load due to the files it requires, then the very first spin will kick you out. This problem only occurs with Rival, none of the other providers, but when I contacted support, it was the usual story - it is not us, it is you. I tried with Chrome, Firefox and Edge, all with no joy.
It’s unfortunate that the player was experiencing some timeout issues with the Rival games, in a situation like this its best to provide our customer service team with as much information so that it can be passed along to our product tech team to investigate. It’s difficult for us to speculate what happened in that specific scenario but will pass along the feedback regardless so that they can try to reproduce the issue and figure out what is going on.

KK

 

[ladyhawke]

KasinoKing,

Thanks for chasing up these queries.

I closed my account before I saw the responses from the Casino, but do not regret my decision as there are still too many grey areas and peculiar restrictions for my liking. However, as I have said before, for many others it could turn into a fun place to play, as long as they are comfortable with the restrictions/unresolved queries.

These are the answers to the questions I asked the operator (in Blue):

When depositing by debit card, you are actually depositing in euros, not AUD.However, there is no mention of this anywhere including the Online Deposit page when making the actual deposit. So totally unbeknown to you, you are accumulating bank charges for a non-AUD transaction. I only found out by accident, and support told me "It is because they are an International company". That is all well and good, but surely something like this should be stated very clearly?
The casinos have to use multiple global providers to ensure they can process deposits for players. Some Credit Cards will work with our AUD providers and some cards would need to be routed to our global providers to ensure that the players deposit is able to be processed. This is quite normal in unregulated markets such as Australia. We’ve however passed along your feedback to the payments team to have this added to the deposits page to ensure players are aware.

A very positive response by the casino.

Deposit by Debit card incurred a 2.5% fee. No mention anywhere that I could see - in T&C's or on the deposit page itself - that this would happen. The website does not charge any fees for players to deposit to the website however, the players credit card issuing bank may charge a fee for international transactions or cash advances, these fees are collected by the banks themselves and are not passed back to the casino, they do not benefit from the fees.

NAB have confirmed that the extra amounts added to my actual deposits were nothing to do with them. They did impose a foreign transaction fee, but those are totally separate transactions from the extra deposit amounts. Also, as a debit card was used, linked directly into my bank account, there is no such thing as a "cash advance".

Withdrawal remains in your actual playable balance until it is approved - which can take up to 48 hours. If you continue playing, and your balance goes below your withdrawal, the withdrawal is automatically cancelled, and you have to start the whole process again.
When a player requests a withdrawal, it has to be reviewed and processed by the payments team. During this review time if a player elects to play with their funds and the amount dips below the amount requested in the withdrawal request, it will cancel the pending request as the amount requested is no longer available to be processed. This is conveyed to the player when they make their withdrawal request. Players are also able to contact our customer service group 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via e-mail, telephone or live chat and as to have their account restricted until their withdrawal has been processed, this is to help fend off the temptation of playing their funds back.

Most other casinos remove withdrawal requests from the playable balance, even if those funds can be reversed. I personally find keeping withdrawal funds in the playable balance very strange.

For any type of Responsible gaming - deposit limits, TAB or SE - you have to contact support, who are only online for a limited number of hours daily. I am not sure how quickly they would respond to an email request.
Our support group offers 24/7 support across e-mail, telephone and live chat. Players can contact via any of these methods to reach the support team.

When playing any Rival game, after about 8 spins, you will be disconnected, and have to log back into the game. If a game takes a while to load due to the files it requires, then the very first spin will kick you out. This problem only occurs with Rival, none of the other providers, but when I contacted support, it was the usual story - it is not us, it is you. I tried with Chrome, Firefox and Edge, all with no joy.
It’s unfortunate that the player was experiencing some timeout issues with the Rival games, in a situation like this its best to provide our customer service team with as much information so that it can be passed along to our product tech team to investigate. It’s difficult for us to speculate what happened in that specific scenario but will pass along the feedback regardless so that they can try to reproduce the issue and figure out what is going on.

Every time I logged onto the casino, I had this problem - spread over a period of a few days, so it was not an isolated incident. Support could not see the problem their end, so even though I provided detailed info on what was happening, I was given the usual clear cookies, cache, different browser crap. Then when this didn't work (obviously!) they effectively washed their hands of the problem. And it was still happening last night. However I can no longer check as I have now closed my account.

I had a problem with some Netent games on Bitstarz last night, and the difference between their support and the way they dealt with, and resolved the problem, and JoeFortune is like night and day.

KK

 

[KasinoKing]

NAB have confirmed that the extra amounts added to my actual deposits were nothing to do with them. They did impose a foreign transaction fee, but those are totally separate transactions from the extra deposit amounts. Also, as a debit card was used, linked directly into my bank account, there is no such thing as a "cash advance".

To be fair, I have personally seen deposits to some casinos using my debit card appear as a "cash advance" with the associated fee. So I do believe the casino on this point - I don't think they are BS'ing...

Thanks again for your valuable feedback!

KK

 

[snotter999]

I got an email today from joe@mylegallhelp today offering me a $5000 welcome bonus with Joe Fortune
Apparently i signed up to mylegallhelp.net

hmmm don't remember doing that! Unsubscribed straight away!

Not even gonna bother looking into it.

 

[Cecil86]

Hey Guys
Has anyone ever actually withdrawn from this casino? I'm getting the run around, would like to hear of other peoples experiences. Thanks

 

[Lucky Loser]

Hey Guys
Has anyone ever actually withdrawn from this casino? I'm getting the run around, would like to hear of other peoples experiences. Thanks

Best online casinos for Aussies are Casino Mate and Slotsmillion. Always get quickly paid to my bank account (2-3 days)