Successful deposit
at the online casino - the harsh reality
If
you live in the United States and have attempted recently to
deposit at an online casino you may have met the harsh reality
of the current situation in the online gambling industry. Ever
since late 2006, when the Congress passed the Unlawful Internet
Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), getting money to and from the
online casinos has transformed into a real nightmare. Although
receiving your winning from an online casino is not so
complicated (although time-consuming), the real problem is
depositing the money in the first place. How big of a problem?
Well, we decided to find out and set forth on a quest to deposit
money at a gambling website. For the purpose of this test, we
chose three different online casinos and two credit cards - one
Visa and one MasterCard. And here are the results:
First we decided to visit
Vegas Casino Online.
Downloading and installing the casino was a breeze and
problem-free. Right from the beginning we were able to install
the online casino, start the software and open an account. Our
tester went to the deposit screen of the casino's lobby and
attempted to make a $100 deposit using the MasterCard.
Unfortunately our transaction came back as unsuccessful, i.e.
the bank declined to process the payment. The same outcome with
the Visa. Following the unsuccessful attempts to deposit money
via credit card at this online casino or options were severely
limited to eWalletXpress and wire transfer. Both options would
take 3-5 business days for new players. For non-USA players the
credit card transactions go through without a problem,
additionally a large number of alternative e-wallets are
available (such as Neteller and Moneybookers). A surprising and
positive twist was added to our experience with Vegas Casino
Online - while we were trying to make the deposits, a $10 free
bonus mysteriously showed up in our casino bankroll. Greatly
appreciated, we spent it playing a few hands of video poker.
A bit disappointed, but in a good mood,
thanks to the free $10 bucks, we continued our quest with the
next online casino -
Golden Casino. It was here when
things got really frustrating as the casino was fast to
download, but a little slow to install. Even after the
installation we were unable to start the online casino software
by any means known to man. We assume the problem stemmed from
the computer running Widows Vista Home Premium (we have tested
the casino before on XP) or it was incompatible with another
program on our computer. After we spent some time tweaking
around we finally gave up and downloaded the casino on another
machine, running Windows Vista Ultimate (64bit) and the
installation and start-up process went through without a hitch.
Excited by the success, our tester opened an account and try to
deposit $100 with the online casino. Needless to say, both of
the credit card deposits were declined, leaving us wit the same
payment methods as the previous casino. A funny note, Golden
Casino gave us the option to deposit via Click2Pay, although
this service does not accept registrations from the US any
longer.
The lack of success and $10 buck free
put us in a New York state of mind and we set off to try the
final online casino on our list -
Bodog Casino. Opening an
account was easy, the download was relatively fast and the
casino software installed and ran without any problems on the
Vista Home Premium machine. When the deposit was attempted -
voila, there is a reason Bodog is currently the most popular
online casino in the world. The transaction went through and we
successfully gambled for a while, before losing our small
bankroll (plus the 10% bonus). This online casino is great and
from our past experiences we had little doubt that the credit
card transactions would go through.
But if this exercise has
shown us anything, it is the dire need for payment processing
methods at the online casinos today. Without anything new, there
would be no alternative left. It's hard to imagine that people
will embark on the task of jumping through hoops to start
playing at the online casinos. After all, the only reason the
online casinos became so popular was thanks to the convenience
they used to offer.
Published on
07/26/2008
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