ewalletxpress

They really suck.

I got an invitation to some Bodog blogger tournament series with a $10+1 buyin and some added money. Since they are a major advertiser at mathandpoker.com I thought I'd play, but I don't have any money in my Bodog account (they pay for the advertising directly, not through my Bodog account). So, for the first time since Neteller went south I set about trying to figure out how to get money onto a poker site.

Bodog doesn't have a lot of options for American players. It's pretty much either NuCharge, some kind of phone card payment system, or eWalletExpress, a more traditional type internet payments system.

I opted for eWalletExpress because with NuCharge if you make a Bodog deposit with them you have to withdraw through them, and that's not the case with eWalletExpress.

Normally I wouldn't like eWalletExpress, they have some pretty high fees on deposits. But they allow a 1-time deposit straight from a bank account with no fee, up to $150 maximum deposit. Since $150 more than covers the buyins for the invitational tournaments I went with it.

First of all I only have one telephone. It's my cell phone that I've had since I lived in Gulfport. I don't have a separate home phone or business phone. But I don't live in Gulfport anymore, I live in Oklahoma. So they wouldn't let me sign up with that phone number.

I contacted their online support, and she suggested I find a different phone number. I guess she meant to make one up with an Oklahoma area code. But I thought that might not be a good idea since there might be a telephone check at the end of the signup.

So I used my old Gulfport address. The address is still there, although the house that was there floated off into the Gulf of Mexico during Katrina. No problem. Sailed right through. And I was right, they do have a telephone verification thing at the end.

But it wasn't all smooth sailing. Making the deposit. They ask what kind of account. I checked off savings account.

Then they want me to input (using a special keypad) all the little micr codes at the bottom of a check. Uh. Savings account. No checks.

But I know the bank routing number and the account number, so I got a check from a different bank and copied the little special codes at the bottom of that check, with my routing number and account number. They rejected it. I found a check from a third bank which had slighly different codes than the ones on the other check, I used that one, it worked.

What a pain in the ass.

It's gets worse. Everybody else validates your account by making a deposit of a few cents and requiring you to tell them the amount of the deposit. These clowns make a withdrawal of few cents and require you to tell them the amount of the withdrawel.

Not just a pain in the ass, a cheap pain in the ass.

I don't like them.