The below is a great example of why so few fish are still playing online poker, and what a fucking disaster it is to deposit using Western Union these days.
I decided to put $2500 on Bovada (Bodog) today.
The fees they charge on credit cards sucks (it would cost something like $125 in fees to do $2500), so I always deposit there using Western Union. Bovada credits you back the WU fees (deposits only, not withdrawals), so that's the way I do it.
Here is the instructions they always give you:
1) Call up Bovada and tell them EXACTLY how much you want to deposit.
2) Bovada gives you the name of some shady Filipina and tells you to send them money in the Philippines.
3) You are supposed to send the money in US dollars (not Philippines $), and you are supposed to MAKE SURE not to say anything about poker, Bovada, or gambling.
4) You need to go down to a Western Union location and deposit there. I once tried online but it failed.
5) Once you have made the deposit, you call Bovada back with the Money Control Number, and they credit your account within 30 minutes.
This is a bit of a pain in the ass, but once you have it down, you can get the whole thing done fairly quickly, provided you live close to a WU location (which I do).
Up until today, I had always done between $1000 and $2000 with no problem.
Today I got a bit ambitious and did $2500.
The following fails occurred:
Fail #1
The Western Union location I'm close to is a supermarket bank. This bank demanded to see two forms of ID (usually they just ask for one) PLUS my social security card (which I was lucky enough to have on me). The bank later told me that $2500 is the magic number to trigger this.
They had to do all kinds of verification and paperwork, and I stood around for like 10-15 minutes while they were doing this shit. Finally, they got it done.
Fail #2
I walked back to my car with the paper showing my Money Control Number, but I then noticed that they mistakenly sent the money in Philippines $, which would not work for this deposit. (You have to follow the EXACT instructions, or the deposit fails.) I ran back into the supermarket and caught the bankers as they were packing up to leave (it was after closing by this point). I told them of the mistake they made, so they were nice about it and stayed late to fix it.
Basically, they needed to call Western Union, get the transfer refunded, and then re-submit it with the same money, this time in USD.
It took a LONG time to get this done -- like 25 minutes. They put me on the phone with Western Union at one point, and the representative told me that I would have to undergo some sort of "consumer fraud interview" prior to the money going through.
I was told that this interview was unrelated to the USD mistake we had just corrected, but was standard procedure in certain cases. Apparently, again, it was triggered by the amount of $2500.
The bank manager then confided in me that $2500 seems to be the exact amount often requested by foreign "romance scammers". Romance scammers are girls (or guys pretending to be girls) who find lonely, desperate saps, and ask for money either to come to the US or for some sort of emergency (inability to pay rent, medical problems, etc). Of course, after the romance scammers milk their target dry, they vanish into thin air.
Anyway, for some reason $2500 is the amount that is often scammed, so they panic at Western Union whenever they see it.
So I finally got the whole thing resent, and then I was told I would have to call this ridiculous consumer fraud protection number and do an "interview".
Fail #3
So now it's almost an hour later after this whole mess, and I am on what appears to be the last step -- convincing Western Union that I'm not a chump being scammed by some shady Filipina.
They asked me a ton of questions about my relationship with "Flora".
How do you know her? I told them that she was a friend of mine.
How long have you known her? I told them that I had known her for years.
How did I get to know her? I told them that I met her in New York.
What is she going to use the money for? I told them that she is just low on money and I'm helping a friend out, and that I volunteered to do it myself.
Is it a loan? I told them no.
How often do I talk to her? I told them once every few weeks.
How do I communicate with her? I said by e-mail and phone.
They sent these answers to some other department for review, and said they would call me back in 6-8 minutes.
I kept insisting that I knew all about romance fraud and other internet scams, but that "Flora" is a good friend whom I have known for years, and that this is totally safe and legitimate.
Not surprisingly, I got the call back, and the told me the transfer had been denied.
Now I have to pick up my refund tomorrow, and my Bovada account has $0.00.
Awful.
You can't reason with Western Union, either. You get a bunch of third world monkeys on the phone who just quote you lines off a computer.
Hilariously, while it was 100% clear that they thought I was some rube who got scammed, they claimed that they were denying this only because there was "a high chance of fraud on the other end -- that lots of people use fake IDs to steal the money".
I asked, "How could someone steal the money if they didn't know it was coming in the first place, and how would this scammer get the Money Control Number?"
They couldn't answer that, but just kept telling me that there was a high chance that Flora wouldn't get the money due to these identity thefts. They must tell people this because it's an easier way to shut them up, rather than telling them that it was determined that they're likely chumps who are getting scammed by the woman they think they "love".
Total joke.
I will try again tomorrow, for $1900 instead of $2500.
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Originally Posted by Corrigan
