Player claims Bovada falsely accused him of chargeback

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08-16-2019, 04:52 PM
Dan Druff

Player claims Bovada falsely accused him of chargeback

From 2+2:

Quote:

This could go in payment thread, but I think it is best suited here, especially since strange actions at Ignition have been discussed here.

I am a long time poster who created this account for anonymity. Several weeks back in this thread there was some discussion about the possibility of a rogue employee at Ignition and/or other strange stuff. He is my story. For privacy I am going to say “about” instead of use exact dates or amounts. “About” a little over 2 weeks ago I tried to log into my Ignition account and a pop-up said my account was disabled. I decided to check my email before calling support. I had an email saying that there was a chargeback on my account for “about” $500 dated from “about” March. I thought that was strange and maybe impossible to charge something back that late after the fact. I Googled to find out how late can a chargeback occur and Google said 120 days is the standard longest length. So somehow right as my deposit from MONTHS ago was nearing the end of being able to do a chargeback someone at Ignition or whatever processor they used is claiming there is a chargeback. I checked my card and my card company says no chargeback occured. And I can clearly see every transaction on my card.

I called Ignition support and they say I can do one of two things. I can make another charge to them of “about” $500 right now or I can wait 5 to 10 business days for the chargeback money to show on my card and then send Ignition the money. There was no way in hell I was sending first. I asked the Ignition lady on the phone in great detail and specifics, “let me get this straight, you are going to send me money, and then you want me to send it to you?”. She said yes.

I have plenty of places to play online and live, so having my poker account disabled and waiting 5 to 10 business days for them to send me money from a phantom chargeback was no big deal to me. But I am sure there are a lot of naive, desperate or impatient gamblers that would have sent the money in first to get their account opened back up immediately. But I waited and after 10 business days there was no money sent to my card. Of course there was not going to be any money sent to my card. THERE WAS NO DAMN CHARGEBACK. And after the 10 business days I sent records from my card to Ignition showing there was no chargeback and neither was there any money sent to me as part of a chargeback. They immediately opened my account back up. But and here is the amazing kicker, I didn’t get an apology email, I got an email saying that since I was a long standing player (my account goes back many years to even before Ignition was created from Bovada) and since my account has always been in good standing they are forgiving the “about” $500 but next time I will be held responsible for any chargebacks.

What the hell. There was no chargeback. Either an Ignition employee or an Ignition processor is doing some shady stuff. When Pokerstars was still in the grey market around Black Friday infamous Daniel Tzvetkoff and his company Intabill and that other processor Selling Source, stole millions from Pokerstars. Now everytime I hear about player processing problems, I figure at least a few of Ignition’s processors are stealing from them.

So. My account is open. The fake chargeback was for “about” $500. They restored the amount that was in my account when it was disabled. They didn’t try to steal it or claim it was part of the fake chargeback. I immediately withdrew and was paid. But now there is a threat over my account that “next time I’m on the hook for anything wrong with my account.” In the last 120 days I have one deposit with a card and I’m not going to risk that another phantom chargeback is going to be claimed. After the 120 days mark passses on that one deposit I don’t know if I will go back to playing Ignition. Also, I don’t know the business structure at Bovada and if they would try to clawback an Ignition claim so I am not playing Bovada either. But if I ever did play again, I would need to make a deposit since I withdrew everything. I will never deposit with a card again (or anything that chargeback claims can be made), I will instead use something like Bitcoin.

Be careful out there.

Source: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...ostcount=55637
08-16-2019, 04:53 PM
Dan Druff

My response:

It's not rogue employees.

Your feeling that it might be payment processor related is correct.

Bovada has lots of shady payment processors, some of whom steal from them, and some of whom steal from the players (and some do both).

Bovada is notoriously crappy in how they handle these situations, always trying to blame the player for the issue, and refusing to acknowledge that their processors are doing these things.

In my case, processors both skimmed from cashouts (assuming the player won't notice because of the bank conversion of foreign currency already eating some of the money) and overcharged deposits (again, assuming the player will chalk it up to fees or foreign currency conversion).

When these happened, I had massive fights with them to make it right, always eventually winning, but it took a ton of effort, and in one case, they only made it right because I directed them to the existence of my forum and radio show, and they got scared that I would make them look bad.

In all of these cases, Bovada wasn't stealing from me. Their processors were the thieves, but Bovada wouldn't make it right until I really leaned on them hard.

In this particular situation, the processor is lying to Bovada about phony chargebacks, and then just pocketing the money.

The problem on Bovada's end is that they have no visibility into who is telling the truth. Some shady players really do chargebacks and deny it, while others did nothing wrong and the payment processor is just lying. Bovada cannot see, so they blame the player first, and then eventually back down if the player has a good history and vehemently sticks to his story.

You were correct to stand your ground.
08-16-2019, 04:53 PM
Dan Druff

Related reading from December 2018: https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...e-a-year-later

Related reading from 2017: https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...skimming-again
08-23-2019, 05:16 PM
incognito81

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan Druff

My response:

It's not rogue employees.

Your feeling that it might be payment processor related is correct.

Bovada has lots of shady payment processors, some of whom steal from them, and some of whom steal from the players (and some do both).

Bovada is notoriously crappy in how they handle these situations, always trying to blame the player for the issue, and refusing to acknowledge that their processors are doing these things.

In my case, processors both skimmed from cashouts (assuming the player won't notice because of the bank conversion of foreign currency already eating some of the money) and overcharged deposits (again, assuming the player will chalk it up to fees or foreign currency conversion).

When these happened, I had massive fights with them to make it right, always eventually winning, but it took a ton of effort, and in one case, they only made it right because I directed them to the existence of my forum and radio show, and they got scared that I would make them look bad.

In all of these cases, Bovada wasn't stealing from me. Their processors were the thieves, but Bovada wouldn't make it right until I really leaned on them hard.

In this particular situation, the processor is lying to Bovada about phony chargebacks, and then just pocketing the money.

The problem on Bovada's end is that they have no visibility into who is telling the truth. Some shady players really do chargebacks and deny it, while others did nothing wrong and the payment processor is just lying. Bovada cannot see, so they blame the player first, and then eventually back down if the player has a good history and vehemently sticks to his story.

You were correct to stand your ground.

Make it legal already