Originally Posted by
Steve-O
Question: How accurate is this site considering they call Cake Poker the flagship of their own network? I mean they have three separate rooms from the Revolution Network (Cake, Red Star, and Lock) all with different ratings, B+, C-, and D-...... And the month before they have Lock at B- with 4-6 (instead of 4-7) week checks??? Don't get their rankings at all.
Also your summary is erroneous, lock is taking 4-7 weeks to process checks and up to another month to clear; there is no mention of 2-10 weeks.
From my own understanding the only fast, reliable, US method at the moment are the debit cards from ACR
You misread what they wrote about Cake. They said it was "
once the flagship of their own network", which is a true statement.
The letter grades are not really relevant, as those are very subjective.
The hard numbers regarding cashout fees, speeds, and availability are much more important.
My summary of Lock is correct. The process of clearing foreign checks is known as "collections". Each bank handles collections differently. Some do only take a month, while others take up to 10 weeks. For example, Bank of America reports their collections process to take "3-8 weeks".
I actually dealt with this issue myself about 5 years ago. A certain poker network was sending checks based out of a foreign bank, but backed by Citibank. Despite Citibank's backing, I found that all other banks were refusing to take these checks without putting them through the collections process. Wells Fargo, for example, wanted to make me wait 6-8 weeks, while Washington Mutual wanted me to wait 6-10 weeks. I refused to wait this long, and instead opened a Citibank account just for the purpose of depositing those checks. Citibank did not make me wait any time, because they were the backers of those checks.
It sounds like the checks Lock is sending out have no US bank backing them, so they always go to collections. Again, this is bank-dependent. If most people are getting them clearing in a month, that's great, but you can't take for granted that it might take longer.
In general, sending foreign checks (without a US bank backing them) has been considered a huge no-no in the online poker industry, even after Black Friday. It's because of this collections situation.
It sounds like Bovada, Merge, ACR, and Red Star all have significantly better cashout situations right now than Cake or Lock.