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On the face of it, this should have been a very easy grumble to straighten out. It had everything going for it -- a player who gave me all of the facts, a Customer Service Rep who answered all inquiries very quickly and obviously put a lot of effort into it, and most of all -- there was very little dispute about the facts. To top things off, there was no bonus involved and those are usually the cause of difficult disputes.
Where it broke down was on the question of motive. Was the player, Alex E of North Rhine-Westphalia, merely trying to save on currency exchange commissions or did he have some darker motive, as iNetBet, and its rep, Lynn, believe?
When Alex E wrote to us, he said that he had been playing at iNetBet since last summer. He had made some large deposits ($1,000-$2,000), never played with a bonus, and had a number of withdrawals without any problem. He worked through a Euro-based Moneybookers account and therein, he said, was the core of his problem. His iNetBet account was in dollars, and whenever he either put money in or took it out, Moneybookers charged him for exchanging currencies and this very quickly added up.
He decided to open a dollar-based account with Moneybookers and use that for his iNetBet dealings.
"I use two Moneybookers account, one account is in the currency of Euro, the second account is in the currency of US $. This is ok for Moneybookers, as having two account with a different currency is a unique feature for moneybookers VIP-Customers," he said. "You may confim this with Moneybookers if needed."
It was not, however, acceptable to iNetBet. It told him that he could only withdraw money to the account from which he originally deposited it. In addition, iNetBet was not happy that the two accounts had different e-mail addresses.
It was iNetBet's unquestioned right to insist on sending the money to the original account. It erred, however, in leaving the new account in his records -- where he could click on it for withdrawals.
Alex, in turn, was wrong in trying to get the withdrawal made to his new account even after being told that he could not. He says that he did so by mistake. iNetBet does not believe that, nor does it think that he was only trying to save on currency exchange commissions. It locked his account and refused to let him play or to make any withdrawals at all.
It was at this point that Alex contacted Gambling Grumbles and we, in turn, wrote to iNetBet.
Lynn wrote back to us immediately, saying "We have spoken to this player on numerous occasions since we paid out his last withdrawals, that future withdrawals to other named accounts are not allowed.
"He then decided to leave the withdrawal for a few months and again tried to take it to another account.
"This was repeated about 10 times by the player, each time he was informed that this is not allowed, he was also warned that his account would be closed if he attempted this again, which he did after another period of waiting."
She added that "with the current climate surrounding money movement and KYC stipulations laid down by all Wallet and Credit Card issuers, we are extremely vigilant as experience has shown that these cases will invariably come back in the future and cause untold problems".
Gambling Grumbles made the following suggestion to iNetBet to solve the problem: "As far as I understand from your reply, you are willing to let him make the withdrawal only to his original account (which I presume is the Euro account). Would it be an acceptable arrangement to you if: 1. You told me which account you will allow the withdrawal (both in terms of currency and e-mail address, 2. You removed the other account from his records completely and re-opened his casino account?"
This, Lynn said, was not possible.
"This player's balance at this time is $3,042.35. The issue with this player is that there he first requested and was paid from this win in Aug 09, he then spent the ensuing months trying to send funds to a different account, despite the warnings.
He is red flagged with us and as far as we are concerned that is it."
She added, however, that Alex "is $750 short of receiving back his original deposited funds. As a gesture we are prepared to refund this to the original account at Moneybookers.
"This is in spite of our better judgemnt as this player is definitely fraudulent in some way."
She later added, "I do not think that anyone could ignore the highly suspicious manner in which this player has requested a part of his win into a genuine account and then left it 9 months to withdraw the rest, each time into a different named account, nothing to do with dollars or euros.
"If you are a genuine legitimate player you do not behave this way, especially after receiving numerous warnings
...however as a gesture we are prepared to allow that he may receive his $750 balance into the correct Moneybookers account.
I think we are being extremely fair on this due to the very suspicious and underhand methods he has continually used to get money into an other account."
In turn, we contacted Alex to let him know the results of our mediation efforts and he replied, "While I am obviously happy to get my deposit back, I don't feel that iNetBet treated me fairly. If it is their policy not to allow withdrawals to a different account they could have ignored my request to have my winnings sent to my dollar account and just put them in my Euro account and this whole problem would never have happened. I hope they will change their minds and send me the remaining $2292 that I won."
Okay, now you know everything about this that Gambling Grumbles does. Should iNetBet have paid Alex the entire amount? Should it have refused to pay him anything at all? Did it do the right thing in returning the $750 from his deposit but keeping the winnings?
As we said in the beginning, "You decide".
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