Skrill to cease processing gambling payments in Canada!

[Weissr]

So I went to make my first bankwire (hopefully of many) from Skrill to my bank account this evening.

I found the form a bit confusing. Country.. ez peezy. SWIFT ... no biggy.. again ez peezy. But the third space > Bank/sort code.. wtf?

I searched the internet, typing in something like "what is Bank/sort code for receiving bank-wire from Skrill?" It took me to a few sites, including TD bank with people asking the exact same question (& seeing alot of incorrect answers givin' on some forums). So I get my answer, the Bank/sort code is 3-digit bank institution number followed by the 5-digit branch transit number. And instead of just referring to it as the 'Routing information number' (< as it is referred to at my bank) they call it Bank/sort code. You also need to add an additional '0' at the start of the first 3-digits so it is written in standard code (although you do leave off the 'cc' ahead of the '0').

Okay so that's great. I get back onto Skrill & am ready & rarin' to go!!
But then the window pops back up 'SWIFT code cannot be updated' << wtf?

I thought perhaps I was incorrect with how I'd entered the Bank/sort code (as some folks on some sites were suggesting to do it differently than I'd come to believe it was supposed to be done). But that was not the case (it gave me an error message then for the Bank/sort code). So I entered all the info. again >> same result. Then again... & again. sigh
Tried cleaning cookies, temp.files etc., re-boot, login again & try it again... & again... same result

So I guess now I wait up til' they're open & can be reached on the phone.(timezone difference I think is ~9hrs. so I've still got a few more to go now).

It's never easy. Well that's not true. It's usually VERY easy to get money onto the sites.

Anyone else experiencing similiar?

1st of many? You must have a decent chunk still sitting on skrill if you need multiple withdrawals to zero the account. Good luck trying to get it sorted by the end of the month; their support team is not the greatest.

 

[Poker Orifice]

I've now gotten to the point where I could actually care less about the majority of the sites I have accounts on. A short while ago I was thinking I would continue to play on PartyPoker, 888Poker (< weird cuz I haven't played on that site in years! lolz), and 3 (or more) iPoker network sites, & of course FTP & Stars.

With just ONE week to go, I began pulling some $'s off of sites the past couple days. (looking each of them over & asking myself "Do you really give a s__t if you play on that site anymore?" ). So I pull most off of pretty much everything (no major problems aside from having to rake $70 on a site I HATE! ).

I go to Withdrawal from partypoker this morning & it still shows Skrill as a 'Deposit' option but it is not there in my 'Withdrawal' options.. argh!!! (they let me deposit on jan.1st). Went to 'Live Chat' & they advised me it no longer exists as an option on PartyPoker (thanks for the warning guys... ffs)
No problems withdrawling from all other sites.... so far. Planning to get the rest off of the others today.

 

[jsaw]

Vegasjj - thanks for the lead on instadebit - did you investigate Ukash which I canada Post supports? The fee is about 5% - how do that measure up to instadebit.

 

[vegasjj]

Vegasjj - thanks for the lead on instadebit - did you investigate Ukash which I Canada Post supports? The fee is about 5% - how do that measure up to instadebit.

No did not investigate it as I am really happy with what I found out about INSTADEBIT. The essential parts I am repeating below:

I LOVE the fact that they have ON LINE SUPPORT.

When you take money out of your bank cost = $1
Put money into your bank cost =$2

Here is a portion from the Q&A from Instadebit
What happens when I receive funds from a merchant?

Funds credited to you by a merchant will automatically be deposited into your INSTADEBIT Balance Account. You can use those funds to make payments to merchants or withdraw them to your bank account.
How do I use funds in my Balance Account to pay for purchases?

The funds in your INSTADEBIT Balance Account will automatically be used to make payments to merchants provided there is enough to cover the entire amount of the transaction and that the balance is in the same currency.


When depositing from INSTADEBIT balance to a site - IT IS FREE
Withdraw from a site to INSTADEBIT - FREE

If you withdraw US$ into your INSTADEBIT account - it will stay as US$, there will be no exchange fees when you deposit US$ to an other site from the INSTADEBIT balance.

HOWEVER!!!!

I just made a withdrawal from williamhill, and I got the funds in CAD$ in my account. EEEEKKKK!!!!
I also found out that you can use as per above for free the funds in your INSTADEBIT account to make a deposit ONLY AS LONG AS - YOU HAVE THE FULL AMOUNT YOU WANT TO DEPOSIT IN THE CORRECT $ (ie you must have sufficient US$ in your account to cover your deposit). Otherwise the money will be drawn from your bank account to complete the transaction.
This certainly would TOTALLY mess-up the cost as I understood it.

So I contacted Instadebit - and they sent me PROOF that the money was sent to them as CAD $, that is why it is received as CAD $.

As of now - I have written to WilliamHill and I am awaiting their response - as to why they sent CAD$, and how to prevent that from reoccurring. I will let you know.

Here is a portion from from INSTADEBIT's Q&A
What happens when I receive funds from a merchant?

Funds credited to you by a merchant will automatically be deposited into your INSTADEBIT Balance Account. You can use those funds to make payments to merchants or withdraw them to your bank account.
How do I use funds in my Balance Account to pay for purchases?

The funds in your INSTADEBIT Balance Account will automatically be used to make payments to merchants provided there is enough to cover the entire amount of the transaction and that the balance is in the same currency.

 

[Weissr]

No did not investigate it as I am really happy with what I found out about INSTADEBIT. The essential parts I am repeating below:


HOWEVER!!!!

I just made a withdrawal from WilliamHill, and I got the funds in CAD$ in my account. EEEEKKKK!!!!
I also found out that you can use as per above for free the funds in your INSTADEBIT account to make a deposit ONLY AS LONG AS - YOU HAVE THE FULL AMOUNT YOU WANT TO DEPOSIT IN THE CORRECT $ (ie you must have sufficient US$ in your account to cover your deposit). Otherwise the money will be drawn from your bank account to complete the transaction.
This certainly would TOTALLY mess-up the cost as I understood it.

So I contacted Instadebit - and they sent me PROOF that the money was sent to them as CAD $, that is why it is received as CAD $.

As of now - I have written to WilliamHill and I am awaiting their response - as to why they sent CAD$, and how to prevent that from reoccurring. I will let you know.

Here is a portion from from INSTADEBIT's Q&A
What happens when I receive funds from a merchant?

Funds credited to you by a merchant will automatically be deposited into your INSTADEBIT Balance Account. You can use those funds to make payments to merchants or withdraw them to your bank account.
How do I use funds in my Balance Account to pay for purchases?

The funds in your INSTADEBIT Balance Account will automatically be used to make payments to merchants provided there is enough to cover the entire amount of the transaction and that the balance is in the same currency.

Sounds to me like your Instadebit Account Currency is in CAD so whatever gets put in there automatically gets converted to CAD. Hope that's not the case as it would make moving money around quite costly always converting back and forth.

When you initially loaded the Instadebit account, did you load it with US funds, then make a deposit to a poker site in US funds?

 

[vegasjj]

Sounds to me like your Instadebit Account Currency is in CAD so whatever gets put in there automatically gets converted to CAD. Hope that's not the case as it would make moving money around quite costly always converting back and forth.

When you initially loaded the Instadebit account, did you load it with US funds, then make a deposit to a poker site in US funds?

I have not received an answer yet...

Regarding your question.. I made a payment to a site (initial) the site is US$, and my Bank account is CAD$.

HOWEVER - based on what their policy is, AS WELL AS based on disscussion with live chat - it should NOT matter. When you put in INSTADEBIT ACCOUNT US$ - it will be held as US $, when u put CAD - it will be held as CAD.
You can have at the same time CAD and US $
when you pay (using your INSTADEBIT funds) the full amount of what you pay has to be covered by what you have in the account in the corresponding currency. If you do not have the full amount in the curency needed for the payment, then the full amount of your "purchase" is taken from your Bank account.

That is the theory - will see how it works out...

 

[Poker Orifice]

5 days left.
Just had a new record set for fastest withdrawal ever!
I made a withdrawal off of Fulltilt this evening & in less than 2mins. it was in my Skrill account! I am going to miss that.
Two minutes! Compare that to a bunch of the other sites

Decided to go with cheque option for withdrawling funds off of Skrill. Received a cheque from Skrill in <1wk. Pretty decent.

 

[Weissr]

5 days left.
Just had a new record set for fastest withdrawal ever!
I made a withdrawal off of Fulltilt this evening & in less than 2mins. it was in my Skrill account! I am going to miss that.
Two minutes! Compare that to a bunch of the other sites

Decided to go with cheque option for withdrawling funds off of Skrill. Received a cheque from Skrill in <1wk. Pretty decent.

Nice, glad everything's working out for ya. I always had fairly quick Skrill cheques as well, which is kind of funny because when they sent the address verification letter by mail it took 3 months!

 

[Poker Orifice]

Nice, glad everything's working out for ya. I always had fairly quick Skrill cheques as well, which is kind of funny because when they sent the address verification letter by mail it took 3 months!

Wow your's took 3mos.?!?! Mine took 25-28days (or something like that) which I thought was a record (a friend of mine in same town took only 1wk.). Yah this is actually why I was initially leary of the cheque option, lol.

 

[Weissr]

Wow your's took 3mos.?!?! Mine took 25-28days (or something like that) which I thought was a record (a friend of mine in same town took only 1wk.). Yah this is actually why I was initially leary of the cheque option, lol.

Yea, it was rather bizarre. I emailed them after waiting a month saying where is it and nicely asked them to resend it and their reply was "looks like the address verification letter option will not work for you, try one of our other verification options". To which I replied, what do you mean it won't work for me? If you sent the letter I should have received it. Anyway I was pretty pissed about the whole thing as you can imagine and then out of nowhere two more months go by and a letter shows up from MBookers (which I had completely forgotten about by then) with the verification code. The whole thing left a pretty bad taste in my mouth but everything seemed to work smoothly after that.

 

[StorkMerriam]

I use Debit for Titan as it was registered long ago , so they allow that . I signed with william hill recently because of a decent rake deal and for deposits on there Instadebit works great . I think they charge 1.00 fee no matter what size of transaction...........I have deposited and withdrew from both with no issues , deposits are instantly on your poker account and withdrawls are 3 to 4 days max..

 

[vegasjj]

I have used INSTADEBIT to make deposits at a few sites (pokerstars, Fulltilt, WilliamHill, 32red) they were processed instantly (there was a hick-up in 32Red) and funds were taken from my account pretty much in one day.

I made a withdrawal from WilliamHill and I got CAD$ - was expecting US$ as my WH account is in US$. After a lot of correspondence and chat with live support at BOTH Instadebit and WH - all I got was that the money arrived in IDB as CAD$. Looking at transaction history confirmed that. As I was not getting real answers - I made a deposit $40 US, AND - in WH cashier it showed that this will cost me $44.79 CAD$. Then I saw the exact same CAD$ was taken from my IDB CAD$ balance.

Having a close look at the history transactions - it shows that the funds going to WH were in CAD, but the funds going to the other 3 sites were in US$ (taken from my bank account in CAD$).
Based on IDB policy my guess is that if i some day will cash something form the other 3 sites I will get US$ in the IDB account - which I will be able to use to make US$ deposits in sites that are using US$.

I do not know of a way to really know upfront if a site is "using" US or CAD, nor am I certain it is permanently consistent. I was not able to obtain that info. But, it is something good to figure out and know - as IDB is charging apx 2.75% premium on conversions. It makes sense to keep the conversions to a minimum. Ie, build and use a balance of US and CAD in IDB account.
If we avoid the conversions, (multiple conversion of the same $) the cost of IDB is VERY REASONABLE.. $1 and $2 when moving money out of or into the bank account. NOTE: I have asked if I can connect IDB to a US $ Bank account (that would be real sweet) but IDB said they can connect ONLY to CAD $ bank accounts.

Hope some of you get some use of this information