For those that have not experienced this yet, in order to get paid for winning money at Pinburgh, and apparently all Replay events going forward, you are forced to sign up for a third party eWallet account and claim your winnings from that. No more checks.
To claim your money, you will be hit with fees from the site. What I see on the pamphlet we got is a $1.50 “maintenance” fee on use, then an additional $1.00 for a bank transfer if you want to give this third party site your bank info, or $4.00 for them to cut you a check. International bank transfers are more.
To complete registration with the site, according to their FAQ, you must give them your full name, address, date of birth, and government ID (e.g. SSN) before you can even access your payout.
That’s a lot of personal information given out to a mystery third party just to collect tournament winnings. No one I’ve talked to in person at Pinburgh is excited about this.
I understand that some international folks were having problems cashing checks drawn on US banks, so this system would help them. What I don’t understand is why US based people are forced to use it also; it’s far less desirable than sending a tax form and getting a check in the mail.
Ah… so were you also the one in the gallery who claimed that “they’re switching to this because Elizabeth doesn’t want to write checks anymore?”
First off, that’s adorable. I always love the insinuations, whenever a single change is made, that clearly this change came fully formed from the buttock of one of our number, and wasn’t born out of MONTHS of research and discussion.
Second, Elizabeth has to manually create your account, manually upload and disperse the payment, and will eventually have to write the API to help her more easily interface with this system. None of this will ever be automated. It’ll still always be me.
Had you bothered to ask, you would have been told that the monthly maintenance fee doesn’t apply to us. Its inclusion is an oversight, a holdover on their broad marketing page that I missed while prepping the 9000 other things that are required to make ReplayFX happen. However, there are fees involved, based on the payment method you choose.
Yes. To complete the registration you have to complete your tax forms. Online. Where they will be held in a secure format, and you won’t have to fill them out every single tournament, and tax paperwork can be mailed out to you in early January instead of early March. This alleviates several pain points players have complained about over the years, and provides for continuity across tournaments.
As Replay Foundation grows, our processes have to become more streamlined. Constantly filling out the same form with your personal information is grueling to all of you (I know this because I read all of that feedback) and becomes an administrative headache for us. If you have questions regarding iPayout’s security and document handling proceedures - and that’s fair - a customer support phone number and email address were provided on the handout, and I am happy to provide them here:
Last year Paypal began demanding documentation for any “gaming” related payouts that would require us to get documentation from every state and every country we release funds in attesting that we are not a gambling site, and that’s cost prohibitive for us. Skrill wasn’t interested in working with us, because we only need to disperse payments twice a year. Going through our bank and wiring the money, while simple and straightforward, is also the most expensive option internationally - there’s a $100 minimum transfer and a $45 fee, before we even get to the exchange rate.
iPayouts works with tournament gaming groups like Magic, and is able to fit our needs at this time.
We’re in a unique spot. I know that from the player perspective this is a simple transaction we are over-complicating. Every other tournament in pinball hands out cash. But we’re a non-profit, and have to adhere to really strict money handling rules to keep that designation. We’re constantly trying to find the best way to make things happen for you guys that also complies with these requirements. Hopefully this is a step in that direction.
I see the published policy that says checks only, when was the iPayout information provided to tournament entrants and where was it published?
If it wasn’t given before the event that’s a no-go for me. I want to know what data I’ll be asked to provide, who will be getting my data, and how much it’s going to cost me before I make the decision to participate in the event.
No, that wouldn’t have been me. I wasn’t successful at finding you at the event to ask questions, so whoever you heard this from wasn’t me.
My concerns are probably unique here, but as someone who has recently had problems with identity theft, I am always concerned about giving out personal information like this. I trust Replay implicitly when it comes to tax forms and such because you all are awesome and I know you will do the right things to keep my information safe. I don’t know or trust this new third party.
I thank you for providing more info on the service and if it helps you be a bit less stressed in the long run then I can get behind it. I would ask that things like this be communicated beforehand though, instead of springing it on us right at the event. That’s where most of the concern was from talking to fellow finalists: what’s happening, what is this, etc.
To be honest this seems like a non-issue to me. With the amount of people to pay out prizes to over all the competitions at ReplayFX handling the paperwork by hand seems to be a sure way for mistakes to happen (that may bring liabilities or trouble for the replay foundation). I have to do exactly one international wire transfer per year and the US banking system I really not setup to handle that at all. The fees are astronomical and I always have to visit the bank at least twice to get things handled right. And I’m only doing one transfer to the same account every year – I can’t even begin to imagine the time and effort involved if Replay had to process these individually!
Working with an established vendor seems like a logical choice to me. Since the vendor is moving money in/out of the US they’re highly regulated anyway. Doesn’t really matter how to hand your SSN over to Replay – it’s going to end up in the same computer system either way. Only difference is that this way Replay doesn’t have to enter it for you.
It is, and they are. I did some research on the parent company (i-Payout) and they’ve been around for about 10 years with an A+ BBB rating.
I think the confusion here (and there was a lot of it from talking with fellow competitors on Saturday) was that no one knew this was happening until they went up to do their forms and found out everything had changed. I’m sure it will be fine in the end, but I do feel this could have been communicated better. For example, likely qualifiers like the usual suspects in A could have set up their accounts beforehand, saving some effort.
Nope. I’ll create your account and you’ll receive an email with your username and password. Eventually, you won’t have to fill out anything on-site; I’ll be able to match your names to your accounts without bothering you with stupid paperwork.
This response strikes a very different tone from your initial post. Perhaps this research could have been done in advance? Or send a direct email outside of the forum instead of posting things that aren’t true? Or if you wanted to speak to Elizabeth at the show, ask any other staff member to contact her?
What you posted turned out to be untrue. Why haven’t you posted an apology? What you said really pissed off a lot of hard workers, so please reflect on that when you respond by saying “you are all awesome”. If you really believed that, you wouldn’t have sent that first post.
What part of what I posted was untrue? Based on the information I had at the time, everything on my original post was correct. The part about the maintenance fee was corrected afterwards, and I’m fine with that. Has something else changed?
I have no problem admitting when I’m wrong, but I do not like insinuations that I’m lying.
I apologize to anyone who might have taken all this negatively. As I said before, I’m mostly concerned that none of this was communicated beforehand.
With all that’s going on to make all of Pinburgh/replayfx happen letting people know they are getting electronics payments instead of checks seems like a non issue. Everyone is getting paid regardless. If they want to change how they do it Day of to make it easier for them who cares. Would it really of changed anyone’s plans or what they did this past weekend or make some one decide not to play? All seems highly unlikely.
I think I’ll do all final battle payouts in bit coin
