PIC-Club -- does anyone have feedback, thoughts, or experience?

I'm sort of curious about this PIC Club thing (www.picclub.com). I've normally been using my VISA Debit card for deposits and w/drawals going directly to my poker checking account, but recently I've run into lots of fees from my bank due to transactions being processed in foreign countries (i.e. China); so far, I was able to get the fees refunded either at the bank or via the poker room, but I'd like to find a better option going forward, so I'm looking at this PIC Club, since it seems to bet supported by a fairly large number of sites, and the fees seem reasonable from what I can tell.

However, I would love to hear from anyone who might have some experience and/or feedback about this before I fund my account. Particularly, I curious about the partial sponsorships/stakes that they supposedly offer to winning players. . . . Anything you can contribute will be greatly appreciated!!

I have a reloadable visa through netspend that I have using for about a year now and it works great at most poker sites. I did however join piclub about 2 months ago and I have used them to deposit at Carbon. They offer freerolls for their members so it is worth a shot.

How easy was it to load your PIC account, and did you incur any hassle and/or crazy fees from your bank? Also, have you made a w/drawal via PIC yet? (I'm interested in finding out how easy it is to get money OUT, not just IN . . . which is usually the easier part.) Thanks!

It was very easy to load to PIC and then I deposited at Carbon, again very quick. I have not tried to withdraw yet so unfortunately I can't tell you the experiences with that. But I have alot of online poker friends who have joined PIC and I have not heard anything negative so that's a plus.

I'm bumping this old thread instead of creating another one.

But I would also like to know if anyone has used this service to deposit and withdraw. I'm pretty sure it's reputable just by the amount of rooms that support them, but I would rather hear it from you all.

Depending on the sight you haver to put in a request to the poker site cashier, i have deposited and withdrawn from reefer and pitbull. the withdrawlls took less then 4 hours to go from my poker act to my pic club act and then instantly to the next poker room. I love pic club!

About this request to the poker site cashier? Are you talking about sites that don't already accept Pic Club, or ones that do? It was a little unclear.

Awesome site, they really make it easy to transfer funds from a base (your account)

They're a company that is made by players. Also, take note of the interest rate you get while being a shareholder!

So, give me a complete rundown of the idea.

From what I gathered... you deposit, say, 50 bucks. They keep a dollar of it in your account and the other $49 dollars you can deposit into a poker site? Is that right?

What about withdrawals from poker sites. Do they keep a dollar to put in your account then? Can they send you a check if you please or do you have to have a bank account?

Also, let's say I donk it up and decide that I want to quit playing poker and would rather play tiddly winks instead. When I go to cash out, do I get all of those dollars that were invested into the company back?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks, Lafer! It's legal speak, but I get the jest of it. Sounds like a pretty good idea. I might have to give it a go.

Okay, decided to give it a go, but they don't support UB! So, here's a list of sites that I play on, and if anyone could give me an idea of where I could go to transfer money between these sites it would be great.

UB
Carbon
Full Tilt
a little on Poker Stars

Yes, that's it, except they'll also slap you with a transaction fee of $1 plus anywhere from 5-7.5% of the deposit amount, so watch out for that! (Much too expensive all the way around, imo.)

They can send you a check (free via US mail, extra for express and/or courier), or they can send a wire transfer/Western Union, for a fee of ~$45 (also high!). If you wanted to get every last dollar back out, that basically would mean closing your account; otherwise, you can w/draw everything except for $1 in the "Common Shares" account, and the account will stay open indefinitely, with the potential to earn "dividends".

While I have decided to open a PIC-Club account since I first started this thread, I have not been able to get myself to actually deposit money with them, simply because of the high transaction fees they charge; to me it doesn't make sense to pay 5-7.5% to get money into this "service" when I can deposit directly from my debit card into any major site with no transaction fee whatsoever. Besides, PIC-Club is somewhat limited to smaller sites/networks (i.e. Everleaf) where I usually have trouble finding enough action to multi-table consistently at the limits I want, so the whole thing is sort of pointless to me. . . .

Transferring money from either one of these sites to another is not possible, as they are all independent of each other. I also play on all of those, and my Visa debit card from Wells Fargo works just fine for deposits everywhere; cash outs typically need to be done by check. (Stars used to have "eChecks" that would ACH directly in and out of a checking account, but I think they took down that option a little while back, unfortunately.) Luckily, none of these sites charge for deposits, and I think only Carbon has a check w/drawal fee on an initial check, so it doesn't really cost too much to "move" money in and out of these sites, as long as you keep your w/drawals to one per month or less. However, note that deposit bonuses usually expire when you make a w/drawal, and if you get rakeback, most sites will deduct deposit fees and possibly even w/drawal fees from your rake credits, so I personally try to keep my deposits and w/drawals to a minimum.

What I really meant was an e-wallet or some such that I can use to withdraw/deposit between the sites. I've got a credit card I use, but you can't withdraw to them and I don't want to wait for a check. I lost my patience with banks and online poker , so that's not an option either.

Oh, ok.... I can't help you much with the "eWallets" -- ever since the Neteller fiasco I have pretty much stayed away from them. Afaik, most of them have all but shut down for US players, anyway (i.e. Click2Pay, Moneybookers, EcoCard, etc.), and any of these services that I ever researched has had such a flurry of shameless (imho) transaction fees that I pretty much ruled them out for my purposes. (Same reason why I won't be using PIC-Club, at least not unless they drastically reduce their fees and add more major poker rooms.)

pic club is awesome it allows you to withdraw,tranfer and deposit without some of the hassels you might encounter...they even get check fees waived from some of the gaming sites...the con is that they are still devolping and not all sites use them,i recently think doyles was added i dont have all the sites theyou can use them on but if look they give it out...yes i think pic club is the way to go...hope this helps

PIC-CLUB is a very good option for U.S. players. The only semi-bad thing is the 5%-7% fee on deposits into your PIC-CLUB account. Last month I deposited $100 and my Visa got charged $108.60. But once the money is in there, it is so easy to transfer to a poker site with no charge. Withdrawals from poker sites back to PIC-CLUB are just as easy. Say you want to withdraw $50 from Doyles back to PIC-CLUB, $49 goes into your available account and $1 into what they call a common shares account. The common shares account is still your money, draws interest, and can be accessed once a year. I recommend the check method of withdrawing from PIC-CLUB, which is free, so they say. If you want to withdraw $200, you should get a check for $200. If you go with a wire transfer to your bank, you would only get $155, and, depending on your bank fee for a wire transfer, end up with $135 or so. I did this once through a different ewallet and got charged another $15 fee from a go-between bank that handled the transaction, ending up with $120. I was not a happy camper. This would only make sense if you were cashing out a much larger amount, since the $45 fee and the $20 bank fee are flat rates.

OUCH! Thanks for your feedback and sharing your experience . . . I guess I understand the convenience factor, but for me, even a 5-7% fee on any transaction seems absolutely ridiculous, and in your example, you lost 40% of your withdrawal amount to fees, which should nothing short of a crime, and absolutely illegal, imho.... But until Congress fixes this awful situation and repeals the UIGEA, I guess these companies are free to try and fleece us, and we have to do our own due diligence -- please, people, read the fine print before you do anything, and don't EVER pay 40% transaction fees......

Sorry but I just discovered cardschat here recently and saw this old thread.

PIC club is great and getting money out of PIC by free check takes 15-20 business days. But if you just signed up for an account it might be longer than that, because they for sure are going to wait till your credit card charge clears and can not be "charged back" before they give you money out. But aside from that it's usually reasonably fast.

The 5% fee on money deposited in to PIC, is unfortunate, but PIC only charges what the banks charge them. And I've been with them for over 2 years now, since the beginning.

The best thing to do to save the 5% fee, is swing a deal with someone already on PIC that has money and would trade for money on another site, say Full Tilt, that allows player transfers. PIC has easy transfers between members on the PIC side. So if you happen to want to trade for Full Tilt money, or you happen to be in LA or Vegas, I'd be happy to talk to you and work out a trade.

Does this site have PM'ing enabled? Guess you can try to get me that way.