Betmaker. How solid?

[FBallLover]

I'm going to back Curious up here. I went through the exact same thing last week.

Until I called Neteller and spoke to the manager I got the same runaround. I thought something was fishy there.

If it smells like trout and acts like trout, it must be trout.

[Curious]

Mike:

Contacting you privately would have allowed you to sweep this under the rug. Thanks for your offer, but I thought this was important enough to let the public know.

If you hadn't misrepresented the situation in this forum, and I hadn't been lied to by your customer service, I would have taken you up on your offer.

Get ALL of your customers taken care of, and my problem will go away.

[ 10-01-2001: Message edited by: Curious ]

[betmaker.com]

Curious,

Now that the public knows of the problem you're reporting, why not call me now?

I still haven't seen you say you've been paid. Don't you want your payout?

I did not request to speak to you privately to try to "sweep this under the rug". I requested to speak to you to get to the bottom of what happened.

We take both payout issues & our customer service very seriously. If you experienced a problem, I want to 1) make sure it gets fixed, & 2) do whatever I can to prevent it from happening again.

I'm very pleased to see good reports on our payouts (as was seen earlier in this thread), & am very disappointed when I see comments like yours.

I never misrepresented your situation in this forum. I still don't know who you are.

We take financial matters very seriously. We--unlike 99% of the books out there--keep all of our customers money on deposit. When someone brings our finances into question, it bothers me.

I'm very interested in speaking to you & finding out all the details of your situation. I can't find out those details unless you share them w/ me. I'd be more than happy for you to share the entire dialogue of our conversation w/ the forum.

If you're completely against contacting me personally, then please contact Jeff or Brian & tell them your PIN, & the steps you've taken to try to process your payout. We save every e-mail & record every phone call & surely I'll be able to identify what went wrong.

If we misled you or wronged you in any way, I'll gladly throw out here on the forum for everyone to read.

Regards,

Mike
1-800-644-6405

[Curious]

Mike:

Are you insinuating that anything I've said is not true? Do you or do you not have adequate funds in Neteller?

If you take financial matters so seriously, then fund your Neteller acct!

As I said before, take care of ALL your customers and my problem will be resolved along with them. When I finally get my money, I will let this forum know about it.

[sportshobby]

I've seen this happen several other times at other sportsbooks. They don't even realize that they have a zero balance at NETeller. Unfortunately, there is no message that NETeller sends to them (although I've made this suggestion) alerting them that a request has been denied for a withdrawal. If there are insufficient funds on hand at NETeller in that book's account, the transaction is simply denied. No record.

[ 10-01-2001: Message edited by: sportshobby ]

[FBallLover]

Then by that statement Neteller isn't ready to use. I don't believe that.

How come the good books (like Royal and Pinnacle) had no problem putting back the money immediately on Neteller (and I'm talking multiple deposits at Neteller's maximum of 2500).

Do you know that anywhere in the United States you can go to a Bank of America bank and make a deposit to your Neteller account. You really believe Betmaker has no access to get funds to Neteller within 5-7 days.

Same ol' same ol'. The Soupy Shuffle when money gets low. We've seen it all before and the hole gets deeper.

PEOPLE WHO HAVE THE MONEY GET IT TO THEIR CUSTOMERS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE BECAUSE THEY KNOW ULTIMATELY THAT'S HOW THEY ARE JUDGED AND IT IS SMART TO DO SO. :mad:

[reno]

Mike, is Betmaker.Com still a clone joint and do they still kick out wiseguys who either beat them on the steam moves or buy back at the best prices? The old Betmaker.Com (Global Sports Connection) booted me for simply buying back, not even playing the "steam" It will literally take dozens of sessions with "the Shrink" for me to ever recover from the trauma of being booted. Just ask Egg Nog. I'm damaged goods after getting 86'd.

[Curious]

reno:

I don't know if they still boot wiesguys or not, but I do know they deal diff. lines to diff. players.

Regarding Neteller transactions, all books know EXACTLY how much they have at Neteller at all times. Betmaker has had insufficient funds there for AT LEAST the last 4 or 5 days.

The most disturbing part of all this is Mike Foreman coming in here and professing to have absolutely no knowledge of ANY of these problems. That would make him either a total incompetent, or someone who has a problem with the truth. In either case, it's not a good situation.

[betmaker.com]

[ 10-02-2001: Message edited by: betmaker.com ]

[betmaker.com]

Curious,

I sincerely hope you can read through my e-mail & try to put yourself in my shoes & understand where I'm coming from. I'm going to try to walk you--& BW readers--through my thought processes on this situation.

When I saw your post on Saturday, it was quite disturbing to me. We have a screen that tells us anytime someone attempts to send or withdraw money via Neteller. It shows all transactions for the last 24 hours. Next to each request there is a "Status" category. There are 3 categories, "Approved", "Pending" or "Denied".

After seeing your post, I wanted to see if I could find your transaction. I couldn't find it. I asked one of our accounting clerks (it was past 5pm & the payout manager had already left) and she was not aware of your situation. I asked customer service if they'd received any phone calls, Internet chats or e-mails regarding this. They said they hadn't. I looked through the e-mail station, & didn't see any e-mails regarding any similar situation.

I felt the most logical & quickest solution would be to have you contact me & explain what happened. This would also give me the opportunity to better understand how you'd contacted us, who you spoke to & why you weren't responded to. That way could swiftly deal w/ any potential shortcoming in the service we're offering.

When you made your 2nd post, you seemed quite hostile (that's fair--you wanted your money).

You said: "If no one in customer service seems to be aware of the problems I'm reporting, then maybe you need a new customer service dept."

You'd already twice made comments to the effect that our customer service is incompetent--I feel this is grossly unfair & untrue. (Understand in the back of my head I was thinking that you have some hidden agenda against us & that's why you wouldn't contact me directly).

As sportshobby pointed out later on, we are not made aware when a transaction of this type doesn't go through.

Nevertheless, by Saturday afternoon, I'd spoken to our payout manager & he was already aware we'd been low on Neteller funds & told me he had already wired them the funds on Thurs. (Please keep in mind, an international bank wire usually takes a minimum of 3 days.)

He was aware of two customers that from Thurs. on had problems w/ a Neteller withdrawal. One customer, hadn't met the bonus requirements (play 3x through) & his payout was not processed due to that. He happens to be a reader of BW & contacted me directly after reading this thread. (I still wonder if you might be him--but he seemed very calm & understanding.) After his original payout not being processed, he went on to meet the bonus requirement. When he contacted me directly (yesterday morning), he was given the option of a payout via PayPal, cashiers check or waiting for or wire to Neteller to hit. He chose to wait & I noticed his payout was approved today. He was never lied to about why his payout hadn't gone through yet & I was very open with about the reason--knowing full well he was a BW poster.

The other person, was also offered to take an immediate payout by PayPal or have a check FedExed. He chose to wait.

Now if this other person was you Curious, & if you were told this was due to "technical difficulties", that's a problem I need to address.

Nevertheless, if it was you, you didn't post that you were given other options for a same day payout, but rather opted to bring into question our financial stability. (which--again--gave me doubts about your motives)

Now, questions for me:
Did our Neteller funds run out?
Yes.
Why did they run out?
As I'm sure you all know, Weeks 2 & 3 of NFL were good for the players. We had an unusually high number of payouts (it's very rare that this happens two weeks in a row). In no way, shape or form are we going to leave extra tens of thousands of dollars on deposit w/ services like Neteller, PayPal or anyone else if we don't anticipating our volume making it necessary. First of all, we keep our customer funds on bank deposit & maintain audited books (no reputable accounting firm would touch us w/o customer balances on deposit). Second of all, our site betzone was already taken by a credit card processor that went broke last year & took us for a 6-figure sum. So when it comes to trusting other people with YOUR money that WE ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY FOR, we're extra careful to make sure it's well taken care of.

Understanding the back-to-back strong weeks the players had & our past experience, can't you understand why our account might not have been funded for 2 business days?

Further to me being on the defensive, you said yesterday betmaker "hasn't had funds at Neteller for at least 5 days now".

But today you say, "AT LEAST the last 4 or 5 days".

Yesterday it was "at least" 5, but today maybe only 4? I'm not trying to tear apart your e-mails, just establish why I've had this feeling all along you've had some other beef w/ us & had been misrepresenting the situation.

If we count Thurs., Fri., & Mon. (bank wires don't go on weekends) we're talking 3 days. So we found out on Thurs. & funds were in on Mon., have we really acted irresponsibly by dragging out your payout?

I really don't want to keep this going any longer than necessary, but if you don't mind, I'd greatly appreciate if you could answer the following questions for me:

1) Did you try to contact our customer service department directly? If yes, how so?

2) If you spoke to anyone, weren't you offered any other withdrawal methods?

3) You said when you were paid, you'd tell the forum. Have you been paid? We've had several payouts since yesterday afternoon & I would take comfort knowing that you are one of them.

In summary:
I sincerely apologize for the delay you've had getting your payout.

We should've realized a couple days sooner Neteller funds were runnning low & avoided this. Nevertheless, we acted as quickly as possible & offered other options that could've been made in the same day.

We have people in this thread & others that have stated they've received they're payouts w/ no delay at all.

I'm sorry if your experience was not what you expected. I can only hope that other readers will be able to understand our point of view, see the other positive comments that have been made about us, & choose betmaker as one of their outs.

Kind regards,

Mike Foreman

[Rich]

I for one appreciate the detailed response by Betmaker and despite some instant skeptiscm i do understand what they mean about neteller and it is important that we draw stong differences between this and a directbet slowpay, this sort of reminds me of when AOL first went to unlimited pricing and what happened was poepl couldn't connect and the "cheap" service was originally a disaster well what happened was two things
they improved thier accesabilty (ie: having more money on deposit with neteller) and they warned that usuage may be limited during peak hours. what betmaker should do is have a stipulation on thier neteller deposits that occaionally withdrawels may not be immediately available by this method
thus the player would no the deal before hand. I can sympothize with books not wanting
these places holding so much cash but in that case everything should be clear before these misunderstandings come up.

[sportshobby]

I feel good about Mike's reply. As I've said before, sportsbooks don't get any sort of message telling them that there was a withdrawal request refused. This is a shortcoming in the NETeller process, which I hope is addressed soon.

Every book will from time to time be out of funds at NETeller, assuming they want to limit their exposure there. It is only the sportsbooks that NEVER seem to have any funds at NETeller that need to be reamed.

[Curious]

Sorry for the delay in responding, but I was unable to reply to this thread due to a problem with the site that has now been fixed. I really wanted to respond MUCH sooner.

Mike:

I will now walk you and others through your story, and correct some of the errors and misrepresentations you have made here. I hope this finally sets the record straight.

Originally posted by betmaker.com:
When I saw your post on Saturday, it was quite disturbing to me. We have a screen that tells us anytime someone attempts to send or withdraw money via Neteller. It shows all transactions for the last 24 hours.

That screen also shows you the amount you have on hand at Neteller.


Next to each request there is a "Status" category. There are 3 categories, "Approved", "Pending" or "Denied". After seeing your post, I wanted to see if I could find your transaction. I couldn't find it. I asked one of our accounting clerks (it was past 5pm & the payout manager had already left) and she was not aware of your situation. I asked customer service if they'd received any phone calls, Internet chats or e-mails regarding this. They said they hadn't. I looked through the e-mail station, & didn't see any e-mails regarding any similar situation.

Let me say this again. On Wed. the 26th I made several attempts to w/d funds from Betmaker via Neteller with no luck. On Thur. the 27th I made several more unsuccessful attempts and then sent an e-mail to Betmaker customer service informing them of my problem. More unsuccessful w/d attempts were made on Fri. and Sat. I fired off another e-mail to Betmaker customer service that Sat. and made my first post in this thread. Those two e-mails sent to customer service went unanswered.


I felt the most logical & quickest solution would be to have you contact me & explain what happened. This would also give me the opportunity to better understand how you'd contacted us, who you spoke to & why you weren't responded to. That way could swiftly deal w/ any potential shortcoming in the service we're offering.

When you made your 2nd post, you seemed quite hostile (that's fair--you wanted your money).

You said: "If no one in customer service seems to be aware of the problems I'm reporting, then maybe you need a new customer service dept."

If you are telling the truth, then I still stand by that statement.


You'd already twice made comments to the effect that our customer service is incompetent--I feel this is grossly unfair & untrue. (Understand in the back of my head I was thinking that you have some hidden agenda against us & that's why you wouldn't contact me directly).

I have no agenda other than to let people know of my experience with Betmaker, which is quite contrary to the rosy picture you were painting in this thread.


As sportshobby pointed out later on, we are not made aware when a transaction of this type doesn't go through.

Nevertheless, by Saturday afternoon, I'd spoken to our payout manager & he was already aware we'd been low on Neteller funds

That' sure not the way you made it look when you posted this late Sat. afternoon:
I have checked w/ our accounting dept & they are telling me there are no pending Neteller transactions & no one in customer service seems to be aware of the problems your reporting.

To me that looks like you are saying that you have no idea what I could be talking about because you just checked and there are NO problems with Neteller...even though you knew at this point you had no money there, and that I was telling the truth.


& told me he had already wired them the funds on Thurs. (Please keep in mind, an international bank wire usually takes a minimum of 3 days.)

A maximum of 3 days is closer to the truth, especially when dealing with a bank that you have an ongoing relationship with...such as Neteller's bank.


He was aware of two customers that from Thurs. on had problems w/ a Neteller withdrawal.

Now you're saying that in fact you DID know about Neteller problems by Sat. afternoon. You posted earlier in this thread that you were NOT aware of any Neteller problems, but in reality you WERE aware before you posted, because you had been informed by your payout manager who had left for the day at 5pm. You made your "I don't know what he could be talking about" post here at 5:21 pm.

You got caught in a big fib here Mike.


One customer, hadn't met the bonus requirements (play 3x through) & his payout was not processed due to that. He happens to be a reader of BW & contacted me directly after reading this thread. When he contacted me directly (yesterday morning), he was given the option of a payout via PayPal, cashiers check or waiting for or wire to Neteller to hit. He chose to wait & I noticed his payout was approved today. He was never lied to about why his payout hadn't gone through yet & I was very open with about the reason--knowing full well he was a BW poster.

The other person, was also offered to take an immediate payout by PayPal or have a check FedExed. He chose to wait.

Now if this other person was you Curious, & if you were told this was due to "technical difficulties", that's a problem I need to address.

Of course that's a problem that you need to address, along with many others. I'm just curious as to whether these people were instructed to lie by their bosses, or if it's just some sort of company policy.


Nevertheless, if it was you, you didn't post that you were given other options for a same day payout, but rather opted to bring into question our financial stability. (which--again--gave me doubts about your motives)

I seriously doubt that you question my motives because you know everything I have said here has been the truth. I think you're doing your best at spin control, but it's not going to work out well for you. It would have been much smarter to have been open and honest from the start.


Now, questions for me:
Did our Neteller funds run out?
Yes.
Why did they run out?
As I'm sure you all know, Weeks 2 & 3 of NFL were good for the players. We had an unusually high number of payouts (it's very rare that this happens two weeks in a row). In no way, shape or form are we going to leave extra tens of thousands of dollars on deposit w/ services like Neteller, PayPal or anyone else if we don't anticipating our volume making it necessary. First of all, we keep our customer funds on bank deposit & maintain audited books (no reputable accounting firm would touch us w/o customer balances on deposit). Second of all, our site betzone was already taken by a credit card processor that went broke last year & took us for a 6-figure sum. So when it comes to trusting other people with YOUR money that WE ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY FOR, we're extra careful to make sure it's well taken care of.

A much better question would be, Why were you out of funds at Neteller for AT LEAST six days? Do you consider that being responsible?

Another good question would be, Why did you choose to lie about being low on funds, and why did you lie about not even being aware of your problem at Neteller? Those are questions that I'd like to see answered.


Understanding the back-to-back strong weeks the players had & our past experience, can't you understand why our account might not have been funded for 2 business days?

More half-truths. Your acct. was unfunded for AT LEAST 4 business days (Wed, Thur, Fri, and Mon). It may have been longer because I didn't try to make a w/d until Wed.

It's also interesting that you don't consider Sat. and Sun. to be "business days" for a book. I would think that the bulk of your "business" occurs on those 2 days, and that you would want to be sure you were properly funded to handle the increased action. In any case, Betmaker went unfunded for AT LEAST 6 days, maybe longer.


Further to me being on the defensive, you said yesterday betmaker "hasn't had funds at Neteller for at least 5 days now".

But today you say, "AT LEAST the last 4 or 5 days".

Yesterday it was "at least" 5, but today maybe only 4? I'm not trying to tear apart your e-mails, just establish why I've had this feeling all along you've had some other beef w/ us & had been misrepresenting the situation.

There's only one person misrepresenting the situation here Mike...and that's you. This is a very weak and transparent attempt to deflect blame.


If we count Thurs., Fri., & Mon. (bank wires don't go on weekends) we're talking 3 days. So we found out on Thurs. & funds were in on Mon., have we really acted irresponsibly by dragging out your payout?

Fibbing again, eh Mike? You knew you had no funds as early as Wed, and it was not possible to make a Neteller w/d until the following Tues. That's 6 days last time I counted. Not 3 days...6 days.


I really don't want to keep this going any longer than necessary, but if you don't mind, I'd greatly appreciate if you could answer the following questions for me:

1) Did you try to contact our customer service department directly? If yes, how so?

I've already answered this questions several times.

2) If you spoke to anyone, weren't you offered any other withdrawal methods?

Let's see. After I had tried unsuccessfully over the course of 3 or 4 days to make a w/d, and after I sent 2 e-mails which were both ignored, and after Betmaker lied to me about why I couldn't make a w/d thru Neteller, and after I made it a public issue, yes I was finally offered alternate w/d methods. Why wasn't I offered those alternatives when I sent my first e-mail? or after the 2nd e-mail? or how about when your rep. lied to me about "technical problems" at Neteller? Why wasn't I offered those other withdrawal methods then?


3) You said when you were paid, you'd tell the forum. Have you been paid? We've had several payouts since yesterday afternoon & I would take comfort knowing that you are one of them.

You can rest easy now MIke. I have been paid.


In summary:
I sincerely apologize for the delay you've had getting your payout.

We should've realized a couple days sooner Neteller funds were runnning low & avoided this. Nevertheless, we acted as quickly as possible & offered other options that could've been made in the same day.

You know this statement is a complete fabrication. Looking at the facts here, not only didn't you act "as quickly as possible", you didn't do anything until this became a public matter.


We have people in this thread & others that have stated they've received they're payouts w/ no delay at all.

I'm sorry if your experience was not what you expected. I can only hope that other readers will be able to understand our point of view, see the other positive comments that have been made about us, & choose betmaker as one of their outs.

People are certainly free to make whatever choices they want, but there are a lot of other fine books out there who always keep their acct. properly funded at Neteller, and don't feel the need to try to deceive people after getting caught with their pants down.

There was another person in this thread who had similar problems at Betmaker. I would guess that for every person who voices a problem in public that there are about a hundred more who suffer in silence. I doubt very much that mine was an isolated problem.

Also, you never did rsepond to reno about Betmaker being a clone joint and booting winners, or about giving diff. lines to diff. players. Since this thread is getting a bit unwieldy, maybe you'd prefer to comment on those items in a whole new thread.

To me, the most disturbing part of all this is Mike Foreman coming in here and professing to have absolutely no knowledge of ANY of these problems, when in fact he was FULLY aware of them. It appears that Mike is someone who has a problem with the truth. Since I was also lied to by another person at Betmaker, it looks like the problem may be systemic. Add in the poor customer service and the underfunded Neteller acct, and you're not left with a very pretty picture.

Can't wait to see your spin on this one Mike.

[SÅTAÑ ¤]

I have been trying to get a hold of Mike Foreman for the last two days. Wvery time I call they say call back in one hour.

All I want to do is to close my f'ucking account and have them send my remaining funds back to my neteller account.

The accounting dept tells me I have to talk to this guy first and he is never there.

THATS HOW GREAT THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE IS!

[Blowfish]

How can you not get a payout processed? Why does one guy have to approve your payout? Do you have an unusually large amount of funds? Are they contesting a bonus claim? Have you tried E-mail (probably a dumb question)?

This Betmaker isn't the exact organization that had been sold to Sportingbet.com. The new guys were friends of the original owner and they were either given or paid for the new name to use. As for customer list, etc., I'm not sure.

Keep us posted, it is a rather fragile time of year.