TLDR: Efi Shlomo and Winner poker locked my account

• They didn't bother to tell me
• They didn't give me a reason why
• They requested documents
• I've sent in documents multiple times, in every way they asked for
• Every time I sent in the documents they asked for I received a reply with an excuse of why they didn't work or needed to be presented in a different way.
• I continue to send in my documents, over and over
• They have since just stopped responding to my emails entirely
• My balance is about ~$60k, I'm not exactly sure the state of their business but seems reasonably possible they are just trying to rob me.

cliffs: Probably don't play there, your player balance is not safe.


Sometime in April of this year my Winner Poker account was locked. They didn't bother to contact me. I wasn't playing much poker at the time so I didn't find out until May. I found out about it and emailed them my documents. I received this email back on May 21st.

"
Dear Ryan Fee,
Thank you for contacting the Winner Poker Customer Support Team.
Please be informed that we cannot access the links that you have sent us. Please send us an email containing you document attachment.

As part of our security process, we require the following documents to be sent:

1. Valid photo identification (e.g. passport or driving license).

The ID must display the following

• Photo
• First and last name
• Billing address as registered in the account
• Birth date
• Expiration date (if one is not present on the document please specify)
• Signature

In the event that the address present on your identification document differs from the address registered in your account, you will need to provide us with a utility bill or a bank statement displaying the registered address.

The document must display the following

• full name and the address as registered in your account
• Company logo (displayed clearly)
• Date (within a three(3) month period)

We suggest that the documents are sent as e-mail attachments to support.poker@winner.com by scanning them or photographing them with a digital camera. . Please make sure that all edges of the documents are visible and it is taken in a well-lit environment. Take note that the content should be readable and clear.

Please enclose your username when sending your documents to assist us in locating your account.
Please do not hesitate to contact our support team 24hrs a day, 7 days a week.

Winner Poker Customer Support Team"

Ok, the links I used didn't work. No Problem, I sent my documents in attached soon thereafter.

They then emailed me back saying my documents were insufficient, that they needed to be
"Additionally, the documents sent must be:

• CLEAR and READABLE
• a full document showing all 4 corners (letters, pay slips/stubs, folded paper, envelopes and partial sections are unacceptable)
• in either jpeg, adobe, tiff file formats
• less than 1MB (if sent as an e-mail attachment).
"

Ok fine, I sent them another copy of my passport. I receive this email on May 26th

"Dear Ryan Fee,
Thank you for contacting the Winner Poker Customer Support Team.
We have received the copies of your passport and proof of address. However, we cannot accept the copy of your passport. As stated on our previous email, we require a photo-captured copy of your passport showing all the edges or corners of it. Regarding your address, we have forwarded it to our relevant department. We will inform you as soon as we hear from them.

Please do not hesitate to contact our support team 24hrs a day, 7 days a week.
Winner Poker Customer Support Team"

Alright, fine. I sent another copy of my passport with a different scan.
Again on May 26th I now receive this email after sending in another passport photo.

"Dear Ryan Fee,
Thank you for contacting the Winner Poker Customer Support Team.
Thank you for taking time in sending your document.

We have updated some of the information in your account with the use of your ID. On the other hand, we are still waiting for your POA. Please note that it should be photo captured with all edges shown and the details must be clear. Also, it should be within 3 months.



We appreciate your cooperation on this matter.
Please do not hesitate to contact our support team 24hrs a day, 7 days a week.
Winner Poker Customer Support Team"

So now out of the clear blue my proof of address documents are insufficient, despite being fine in the last two emails. I resend all my documents in and am ignored until June 10th when I receive this email.

"Dear Ryan,


As you may have noticed, your player account with Winner Poker has been frozen. This is the result of enhanced security measures regarding personal identification information provided to us by players.
We would like to resolve this problem as soon as possible and release your account.
In order to make this possible, please send us a notarized ID and a proof of address from the old or the new address. Please send the required documentation to docs.poker@winner.com, or to support.poker@winner.com. We would also like to request that you send us these documents via post, on the physical address provided below.

Winner Poker
14th Floor Yuchengco Tower 1, RCBC Plaza
Senator Gil Puyat Avenue corner Ayala Avenue,
Makati City, Philippines


Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the Winner Poker Support Team.

Email: poker@winner.com

Toll Free (Canada)
Phone: Canada: 1-888-402-2057 UK: 44-800-0664-380
Fax: Canada: 1-877-800-9874 UK: 44-800-0664-384

International
Phone: +6327567877
Fax: 632-756-7853


Best regards,

The Winner Poker team

http://www.poker.winner.com/

It's in Your Hand!"

Which is completely absurd. I've played online for 6 years and never had this many complications trying to send in documents. Now I have to get my documents notarized and sent to the Philippines on my time/dollar.

Sometime in early July/late June I get around to notarizing and sending my documents off. I email them and post mail the notarized documents. Both the email and the physical documents are completely ignored by winner for about two weeks, at which point I send them the UPS tracking code to prove they received a document.

Another two weeks goes by. My affiliate contacts Efi directly. He says that my documents are insufficient because my bank account is too new (which is ridiculous I've had it since mid 2011). I sent in proof of my bank statement from early 2012. I have not received a response. At this point Winner and Efi are straight ignoring me and my affiliate. We've both emailed them and received no response.

I don't really know what to do other than out them. Basically they are seemingly very scummy and/or incredibly incompetent. I can't really advise anyone playing there, you shouldn't have to worry about being robbed if you deposit and play on an online poker site.

gl

Ryan

Ryan this is most likely because you are originally from the US and playing on iPoker. Can you please confirm your affiliate?

Presumably (and unfortunately) you are under the affiliate which set up US players with VPNs to play on iPoker. This prompted iPoker's parent company to get certain skins, namely Winner Poker, to verify that players are not playing from the USA

Ty for the heads up I will never play there again. Crappy they would do this to you.

My affiliate is Jamie Nevin, pokervip.com

Figured as much Ryan:

http://calvinayre.com/2013/05/18/pok...ervip-vpn-use/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...pdate-1353767/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...ervip-1332724/

http://forum.ixgames.com/poker-forum...-concerns.html

http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...ajor-affiliate

etc

whatever happened to that 4500?

I was also affected by this after receiving a transfer from Ryan.

Ryan transferred me some where between 10-20k when before this all started. I ended up winning close to 80k while we transferred to each other in that time as well. Once i got about 90-100k on the site i decided to try and cash out. I had verified my account when setting it up on around 2/26/13. I can't find an email of when i verified because i was having problems with email support and took to chat support where i got verified.

Here is an email proving they processed a withdrawal for 5k, a sum they'd only cash out after verification.
Around 5/20/13 I put in multiple requests for withdrawals totally around 20k. After weeks of them not being processed I emailed them. I got a canned response. They then said the reason for the delay was they were waiting on documents from a player i had received a transfer from. The only person this could be was ryan. Once again i can not find the original email, but this email shows that this was the case after i complained again for the length of time it was taking.

again later

Finally my withdrawls of around 21k were processed around 2 months ago (i do not have emails proving and can't search transaction history for this time via client).

I then put in new requests totaling 30k which were all declined.

I then received this:
I responded saying basically i'd just gone through this months ago and the problem before was ryan's account. How could this be happening again when i put in requests days after this problem had been resolved.

They responded with this:
since then i've tried explaining and they responded with 'canned' responses and then stopped responding at all.

EDIT:

Cliffs: they are holding my money too only because Ryan transferred me money over half a year ago. This amount now is around 54k

"Sometime in April of this year my Winner Poker account was locked. They didn't bother to contact me. I wasn't playing much poker at the time so I didn't find out until May. I found out about it and emailed them my documents. I received this email back on May 21st."

this is why I don't believe you are telling the whole story.. leaving 60k laying around doesn't seem legit.
Also why would they be requesting someone's ID if u simply transfered them money for them to play with.. did they transfer u the money to play?? if so, collusion?

I had the identical situation a few months ago (through a different affiliate). Had never come across anything like it either in my time playing poker.

They paid me in full in the end OP so I'm inclined to believe they're just (extremely) incompetent rather than dishonest.

Would advise anyone against playing there after my experiences with them though

Sent them this upon leaving:

Hello,

I just wanted to give you some feedback on your customer service after my recent dealings with Winner Poker. You have been so evasive with me over the past couple of months that I genuinely started to think that you couldn't pay me or worse, were stealing my bankroll altogether. I was scared to really vocalise my discontent with the situation as I thought this would only reduce my chances of seeing any of my money again again if I was, in fact, dealing with a bunch of crooks.

Now that I have withdrawn my full account balance I feel more confident in sharing my recent experiences with you. The last 2 months or so have been extremely stressful for me as I held about £80k with you and was losing sleep at night wondering if I would ever see any of it again. Every time I emailed (I'd guess around 30 times altogether) or called, I was fobbed off with a generic email template, given some mumbo jumbo about my account being under review, and given no assurances whatsoever to put my mind at rest.

The whole notarised ID nonsense was a huge inconvenience and was a considerable cost to myself too (over £100 in total once I had it couriered to the Philippines.) Just a word of advice - making your customers jump through hoops to get their OWN money returned to them and dragging the process out over months to the point where they are at their wits end is not a good way to maintain your customer base. At the time I vowed never to play with you again on principle, but the truth is I'd be petrified to even have a smaller amount of money in your hands, given your obvious incompetence. There is no information on the internet about who owns you and you have no reputation or high street presence to put people's mind at rest that their funds are safe, so really you should be going out of your way to ease any concerns rather than doing the exact opposite.

At times over the past months I've genuinely despised your company and every single support member who has repeatedly patronised me with his condescending emails. Every time I've tried to appeal to someone's human side or have my case escalated so it can be dealt with at a personal level, I have had a pathetic email in return containing no helpful information whatsoever. I don't think anybody deserves special treatment but can't believe this is the optimal way to treat one of your more valued customers raking around $10k a month on your site.

I'm glad to put this whole episode behind me now but really had to get this off my chest before moving on, such has been the aggravation caused by Winner Poker over the last couple of months. You have shown no regard for me whatsoever and if this whole episode was really the result of a standard ID check, I suggest you review your methods immediately if you want to still be in business in 2 years. Its fairly clear that a fledgling poker site's reputation is everything to it and episodes like this do not build trust within the poker community.

I look forward to never dealing with you again, but please take on board the genuine constructive criticism I have offered in this email so others don't have to experience what I have.

Kind Regards,

To which I received the half expected, pathetic, template response

How did you get them to respond and reopen your account?

To the bolded, I wouldn't read into that too hard. I don't know OP, but I recognize his name. Plenty of guys that play high leave solid five figures laying around all the time, even if it isn't chump change to them, it not uncommon in the poker world.

+1 Not unusual for some players.

what makes me wonder is that PokerVip always says they have a top notch support for players ?

and they are unable to deal with that and help you to get the funds ?

i guess by the whole process with VPN's on ipoker some people needed to be lay back to path the way to keep them working with ipoker.

Anyhow im still wondering .. there is no way this cant be handled by your affiliate.


Another option would be, PokerVip is paying you the 60k you lost through them by reffering you to Winner Poker

I hope PokerVip answers to this thread soon.

You might want to reread the OP; it sounds to me like they're doing what they can.

LOL, what?

What on earth would they have to say other than what OP already told us? Isn't it Winner Poker we'd like to see answering?

I just finished withdrawing my smallish bankroll from Winner. I haven't found much to like about the site and I've seen numerous threads with people having problems with them, so I'd rather simply leave than take the chance that I'll be next. Good luck getting your money, OP.

As Bobo suggests there's not an awful lot we have to say here, however I do wish to add to Ryan's story in order to strengthen his case and urge Winner to allow for the withdrawal of his funds. This thread must remain about Ryan getting his money back from Winner Poker and rightfully so.

We've been contacting Winner & Efi daily to push them to allow Ryan to cash out his money. The response we've received is exactly the same as the response Ryan has received.

As chirpy's story can testify (given that he joined winner through a different affiliate) the withdrawal prevention unfortunately appears related to how much money a player has sitting in their account rather than the affiliate the player signed up through.

As far as I know there's a very, very small number of players still having issues with Winner poker, but the unfortunate pattern I've personally noticed is that those players encountering issues are players with significantly large balances in their account.

More to the point - Ryan should absolutely be entitled to his funds. I know he currently plays at Pokerstars and a number of other popular online poker sites (forgive me for saying Ryan) - To me this clearly proves that there's absolutely no issue with his documents. A significant number of reputable sites deem his documents satisfactory. It's beyond me as to why only Winner Poker will deny Ryan withdrawals whilst other poker sites approve.

It's pleasing to hear that chirpy eventually managed to withdraw his funds and I urge Winner to allow Ryan to do the same.

In the mean time we'll continue to support Ryan and continue to push Winner for the rightful withdrawal of his funds.

Stewart Dunlop
PokerVIP

Well, What I wanted to hear from PokerVip was that they are pushing Winner to pay this player.

I can confirm their verification hell.

I registered there in order to get the h manager offer.
I was lucky because i had read a similar thread on pstrategy where players had issues with their documents on ipoker rooms.

Smn suggested that we should make the verification prior to deposit on them.

Yet i was unable to pas their verification.
With the same docs that i had opened the pokerstars.fr and winamax accounts.

After like 5-6 emails i requested them to delete my details from their site.
Then somehow after explaining the reason of my request i got an reply stating that upon their new review my docs where approved and my account was verified.

Facebook him hard to find he mentiones his job as "Winner.com"

Apologies, I skin read the OP and our situations were not identical..my account was actually never locked, they just would not process any cash outs without 'verification'

From this point I sent about 30 emails where they were as difficult as possible and encountered every problem you have mentioned. Around 2 months after I first agreed to send notarised ID to the Phillippines my cash outs were processed, seemingly out of the blue. During this time I didn't play on the site at all fearing the worst about how trustworthy they were (was assured by people that Ipoker actually own them (or Playtech!?) so not to panic).

They are single handedly the most infuriating organisation I have ever dealt with but I'd be surprised if your money wasn't ultimately safe.

im not sure why you say '' LOL , what ? ''

many smaller affiliates has paid their players balance and cashback or whatever was missing if the room was not willing to pay them.

of course some affiliates also refuse to pay it ... I would understand if Winner is broke and dont pay comission even ... so as this is not the case and PokerVIP earned comission on Ryan.. they shld be obligated to pay him if Winner keep refusing

The reason why, is we all know why Ryan dont get paid, i dont think i need to say it out loud again.

The reason my balance is so high is because I am a high stakes player. It is not unusual for me to have five or six figure balances. I am going to add Efi on facebook and see if I can get him to respond.