First, don't censor the title of the thread. You earned it.

It seems that someone has their bowels drain into their head when they came up with the whole 'additional option' excitement.

You have a lot of upset players, almost all regs. Fix it. Write a quick script and separate the people you decide would be your crash test dummies, make two lists. One is cash player and the other is MTT.

For the cash players, offer a period of time where they play rake free, say 8-10 PM local time to them on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It costs you nothing and saves them plenty.

For the MTT players, give them tickets to enter $10 or $20 games, tickets is plural, could be for a $10 1R+A, something like that. At the very least, run a decent size freeroll for those that are already stuck with this brainfart of a move. If there are a thousand of them, $2,500 freedonk at the least. That makes people happy. Cash players are not interested in MTTs and vice-versa, treat them separately.

Then, allow an opt-out aspect so players can stick with PayPal, but put both options up for players. Incentivize people to use the new option exclusively. Cash players get X hours of rake free games, MTT players get $X of $weepsCash in the form of entry tickets, etc....

Global made this mess. Instead of some random zendesk help link that goes to no one, let players air their ideas out here and then you can show Larry and Nigel this thread. It isn't hard and requires no out of money remuneration from Global. It would be a show of good faith and the players would have to rake back the compensation tickets anyway.

Finally, re-assign the genius that came up with such a ridiculous idea and for God's sake....stop with the cutesy verbiage in the emails. No one missed the part of the additional option not being additional. The faux excitement about this 'opportunity to test drive Global's new idea' is lame.

Poker players are not complicated. They want a place to play, get paid, and transparency. Most will even understand negative changes when discussed openly. Many have been through shady **** from other networks and when you do crap like this credit/debit card switch, it sets them off, mostly precautionary and a handful irrational baseless doom and gloom.

The alternative is, Global lets it die down naturally and all the players that have commented here move their monies to another site. Is the annual rake lost worth not making things right?

Well said I agree. I’ve already taken my action to other sites. I don’t put in the most volume, but have conservatively raked $20k plus on this site and have kept games going at mid level limits. Will come back if they decide to fix even using something as simple as you outlined above.

+1 well written. I'd like to add that if the transparency issues/thread moving stuff continues I will be looking forward to these conversations being discussed somewhere else. These changes have raised concern amongst a lot (probably a majority) of the regular players on GP -- there are lots of new posters and repeat discussion threads as a consequence -- but for now they should be left untampered.

Thank you, OP. Through Red Chip and other poker resources, since October I have encouraged a significant number of players, friends, and students to join and play Global (especially through our "Global Nights" which have been so much fun and fit the recreational spirit of the site).

Until these issues are completely clarified on the site, here and via email, I will no longer support giving our action to Global. Communication matters.

I agree with the OP.++

Global,

Fix this mess, I want to get paid!

Yeah I'll take some rake free play now, thanks.

Cashed out all but $1k.

PLO 1 / 2 reg here. You effectively put a bad taste in my mouth with this move Global.

Please fix this, horrible horrible customer service.
Never force anyone to do anything without notification - bring Paypal back.

a dewd I'm continually impressed with your well thought out, intelligent posts.

I have emailed support requesting I have paypal restored, as well as did their cute little feedback form. 2+ days now and no response yet.

The only way to fix this is to have Paypal as an option.

Either paypal dropped them or they were getting too many chargebacks by players thru paypal. Plus maybe paypal is charging/was charging them a lot more per transaction than this new payment processor.

But basically with the rake they are charging (unless paypal dropped them) dropping paypal was/is a monumental f**ck up of enormous proportions on their part.

Id love too know what happened, if they dropped paypal and not the other way around, thats just icm suicide, there is no way they are that dumb. Paypal had to have some dispute, but dewd? Your opinion is pp would cut them off ASAP, it seems like some people still have pp as a option, is it possible that there was not a dispute and they just want to save money going through world pay? I know they are incompetant when it comes to software/glitches, but do they really think this a smart move for them.

Who the hell knows... (certainly not us the users)

It seems at least a couple of people have reported to have received money thru paypal within the last 24 hrs... So maybe they are that dumb... and decided to move away from paypal because they are taking too many hits if that's the case my oh my.

Many people have issues with Paypal they're the most garbage/restrictive payment processor in the world.

I personally don't think the "sky if falling" nor do I understand all the hostility towards WorldPay. Based purely off reviews alone they seem to have a higher percentage of good reviews as Paypal is one of the worst reviewed payment processors around and many people have issues with it.

The website and the people who work there probably were just as blinded sided as you guys with the shift over to WorldPay as a secondary option, perhaps so they don't have to process as much through Paypal. I'm use the cashouts will be just as quick after approval on business days, you entitled crazy people need to calm down and relax.

I've been playing on this site for a year now and I don't think this is a panic situation at all. I've been playing online poker for nearly a decade and never seen people freak out more over a change in processors. They did notify you guys via email at the beginning of the month that there would be a shift and some people would be trialing it.

Have you guys tried asking them if you can continue to use Paypal for the time being?

Lol at poker players, the most unloyal turn-cost customers around. I'm sure the site will have plenty of traffic with or without the small vocal minority that seems to have a huge issue with a small site change. Anyone saying they don't have a bank account to use and most use Paypal is a clown, how do you not have a bank account?

I personally world prefer Worldpay over Paypal and I'm thrilled I was put into that trial group and I hope I can use them going forward. Also lol at people saying you cannot trust them with your bank information, but you were willing to provide your ID's before, Worldpay is a perfectly trustable payment processor as is Paypal. Although there is an entire website dedicated to how much Paypal sucks. Aptly titled - Paypalsucks.com

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.paypal.com
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/paypal_02.html
http://complaints.paypalsucks.com/

In before someone calls me a "shill"

I've been around the poker community longer than many of you. This is my old account I had deactivated a while back because there were no USA poker sites and I no longer wanted to use this site for whatever reason. I have an older one as well but forgot the spelling of the name.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/374825/

I have never know it heard of a time when PayPal eeaned an account to closure. I know if someone that ran over 200K a year through PayPal in their eBay store and after a couple of years, shut instantly. They were allowed to love their monies off PayPal but that was it. He bought/sold memorabilia, not a big business, but did decent numbers.

Simple business accounts that are self explanatory go through with no questionnaire. If you have business that isn't crystal clear, they send forms to fill out and explain. Each time soubmitted, a different person looks at it judging by the way some of the prior answered questions are reasked. There is just zero chance that PayPal would not be curious about an account as large as Global's and if there was some concern as to the legality of it, they would close on the spot or risk losing their banking ability, seems like an obvious conclusion to me. PayPal report 18billion in customer funds as of December 2017. VGW reported just under $10million on deposit at PayPal. Far from the lion's share of PayPal reported funds, but far too big to go unnoticed.

People are stating they are still using PayPal and getting their withdrawals done. I have a poker group and have also referred dozens of players to Global, some of which I put up the money to play. Maybe 20% are direct in/out of bank transactions now.

Where Global goes very well and the naivety of their customer service department is telling people in first email about WorldPay. WorldPay processes transactions. Individuals cannot get an account there. They should have said direct deposit to your bank account. In fact, they should have said there is a new option for all to have deposits sent directly to their bank accounts IF they wanted that. Sending out emails blowing glitter up my ass suggesting it was an exciting thing for me is more juvenile that a fancy new avatar.

Having US banks accept money directly from Global is not a bad thing, having a department staff unable to count to potato is.

Yeah, I'd guess their crackpot/head team handling this mess is inundated. They earned it. I'm lost as to wtf takes so long to repair it. It isn't brain surgery. If only 25 players that rake 15K a year stop playing, that's a real loss to the bottom line. An incentive gets hundreds, if not thousands, of test pilots. With US players expecting doom at some point from every site they play on, this is really the Corvair of business decisions.

Interesting situation to read about, as it is a bit different from other not so shocking changes that have happened in the past 15 years in this industry.

I will first question this

because while I agree how this was handled was about as LOLbad as it gets, the reality is that even when changes are presented well in advance and are very transparent, this those within this industry are among the least accepting of any change to their situation, and the reality is this is always an industry where the "good things" eventually get consumed by the behavior of the regs in this industry.

That brings a bit of a different point, that being the hard core regs have always had a misguided idea of how well they are loved and fit in this industry. Sure, they can help generate rake, but in general they also feed hard on the system and drain a ton of money out of the system, which is why you have seen all the changes that have happened in the past several years.

A semi similar example would be how Stars handled the SNEs. The SNE program was so insanely outdated in terms of how it fit in the industry that I was surprised it was around as long as it was, yet when it was changed (in a pretty clunky way by Stars) the reaction from the players was that that their reduction of play was going to cripple Stars, when in fact it was Stars goal to reduce the amount of predatory play from these same players.

I do not know how much the player mix has changed in Global in terms of predator/prey, but no doubt it has changed quite a bit since the days where the biggest headache were all the people screwing around with the free 2 bucks. With that in mind I would suggest that the more rational of the "this is the end" crowd try to do their best to figure out if these processor changes are for everyone, or are they actually forcing those that are processing a ton of cashouts to this new method.

How Global is handling this is pretty bad, but I can understand that if their choice is somewhat based on the above they may not want to be fully transparent (LOL, our policy is paypal for donks only!), however I fully agree with how they are presenting it is about as bad as possible from a marketing perspective.

I would also suggest that those who are screaming the most about not wanting to give bank details who treat this as a proper job start taking the steps that should be done for something this serious, and that includes setting up a separate bank account that handles all of these transactions. I am not surprised that is is not common, as a lot of what I do when I work with players is help them set up a much more efficient and professional structure for handling the funds from essentially their jobs.

I encourage continued pressure to have some information and progress made with how this company communicates, but this should also be a wakeup call to those who are deeply impacted to be more aware and prepared for these types of changes, for they happen all the time.

I think most people are moderate in life and their views. A change, even unwelcomed, loses almost all the hate when thoroughly explained as to the hows and whys, in advance. The way Global did it was more of a bait and switch. Faux excitement in an email announcing a new option with a virtual small print *only option*. There will always be gripes and bitching, but it will be much more tame. Adding an option to ship direct to your bank account is a positive, randomly deciding who will have no choice but to use that feature is wrong.

There is a valid argument from those that do not have bank accounts, traditional brick and mortar ones. PayPal and reloadable debit cards are a way around traditional banks. Some opt for it due to credit issues or liens, some utilize it for convenience, or even lack of fees. There are some companies that offer direct deposit onto one of the reloadable cards and some employees have switched to that as their source of banking. Any player that falls in that realm now has virtually no way of getting their money off the site. The request for pre-printed bank statements on letterhead is impossible for many of those cards/options. PayPal debit card has no letterhead if you want a printed copy. In actuality, the existing player should not have Global decide how they want to process their business.

There is no issue with WorldPay as a company. They are huge and process transactions for thousands of clients, US and internationally. naturally, Global screwed up explaining the new process, too. Zero discussion of how it would work or why there is a change in the timing. Processing companies usually sweep their client's account once a week. They could state that all withdrawal requests by (day of the week at o'clock) will be sent out within 48 hours. This gives the players a real idea and understanding of wtf is going on. They op-ted for some cryptic timeframe of 3-5 days. Not exactly helping the player that needs a withdrawal in time to pay their rent, insurance, etc... You can see from the majority of the comments, most people have no idea who or what WorldPay even is. Why the need to mention it or have their banner on the cashier page is beyond me. An email stating that you now have the option to have money sent directly to your bank account, if so desired, would have been received with open arms. We've decided that you no longer can use PayPal and will have to wait up to 5x as long for your money is nothing to send in a positive fashion. It is bush league and amateurish. It really is like the issues many have with WPN and then there is a big announcement of new changes like....avatars. Insulting the intelligence of your player base usually does not bode well over the long haul.

Global has/had a good thing going. True, their core base is not the hardcore player, but if you piss off enough of them, the bottom line is noticeably less. Aside from all that, it is horrific business and makes you wonder what else they will screw up in the future. It isn't expecting too much to want the network to be cognizant of player issues. They now pretty much have the highest rake with the slowest payout of any of the 'legit' networks.

They have been interested in adding more payout options since last fall. I spoke to them directly about it and offered to set them up with a crypto wallet, debit card, and an ACH processor. After a couple of communications....silence. Hard to believe that there is a credible team behind this disastrous PR move would opt for a single addition and then not allow a choice for the player. That breeds distrust and tinfoil hat theorems.

Many changes (particularly from Stars) were announced well in advance with full transparency and they were met with as much if not more vitriolic responses as this change, so I do not share your belief that how they presented it (which was certainly pretty bad) was the key reason for the reaction. Any change like this, regardless of how it was presented, would be met with anger and frustration and scorn. That is just how most of this industry is, they react rather than prepare.

I also suggest you do not overvalue hard core regs who drain a ton of money monthly from the system in terms of their value as customers. All one needs to do is see all the changes pretty much all the larger rooms have made in recent years to see how much they want those types of customers to be the driving force of their business. Note, I am not saying that they want all of these types of players gone, but a person who generates 2,000 a month and cashes out 10,000 a month may not be quite as sexy to the site as one might believe, and perhaps that is part of the reason for these changes.

I would suggest some of the energy yelling about how badly they have marketed these changes be used to try to find out the real reason behind them, because that would allow the regs to help be part of thje changing system instead of constantly being frustrated whenever an inevitable change comes to a system.

As to those who opt to avoid the traditional banking system - that is their choice, but it is one that does create potential obstacles within this industry as more and more pressure is put on to be accountable for the large amount of funds being moved around, and I admit I cannot feel a ton of sympathy for a person who chooses to avoid setting up a more stable and professional infrastructure to move the funds. A person who treats this as a serious form of income needs to do their part as well.

I agree with alot of that, but taking away the SNE from players that are only interested in it is a little different than a chasier change. Look at WPN, Neteller...gone, debit card....gone, etc... My bet is they go 100% crypto soon. Players complained, but still stay for the most part. If they stopped the Beast/SnC on Saturday, that would be a much more dramatic change then and the race runners would likely split.

This was a big feature for many and most of the people I referred in. It was important to me in the sense that there is no P2P, it was painless to get funds back from those I backed or loaned money. Not saying it still can't be done, just one less layer of transparency.

If they just added it as an additional option, no one could really complain logically, although someone somewhere would find an issue with it somehow.

Global hasn't elaborated on it, but my guess is the concept was intended to be of good faith. I was speaking to them last fall about setting up crypto and other options. The reasoning behind isolating players to one or the other option...brainfart, acid flashback, loss of cognitive abilities, flipped a coin...heads we let players decide, tails we do something stupid. Oh look, tails!!! It would be nice if the company issued some kind of clear statement explaining things. I'm the type to try something new, on my decision. I think it's one of the few ways I'm part of the majority.

Funny, some of the people I referred in are want to know if they should be worried if not included, two emails this morning about it.

How could you ever think PayPal was a partner? GP is now just another two bit scam site with slow payout times and high rake.

I would say the flaw in how you approached and regarded this was that you also thought the paypal thing would likely last forever, because the company (and people behind it) were not randos, and obviously paypal was not setup without everyone understanding what was going on.

However, this industry always changes very quickly, and that is because when opportunities present itself (as Global did with free 2 bucks and very soft opponents) you will find people will in the quickest and most destructive manner utilize and eventually destroy that which exists, because that is the natural way for humans to react to "too good to be true" situations.

The longevity of paypal as the only source of financing was always a concern of mine with this place, because I was not sure what was going to happen once regs started noticing and smashing the place. That has happened, which was unavoidable, and that will lead to stresses on how the system maintains itself.

The reality is most players once they have a good thing settle down and assume it will always be there, regardless of the past history of that behavior. A good chunk of those involved in this industry are just like the poster between us, who demonstrate basically zero foresight and simply whine whenever something happens (and often times whine regardless of anything happening).

I agree with you that better transparency and communication would have helped, but these changes were to some extent inevitable, as was the reaction to them. Hopefully once all the shouting calms down there will be some progress made to find out why these changes are taking place and what the end goal is, so that those who actually have an idea of how this industry works among the players can be a positive force toward helping them to that goal.

You are both having a thought out, logical discussion, which is shocking and nice to find on the internet. I think the main problem here is being thrusted into WorldPay with no choice, no warning, and having it marketed as a reward that I requested. I should have had the chance to pull my funds off via Paypal before I was forced to provide my bank account number. That is an extreme invasion of privacy given the initial business model of cashing out via Paypal, which presents no risk to my personal information.

Well, PayPal is still there. It's more similar to a network coming out with a new game and they assign players that they can play that and only that.

The idiocy is in assigning it to people with not allowing them to decline it. The email verbiage is faux excitement and complete bush league. Someone posted a reply to their question re not having a bank account to send them and Global merely told them it was no problem, their money would sit safe in their account. How is it that every network hires only prokaryotes as customer service is reps. It's amazing.

Agree about the invasion of privacy. My account balance is none of their f'n business. My account is at a private bank and connected to my stock accounts and pension/retirement monies. I get a consolidated statement for the front page. If I have to open a local account, the inconvenience should be theirs, along with the fees and waste of time out of my day.

Didn't read all thread cause lazy but my read was that Paypal hasn't pulled out or done anything yet but there is either increased scrutiny or some other writing on the wall that PP/Global is becoming increasingly aware of and is trying to get out ahead of before something does happen.

Also along this same line of reasoning was wondering if WP assignments were triggered by deposits/withdrawals, either frequent and/or large. Basically wondering if the more "noticeable" users were the ones switched to WP. I was withdrawing $600-750 1-2 times a week through PP for about 5 weeks leading up to this week, and then decided to do a larger one for $1800 and see what happened. I had already been sent the re-verification email but nothing about WP. even though I'd been reading all about it for a couple of days here. Had also just received my last $600 withdrawal from PP 1-2 days prior. But the day after initiating the larger withdrawal I got the WP email.

Super awesome btw Global forcing me to link a WA bank account, after telling me I can't deposit anymore at all, with a possible known gambling processor! But since they do other things too I'll assume/hope they have their **** together and aren't going to label it as "illegal gambling winnings".

Oh also should maybe mention that I redacted all balance and transactional information from the bank statement I submitted, even interest info - basically anything that even hinted at a balance amount - and they accepted it (they did not accept this the first time around for PP, they said it had to be completely unedited, so I used a student loan statement + local mail-in voters ballot for address verification that time). Just had the routing number/account number/name address visible. Which I understand can still be problematic but which is also pretty standard for all online payment/deposit stuff.