Pointbet downgraded!

noyb · 01-26-07, 11:05 AM

if you look around the various betting forums they do appear to be paying some people every day, it's just there's some sort of strange reverse chronological order in it. some people report even getting paid within two days.
apparently, they seem to have put a prioritity in paying off people who asked for a withdrawal recently, and pay off at random one or two people who have been waiting longer with what's left for that day.
it's a pretty sound strategy from the sportsbook point of view, but obviously not very customer-friendly to people who have been waiting for weeks (but i guess they think they've lost most of these people as customers already, which definitely makes some sense). i am still confident they will pay eventually, could be a very long wait for some though.

JoshW · 01-26-07, 11:12 AM

Lots of complaints piling up to us. If I was waiting two months to be paid and they were paying off people who just put in w/d requests I would be pissed. As it is large balances seem to be the slowest to be paid.

noyb · 01-26-07, 11:46 AM

i think "pissed" is putting it mildly.. not much anyone can do about it though (except pray you're somehow next on their paylist). anyway, if they were going to dissappear, i'm pretty sure they would have done it by now. after all the troubles with their website because of the earthquake, they finally seem to be back online on a more or less consistent basis.

deltanovember · 01-27-07, 06:15 AM

They have confirmed to me via live chat that active members are being paid first. The operator intimated that if I started betting again, I would be paid more quickly but if I continued to abstain from betting, my payout would be delayed.

Bill Dozer · 01-27-07, 07:59 PM

We had a few reports of small and partial payments after last night's wire but more complaints of large no-pays. Now they are trying to maintain a source of revenue by keeping new and active players happy. I hope we get some reports of 5 figure payouts soon.

winning2007 · 01-28-07, 11:39 PM

Pointbet must pay for player. If not, nobody play with them

bigboydan · 01-28-07, 11:42 PM

first off, welcome to the SBR forum

Even if they pay the players I still would never play there! Who's to say they wouldn't do this again to another player.

winning2007 · 01-29-07, 02:43 AM

please sent me new dealer with hight ration same same pointbet

wack · 01-29-07, 07:46 AM

I would seriously recommend to everyone that they pull any balances as soon as possible. I had over 70k there (they had never slowpayed me at any point before, even on bank wires of 25k plus) - now I have withdrawals of 21k backed up and only a very small balance. I am not wagering with them any more and will not do until they have paid me in full.

They refuse to give any answers on their live chat, will not specify any dates for payments and will not give any reason for the slowpaying. They were saying moneybookers was unfunded, but now even they realise they can't keep saying that after 2 months.

I am almost resigning myself to the fact that they are not going to pay. I have been waiting for 38 days now and I could wait 380 more, that's how I feel about their whole operation.

Please, don't anyone else get themselves in this situation with this book which is now operating as a serious slowpayer/scam book.

I got my money from internet 1X2 many years ago (before I discovered SBR) by contacting the Belize government and they intervened on my behalf (they were very helpful). May have to try the same with the Indonesian government or whatever.

Wish me luck....I will keep you posted. Wouldn't be surprised to see them go "F" in the next few weeks.

deltanovember · 01-29-07, 01:43 PM

Hi wack I would advise you to proceed with caution regarding the Indonesian government. The legality of operating an online sportsbook in Indonesia is questionable at best and alerting the government to Pointbet's delinquency may just cause them to come in and shut down the entire operation.

Lucas · 01-29-07, 01:47 PM

Originally posted by wack

I got my money from internet 1X2 many years ago (before I discovered SBR) by contacting the Belize government and they intervened on my behalf (they were very helpful).

wow
how did you do it?

wack · 01-29-07, 08:43 PM

Thanks Delta advice taken on board. Have you considered betting small sums such as 25 or 50 $/£ a couple of times a week? I think that is what I am going to do, to stay "active"

With regards to 1x2 I actually did some research on Belize and found out a bit about the place, a lot on the internet about them being up and coming and it was very easy to contact their minister of finance who quickly sorted something out for me by contacting the infamous Mr Raviv himself who paid within days (after i had waited 3 or 4 months).

winning2007 · 01-31-07, 09:10 PM

Oh Dear.
Help Me.

wack · 02-04-07, 07:23 AM

I don't suppose anyone has been paid?

Gr8Scott · 02-04-07, 01:38 PM

I am still waiting

wack · 02-04-07, 07:08 PM

Apparently their chief investor has pulled out, and they are looking for more investors. No-one is going to take on that project in the current climate (although I don't suppose the US situation has affected them THAT much to be honest, nothing compared to other sportsbooks), so they must be operating essentially as a scam.

Any deposits will just be paying their staff and lining dishonest pockets, I will be surprised if anyone gets paid out ever again from what I have just read and heard. Time to move on and get on with it.

If anyone gets paid, please let us know on this thread, even if it is only a couple of hundred dollars.

winning2007 · 02-04-07, 07:52 PM

[QUOTE=wack]Apparently their chief investor has pulled out, and they are looking for more investors. No-one is going to take on that project in the current climate (although I don't suppose the US situation has affected them THAT much to be honest, nothing compared to other sportsbooks), so they must be operating essentially as a scam.

Any deposits will just be paying their staff and lining dishonest pockets, I will be surprised if anyone gets paid out ever again from what I have just read and heard. Time to move on and get on with it.

If anyone gets paid, please let us know on this thread, even if it is only a couple of hundred dollars

HELP ME, PLEASE, PLEASE PAY FOR ME
IM A POOR MAN:

Bill Dozer · 02-05-07, 02:07 PM

Originally posted by wack

Apparently their chief investor has pulled out, and they are looking for more investors. No-one is going to take on that project in the current climate (although I don't suppose the US situation has affected them THAT much to be honest, nothing compared to other sportsbooks), so they must be operating essentially as a scam.

Any deposits will just be paying their staff and lining dishonest pockets, I will be surprised if anyone gets paid out ever again from what I have just read and heard. Time to move on and get on with it.

If anyone gets paid, please let us know on this thread, even if it is only a couple of hundred dollars.

Welcome to the board wack. Can you link us to the source of that rumor?

Gr8Scott · 02-05-07, 05:08 PM

They told me that if i became an active custumer they would pay me faster

magnavox · 02-05-07, 05:30 PM

F+ at the moment.

Gr8Scott · 02-05-07, 06:43 PM

probably time to treat the money as a loss and move on.

RickySteve · 02-05-07, 07:09 PM

Originally posted by Gr8Scott

They told me that if i became an active custumer they would pay me faster

How could you be an active customer? Their site has been inaccessible for weeks.

winning2007 · 02-05-07, 07:29 PM

my money, where. help me

oh dear. help me, they keep me 100.000 usd
They told me, they paid by moneybooker after 10 days.
I have been waitting my money.

noyb · 02-05-07, 07:55 PM

Originally posted by RickySteve

How could you be an active customer? Their site has been inaccessible for weeks.

www1.pointbet.com works for a quite long time now.

wack · 02-06-07, 04:24 AM

Originally posted by Bill Dozer

Welcome to the board wack. Can you link us to the source of that rumor?

I can tell you that I received that information from another internet site manager, I don't know if there are any rules about posting another website's URL so I won't post it as technically they are "competition" to SBR (but if you want me to post it just ask and I will).

I contacted them a while back via email and they sent me an email detailing the situation to the best of their knowledge which included the following information:

It is unclear as to whether they have ever had an actual betting license or whether they are just an offshore company, although it is suspected that it is the latter.

Their chief investor has pulled out leaving them searching for a new one. The manager told me that he rates the chances of this as "unlikely" due to the "current climate of the betting industry". Having said that I can't personally imagine that the US ban has hit them anywhere near as hard as it has hit a lot of sportsbooks, especially as their main business is soccer.

The bookmaker has been downgraded on this site since early January, the last signficant payout reports were some weeks before that.

I have now been waiting 46 days and am 90%+ certain I am not getting paid. This is cut and pasted from their internal messaging system, as you can imagine I have had numerous conversations with them via this method and via live chat.

"Thank you for your reply.
We are process your withdrawal. Please don`t worry.
There are members who waited more longer then you, more then 45 days
and they get their money for sure.
If you informing everyone on the internet, this will make the situation worse."

My reply was along the lines that I feel it necessary to inform as many people as possible so that they don't get scammed. They even admit people have been "waited more longer" than me, I feel very sorry for these people. Despite telling me several times to check my "account" later in the day, later that week, etc, the PM I received before this one read as follows:

"Thank you for your message.
We are sorry for the delay in process the withdraw request.
Just to inform you that we still pending the withdraw using bank tranfer.
We are processing the withdraw request using Moneybookers first, but it will takes a few more weeks also.
But for sure you will get the fund in your moneybookers and bank account ."

This is despite telling me numerous times that they are processing requests on a "first in, first out" basis, and my bank transfer request was tabled about 2 weeks before my first moneybookers request. Conveniently the moneybookers request is for about 1/3 of the amount of the bank transfer.

They are continually buying time and telling monstrous lies, and it seems to fit in with the fact that they are looking for a new investor. Essentially I would imagine their business model to be quite sound, they are splashed all over the internet with decent limits, and have a casino, poker and games operation which I can only assume makes a decent profit - but I also imagine that any sports betting operation will indeed struggle to attract any significant investment at this time of doom and gloom, even if they only ever had a handful of US customers and US sports is only a couple of % of their action.

wack · 02-06-07, 04:26 AM

Originally posted by Gr8Scott

They told me that if i became an active custumer they would pay me faster

Clearly another lie, I have been wagering since they told me to use www1.pointbet.com and still they haven't paid after 46 days. I am only wagering out of pure desparation, but if I am never going to get the money anyway I guess I may as well bet it!

wack · 02-06-07, 05:00 AM

interestingly, www.pointbet.com is working again, although as soon as you log in it takes you to www1.pointbet.com - also someone apparently just won £9336 on roulette, good luck with getting paid!

noyb · 02-06-07, 08:00 AM

i have a hard time understanding what exactly is going on with pointbet. a big investor withdrawing could be the problem (perhaps big amounts of money were used to buy him out), but since they have been around for quite some time you would still assume they are generating monthly profits and could use these profits to pay people off (which is perhaps what they're doing, since some random people seem to get paid every now and then, and these seem to include five-digit amounts from what I've read, all second-hand information ofcourse), They offer extremely low juice (I don't see how you can make a lot of money out of 99% books), but so are other AH-specialists in the market. Also, their odd movements are in line with other books, they don't seem to be betting on outcomes offering crazy lines and praying the other side wins. I really don't believe the US-gambling ban has affected them in any way, from what I have gathered about them most of their customers are from Asia, where they're a major book, and the rest from Europe.They are still actively upgrading their website with new features and upgrades, they have recovered from the Asian-earthquake and a site that was not reachable for some time (would have been the perfect excuse to close shop alltogether). In short, there's not a single sign they're going anywhere, except they somehow suddenly just don't seem to have any cash anymore. It doesn't make any sense, if I were them I would at least explain things, but they're just categorically refusing to do that, and keep e-mailling the same bullshit excuses, which so obviously mean nothing. It's really very bad PR from their part. If I could be sure profits were still coming in, and backlog is decreasing, I would be a whole lot less worried, now it's all just a big question mark.

bigboydan · 02-06-07, 11:37 AM

02.05.2007 (09:28 PM CST)

Pointbet (SBR rating D-) tells players they may receive payment faster if they wager with balances. No-pay reports continue to reach new highs.

Player:

I hit myself for not taking last summers slow payment reports seriously. I made several withdrawals during September and October without problems and thought everything was fine. I still made few thousand euros deposits during November and December which I regret now. Few days ago I asked their customer service that in which country my bets are received and processed. I was answered (within 15 minutes!) that "We are based in UK." If that is the truth I wonder why the internet connection problems at christmas to their site were caused by earthquakes in Asia as they claimed.

Gr8Scott · 02-06-07, 02:42 PM

An asian Sportsbook reviewer recently upgraded Pointbet

, maybe they bought that upgrade or maybe they are only paying asian custumers.

kiwi · 02-06-07, 02:43 PM

Originally posted by noyb

i have a hard time understanding what exactly is going on with pointbet.

Exactly these are my questions too. I wonder why they don't seem to have any cash anymore even if their odds are resonable. They have similar odds compared to other asian books which don't have any problems though - really strange...

deltanovember · 02-06-07, 03:41 PM

Pointbet have always behaved like a bookmaker strapped for cash. I remember in August 2004 I specifically had a chat with them telling them that I was impressed with all aspects of their operation except for their delayed and seemingly random payout times. I went so far as to plan a trip to visit their operation because I was considering depositing a significant sum of cash. When they told me I would have to fly to Indonesia and not the British Virgin Islands, I cancelled my plans. Their explanations during this recent fiasco have often made no sense and at times have been blatantly contradictory. I have been told at various times:

(a) Payments were being processed on a first in first out basis
(b) Payments were being processed to active members first
(c) I would be paid this week
(d) They wanted to negotiate "terms" with me to payout a small portion of my balance once every three weeks
(e) My payment was being delayed because the CEO had to fly to different countries to send money back to their bank account

wack · 02-07-07, 11:26 AM

Originally posted by deltanovember

Pointbet have always behaved like a bookmaker strapped for cash. I remember in August 2004 I specifically had a chat with them telling them that I was impressed with all aspects of their operation except for their delayed and seemingly random payout times. I went so far as to plan a trip to visit their operation because I was considering depositing a significant sum of cash. When they told me I would have to fly to Indonesia and not the British Virgin Islands, I cancelled my plans. Their explanations during this recent fiasco have often made no sense and at times have been blatantly contradictory. I have been told at various times:

(a) Payments were being processed on a first in first out basis
(b) Payments were being processed to active members first
(c) I would be paid this week
(d) They wanted to negotiate "terms" with me to payout a small portion of my balance once every three weeks
(e) My payment was being delayed because the CEO had to fly to different countries to send money back to their bank account

I must say they have never tried to negotiate with me. However I have techically still been an active player. Whoever has ever run the operation has obviously been totally ruthless about how much cash he takes out in profit and also the fact that they are essentially unregulated obviously doesn't put any onus on them to keep any amount of "working capital" that any decent bookmaker would need from time to time.

(e) has made me laugh. I thought they had told me some bs, but that's a joke.

wack · 02-08-07, 12:51 PM

Just heard about someone who has been waiting for a large payout for over 10 weeks. It gets worse.