Yes, the OPA has slowed in response time:time crunch on volunteers

[mary]

Dear OPA members,

between travel difficulties, day jobs, vacations, and the industry shows, a lot of OPA volunteers (including our Fearless Leader, Steve)are getting overloaded. So, yep, things are slowing down at OPA land.

If you are having trouble with a casino and would rather not wait, you can try:

*Asking for help from the Webmaster of the site you found the casino on; both www.casinomeister.com and www.got2bet.com will mediate with advertisers.

*Submit a grumble to Julie at www.gambling.com
They have paid staff to handle complaints & are especially effective concerning their advertisers.

General tips:

*Avoid OPA not-recommended sites. We couldn't help you with those anyway. That includes all sites running Unified Gaming,iGlobalmedia, or gamblingsoftware.com software. If you cannot identify the software, email support to find out. If support doesn't answer, you don't want to play there anyway.

*Avoid all sites without phone support.

*Before depositing, email a site to see if it answers.

*Sites running RealTime Gaming software appear to have increasingly lengthening withdrawal processing periods. It is recommended that if you make a withdrawal request that you note the names of any specific customer representatives who have promised specific processing dates and phone them daily about missed dates, should they occur.

*Casinos that market to North Americans are experiencing significant drops in play from that market as more credit card processors deny transactions. If you live outside of North America, play at sites that market to your region, as they will be less affected by the American banking freeze.

 

[ttt]

Mary,

I thought smoething was a bit strange when over the last few weeks lots of casinos were accepted into the OPA without any announcement on the website or even an email sent out to members. I am really keen on keeping bang up to date on who's joining the OPA so I hope in the future one of you can just send out a teeny weeny little email to us members informing us of any new aditions/removals.

Yours understandingly

Treeny

 

[mary]

That was a timing thing, we had just accepted the Levy Group of casinos (you'll find them at www.gamblingmagazine.com)which was something like *96* urls, and then...Sep 11th.

And everything changed here in the US.

Since then, the Levy Group has changed software providers, as have other member sites, so we have to get that updated. *Three* industry shows in Vegas, involving international travel for the non-US OPA volunteers. Domestic air travel for the American volunteers. 35--70% dropoff in North American business for many online casinos, so they are facing great management and service stressors; credit card companies refusing even more transactions; and you can imagine how all international banking transactions have been slowed to a crawl.

Not that they were all that brisk in the Caribbean anyway.

Think of all the players with Bank of Lebanon checks to deposit...I mean, it was embarrassing enough when we were gamblers. Now we gamblers who also use offshore banking and internet transactions could be suspected of being terrorists cashing our paychecks. I haven't played at an online casino myself since the beginning of September.

We also keep a tight rein on the OPA member list, so I, for example, don't have it to do a mass emailing. That's for privacy purposes for our members. I'll try to keep updates here on the message board, and Treeny, feel free to post questions or start discussions here.

It was so strange to see Oscar Goodman praising us for our patriotism for getting on a plane to Vegas. Since when was it ever *patriotic*? Self-indulgent, fun, a treat; now it is patriotic. The flip side is wiring money offshore is not patriotic, I guess.

 

[Casinomeister]

Hi y'all,

I'm back.

I'll be announcing OPA approved casinos weekly in my newsletter starting with this week's which will be out tomorrow.

Bryan