POKER ROOM REVIEW ARTICLE

We Need to See Some I.D.

“What do you mean you need to see some I.D.? I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve been a good customer of your poker site for quite a while!”

When poker players get an e-mail from their poker room asking for identification, their first response is usually to get defensive. It provokes an uncomfortable feeling when you’re asked to submit documentation, and it normally happens at the worst possible time: when you’re trying to get some money back.

“Sure, they were happy to take my deposit, but now that I want a withdrawal, they want me to jump through flaming hoops.”

I know all about it; I’ve been asked for documentation more than once, and the first time it happened to me, I reacted in the same way. But I survived!

And you will too.

This article will talk about what prompts these kinds of security checks, as well as how to deal with them painlessly, and why you should actually be glad that poker sites take such an active interest in protecting your account balance. It’s to the players’ benefit that poker sites put up guards against fraudulent withdrawals.

Poker sites want to keep their customers happy, and if they go to great lengths to protect your interests, it should make you happy. However, they often don’t do a very good job of explaining this. A form letter that starts by saying, “We’ve frozen your account, and won’t process your withdrawal request until you send us the following documents . . . ” can unnerve a customer who doesn’t initially understand what’s going on.

It’s true that the poker sites seem to wait for you to make a withdrawal before they get interested in your identity, but if you think about it, it’s a very reasonable request. If someone is trying to steal from you, they don’t do it by making a deposit into your account. Poker sites don’t pay too much attention to how your money gets into your account. But once you (or anyone else) try to make that first withdrawal, any irregularities in your account information will surface immediately. It’s those irregularities that prompt security systems to wake up. Once you’ve somehow triggered them, you’ll have to fix whatever problem has surfaced.

How can this kind of thing happen? Well, there are a number of causes.

Some new players start their first poker account by making a deposit using a friend’s E-wallet (like Neteller or Click2Pay, etc.). Most of the time the deposit proceeds with no problem. But what the player is unaware of is his or her account gets linked to another person’s E-wallet. By the time the player decides to make a withdrawal, they have already acquired their own E-wallet account, and that is naturally where they will request the poker site send the money. The problem is that poker sites are very careful when they receive a request to send money to a different E-wallet from the one that funded the poker account. It appears to the poker site as if someone other than the legitimate user is attempting to empty the poker account. They’ll freeze everything right there until they are satisfied that the account holder is the one who is asking for the withdrawal, and make the determination as to which E-wallet is the proper destination.

Typographical errors made when registering a poker account are the most common cause of triggering a security alarm. Contact information at the poker site and at the E-wallet site must match exactly to ensure seamless money transfers, and again, the poker sites don’t pay as much attention to deposits as they do to withdrawals. Double-check your account information, and be prepared to send identification if you find a mistake and make a request to the poker site to correct it. If you do it now, you will avoid causing a delay when you want to make that very important first withdrawal.

Another problematic situation arises when a poker customer tries to update their address information. Most poker sites will require proof of your new address in the form of an updated driver’s license (or other government-issued I.D.) that shows your new address or a utility bill listing your new address. The poker sites ask for verification so that they won’t mail a check to the wrong address. If you rent rather than own your home, very possibly you may not have a utility bill in your name. In that case, poker sites will normally have another document option for you. Most sites will allow a bank statement to be used in place of a utility bill. In all cases, they won’t mind if you blackout any financial information. They don’t care what you bank account holds, or how much you spend on electricity, they only care that the address matches their records.

Large withdrawals will sometimes trigger a security alert as well, especially if it’s the first big withdrawal from the account. There may be other reasons why a site will ask for I.D., but the reasons addressed previously are the causes in the vast majority of cases.

Poker sites will accept your documentation either by fax, as an e-mail attachment, or through normal mail. In preparing to write this article, I spoke to customer service personnel at a few different poker sites, and the reasons for documentation requests were remarkably similar.

They also had the same answer when I asked them what frustrates customers the most concerning these I.D. checks. Customers hate it when they go to the trouble of providing documentation only to have it rejected by the poker site. Those rejections usually happen for 2 reasons: improper scanning of the documents, resulting in images that can’t be read by the site, or faulty FAX equipment that produces illegible documents. Clean the glass on your scanner and make sure the scanned documents are large enough to read easily, or check your FAX machine’s operation. It’s also a good idea to call the poker site and verify that they received your documents.

If you follow up with a phone call and leave a phone number, you’ll make it easy for the poker site to accommodate your desire for speedy service.

The first time you get one of those security e-mails, try to remember that the poker sites are only attempting to protect your interests. You can prepare in advance by keeping a copy of your I.D. and proof of residence scanned and ready to send. In most cases, the security issue can be resolved in a matter of hours. Speedy service, especially withdrawals, ranks high on my list of customer service issues. In fact, comes in second place, right behind the security of my account balance.

Here’s another tip: Calling to thank them for protecting your balance is more helpful than calling to scream at them for making you wait, if what you’re trying to accomplish is the processing of your cash-out as soon as possible.

In summation, requests for documentation are common, easily explained, and easily complied with. There is only one reason a person should fear them, and that is if the person happens to be a crook trying to steal your money. Personally, I’m in favor of anything the poker site can possibly do to make that person’s life miserable.

And you should be, too.