Grubby at PokerWorks

Giftcards.com’s virtual card is back!

They’d removed the virtual option a few days after I’d posted about it, but now it’s returned.

Instead of a $500 max load, it’s now $200 ($25 minimum).

And instead of the $2 service fee, it’s now $4.

That’s a fivefold increase from 0.4 to 2 percent.

This is the virtual card I had success in loading with a Mastercard and receiving by email in about 3-4 hours. With it, I was able to deposit to Poker Stars, Full Tilt, and Ultimate Bet.

The physical card is still available with a $500 max but comes with a $6.95 shipping fee for a 7-10 day business delivery (which can be sped up to 2-3 days for $23.95).

As for withdrawing from a poker site, well, you still can’t withdraw to the card and must request a check.

However, in the mail I finally received my PayTru card after patiently waiting 15 business days.

You can request this free card through the cashier at Stars. Signup is entirely through them, and Stars takes care of any signup fees as well as any withdrawal fees.

You don’t need to deposit to the card before you can withdraw.

Once you’ve signed up, your card number appears in the Stars cashier when withdrawing, giving you the option of withdrawing by card or check.

A bug in the system (which they said they’ve since fixed) randomly generated a middle initial for me, and they didn’t respond to an email to correct it. A quick call to them got me through on the first try, and it was fixed immediately.

They also asked for my social security number, which I used to be uneasy about until I found gambling and gambling found my credit cards (this was back when credit cards were freely accepted at online casinos). My future identity thief would probably have better credit than I do. For some reason, I feel better about handing over my personal information to strangers in Antigua than Panama.

My first withdrawal took a few days and came back with an error. Stars support said there was a problem with the processor at the time I withdrew and to try again. I did, and it processed in an hour. Another withdrawal a week later took less than an hour.

I wasn’t able to make a purchase online, even using 000 as the CVC number that had been emailed to me. (I presume this is because that number had changed with the printing of my card that was on its way to me.)

Withdrawing from an ATM is $2.50 with a $500 max per day (plus what the actual ATM might charge).

Every purchase you make with the card, they charge $1.

To load the card via credit card is 4 percent plus 50 cents, putting it in the same range as giftcard.com’s virtual card (even though giftcard.com’s max is $200, you can buy multiple virtual cards at the same time).

A $2.95 fee is charged per month, but they don’t tell you when that is. My account’s been active 19 days and so far no fee. The trick to avoiding this is to always leave a $0 balance. If no balance, no charge. If an ATM withdrawal charges you 45 cents less than that fee, you may as well take out all the cash (assuming it’s under $500) once the withdrawal goes through. Or just keep everything in Stars and only withdraw when you’re planning to make an ATM withdrawal.

Tomorrow I plan to withdraw from the ATM, check the balance online, and then deposit that exact amount to Stars to bring the balance to $0.

The card has a Visa logo on it (and is therefore accepted anywhere Visa is), the expiration date is in 2010, and the raised lettering and numbers are very faint; it couldn’t be rubbed by a pencil or swiped by a credit card machine. But then, who uses those any more? “Electronic Use Only” is written on the front of the card.

Now time to spend some money.

As it happens, I’ve busted my Stars account, so I tried redepositing from the PayTru card. It worked and I wasn’t charged a fee.

Then tried Full Tilt: “We’re sorry, but your deposit has been declined.”

Then tried Ultimate Bet: “Your deposit has been PRE-AUTHORIZED for an amount of $ 300 USD. Due to this status no funds were deposited into your on-line gaming account under Account ID xxxxxx.”

Not sure what this means, but I didn’t pursue it, knowing I’d end up blowing it on blackjack.

Likewise, I didn’t bother trying the online casino, but more because of the difficulty I’d have in withdrawing and because not having played there in weeks, my match deposit bonus dropped from $400 per week to $75.

Stars might very well have programmed it to not accept any gaming site except for their own.

So far, in the hour I’ve had to play around with the PayTru card, I find it a nice alternative to NETeller. Some annoying fees here and there, but the most important thing is that if you’re a U.S. player, it’ll get you up and playing fast and let you get your money out fast.

And all without any trace of an EFT.

Now if the other sites could only offer similar cards…

This entry was posted on Friday, March 16th, 2007 at 12:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized.