ePassPorte Problems Persist for Online Poker Players

For many online poker players and gamblers in general, ePassPorte represents the only viable method of depositing and receiving funds through a third party eWallet. The problem: ePassPorte has proven time and time again not to be among the most reliable of services.

Not only is their system flawed, there has also been reports of fraud as illustrated by Gambling911.com a few months back.

Lately, Gambling911.com has been flooded with inquiries concerning ePassPorte and its poor response rate.

It's not all bad perhaps. One Two Plus Two Forum member writes:

I would just like to say that EPP has worked excellently for me, although I am only a low stakes player, and I haven't actually attempted to get money out of them at any point. After I have my recent bills caught up, I'm going to get their ATM/real VISA, and hopefully continue to be as happy as the proverbial lark.

My only complaint is that it usually takes a day or two for a site to get funds INTO the EPP account, but it takes less than a second for funds to transfer to the site from the EPP account. :|
I think that's pretty standard though?

More common, however, are complaints such as this one:

Since the 22th of January I have been trying to receive a 'physical' Visa card from Epassporte. I had already the Visa electron, but I paid the $40 dollar or so extra to get the real thing.

I'm not going to tell the whole story again, but I didn't receive it. At the end of March I called Epassporte for the 3rd time or so and then got to speak to a lady, who told me that according to them I should have received the card, because it had been sent a couple of weeks ago already. Since I had not, they blocked the old card and sent me a new one.

So I have been patiently waiting until today, when I decided to give them another call to ask where the f.. my card was. I got to speak to another lady who told me that this new card had never been sent. Also she told me that the old card was blocked because I had e-mailed them asking them to block it because I had not received the card. I told her that I never emailed them and that the blocking of the card had been their idea. And that during my last phone call I had been told very clearly that they would send me a new one (see my old post, I even had a discussion about it). But no, there could be no mistake about it because their system said cleary that I had emailed them and that I had not asked for a new card.

Do a search on "ePassPorte Complaints" via Google and see what comes up. It's a little scary but for gamblers, the gamble may be well worth it. As we mention above, ePassPorte for now may be the only viable outlet for some online poker rooms outside of Visa and Mastercard though Gambling911.com does see improvements in the area of processing down the road.

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ePassPorte Problems Persist for Online Poker Players
Merchant Claims ePassporte Held Over $250K Funds Hostage
Online Gambling: ePassPorte Security Flaws Have Customers Worried

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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com

Originally published May 21, 2007 12:01 pm ET