I recently had an experience with Ultimate Bet that can best be described as “shady”. I don’t feel that the evidence warrants accusing them of outright theft, so I’m just going to post a factual account of what happened and let people make up their own minds:
In 2007 and 2008, I had an active account on Ultimate Bet. I played in their bigger tournaments and in cash games ranging from 5/10 to 25/50 NL. When the extent of the cheating that had taken place on UB began coming to light, I withdrew the entire balance of my account and have not played on there since.
On January 24, I discovered an old e-mail from UB , dated 2/19/2010, in my spam folder. The e-mail informed me that I had $1040.26 in my account and encouraged me to come play on the site. I do not know for certain where the money came from. My best guess is that it was a superuser refund, but to my knowledge (it could also have been lost to a spam filter, though I think the other email got scammed primarily because it was an auto-generated advertisement), I never received an e-mail or anything explaining that I would be getting a refund.
The old e-mail that I stumbled upon was NOT a notification that money had been credited to my account. It seemed to be an advertisement sent automatically because I had not logged in for a while, informing me that there was money in my account and encouraging me to return to UB to use it.
I have no intention of playing on UB anytime soon, but I downloaded the software and logged into my account intending to withdraw the $1040.26. Upon logging in, I received a message that my account was unavailable and that I needed to e-mail support, which I did:
I attempted to log-in to my account this morning and received a message
saying it was unavailable. I assume this is because it has been quite
some time since my last log-in. Is there something I need to do to get
access to the account and its contents again?
The next day, they responded:
We checked your account and we are pleased to inform you that at this moment, your UB account is in good standing and has no security blocks or restrictions. Please try to log in once again, and in case you experience any other issues, please let us know.
It’s not clear whether they are saying that there was never a restriction on my account or that they lifted whatever restriction there was, but in any event I was able to log-in successfully. I was not surprised to see that my account balance was $0. I wrote back immediately:
Thank you, I was able to log in successfully today. Unfortunately, there
seems to be $1040.26 missing from my account. Allow me to explain:Several years ago, I decided to stop playing on UB. I cashed out my
balance, deleted the software from my computer, and never logged in again.Yesterday, quite by accident, I found an e-mail in spam folder informing
me that I had a balance of $1040.26 in my account. This e-mail is dated
2/19/2010, but because it was caught by my spam filter, I never saw it
until now. I am assuming that this was a refund I was issued in
connection with the cheating that occurred on UB.Upon logging it in today, I find that I have a balance of $0.
Obviously, I would like to know what happened to the $1040.26. If you
could please look into this and get back to me, I would greatly
appreciate it.
The next day, the money was back in my account, no questions asked and no explanation given:
We are pleased to inform you that your account has been reactivated and you should now be able to log in. Also, we have put back $1040.26 to your UB account.
When playing in our poker room, please abide by our Terms and Conditions at all times.
Important: Sometimes players experience difficulties logging in from the lobby after having their account reinstated. Please follow the instructions below to ensure that you can access your UB account without issue.
1. Open the UB software.
2. Go to a table.
3. Choose an empty seat to sit down.
4. Proceed with the login process from there.We appreciate your patience in this matter. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any additional questions or concerns.
After withdrawing the funds and confirming that they were safely in my bank account, I asked for an explanation as to why the money was removed from my account. Here is the response that I got:
Thank you for contacting us.
In regard to your last message, please be informed that funds were on hold since we found out that your account was inactive for more than 6 months.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any additional questions or concerns.
I find this suspicious for a few reasons:
1. I don’t know at what point the money was removed, but my account had been inactive for well over 6 months when the initial e-mail “reminding” me about the $1040.26 was sent.
2. The money was not automatically restored to my account when I re-activated it. More than 24 hours passed between the time that security informed me I could log in to my account and the time that the money was restored to my account.
3. Significantly, the money was not restored until I asked about it, but was restored immediately when I asked about it. In retrospect I wish I had allowed more time to pass before asking, just to see what happened, but it seems to me that they had no intention of putting that money back into my account had I not inquired.
In their defense, the User Agreement does state that
If you do not access your Account by logging onto the UB servers and using the Services offered by UB for any consecutive period of 180 days your Account will be deemed inactive, and may be deemed abandoned. UB is entitled to charge you periodic administrative fee(s) during the period that your Account remains inactive, up to the extent of your Account balance. Without limitation, if your Account is deemed by UB to be abandoned, your Account may be closed, this Agreement may be terminated, and/or UB may take the other actions or remedies set forth in Section 8.2 of this Agreement.
The primary reason that I have problem with them confiscating money from the account in this case is that, as best I can surmise, the only reason that there was money in there at all was because of the cheating that occurred on their site. In that case, this was a refund that I was issued when I was no longer an active player and would have no reason to realize that this money had been added to my account. I’m sure I’m not the only person to receive a refund after cashing out my account never to return, and it doesn’t seem right to me that they can take this money back after 6 months of inactivity.
I gave them one last chance to explain themselves before posting this:
Thank you. I am still unclear on what happened, though.
Where did this $1040.26 come from? Was it a refund from the Russ Hamilton/superuser incident? If so, why was I not informed that I had received this refund?
What does it mean that the funds were “on hold”? Would they have been returned to my account if I hadn’t asked about them?
This was sent on February 4, 2011. It is now the 21st, and they have not responded, so I’m posting this as a PSA to others who may be in a similar situation and generally as yet another warning that UB is still engaged in shady practices.
Cliff’s Notes: I stopped playing on UB years ago and cashed out my balance. For some reason, possibly as a superuser refund, $1040.26 was credited to my account without my knowledge. I eventually found in my spam folder an old advertising email from UB telling me there was still money in my account. When I logged in, the money was gone. I wrote to ask why, and they returned the money with no explanation. When further pressed, they told me the money was “on hold” because of my extended inactivity but did not respond to further questions. I was able to cash out the money.
If you haven’t seen it already:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/black-yellow-song-981576/
<3 UB
Judging by the thread, the only thing to be learned here is, never post in NVG when MTTc is a far more useful spot.
This is soooo shady. I wonder how many other people are in the same situation. The inactive funds rule is fine when it comes to money that a player would cash out before quitting the site, but cheating reimbursements should be handled more carefully.
If players who are inactive at UB because of the cheating scandal are getting their late reimbursements from said cheating scandal seized as inactive without multiple, explicit notifications from UB first… well, I’d be tempted to say that it would almost have to be a deliberate shady business practice by UB, but it could just be their overall incompetence, too. If nothing else, you gotta give UB credit for having a very balanced range.
Not really shocking Andrew. Glad you got your cash though!
I’m not defending UB here, but they probably did actually do the right thing here, for once, perhaps by accident.
It helps to know something about bailments” and applicable laws and accounting practices. You guys are all smart enough to read the article for yourself, so I won’t repeat all that here, or explain how it applies to online poker accounts. I’ll just make a couple of quick points about bailments that aren’t obvious from the article:
1. There’s no obligation for the bailee to assert ownership of the chattel immediately upon acquiring the right to do so.
2. However, once the bailee does assert ownership, the chattel must be transferred out of the bailor’s account into a bailee’s asset account.
On the latter point, bailments are “off the books”. That is, in a properly-run poker site, the money held in players’ accounts does not appear on the financial statements as assets, liability, or equity of the company (although the amount on deposit may be reported separately for reasons of regulatory disclosure). So once the bailee does assume ownership, an accounting entry must be made (specifically, a debit to some cash asset account, and a credit to some “miscellaneous revenue” account). At the same time, the money must be “removed” from the player’s account. There’s just no other way to do it, legally or from the standpoint of sound accounting practice.
What appears to have happened here is
1. At some unknown time in the past, UB deposited $1040.26 in your account because it wanted to for whatever reasons. Nothing shady or illegal about that.
2. At some time after this, UB probably did a routine survey of inactive accounts to which they had deposited funds and sent emails out to give account holders a last chance to decide what to do with the money.
3. When you failed to do anything with the money within some arbitrary and unknown time frame after the emails were sent, UB exercised its perfectly legal and contractually stated right to assume ownership of the money, at which point it took the money out of your account as its supposed to. They probably also locked your log-in account at the same time, most likely as a security measure – if it were my site, I’d lock any account that had been inactive over some period.
[Note: Your log-in “account” is not the same as your cash account. The former is a software security/customer identification construct that has nothing whatsoever to do with money; the latter is an accounting entity.]
4. You finally found the email, logged in after requesting the account be reactivated, and found there was no money in the account.
5. You reported the money “missing”. UB went back through its records and decided, even though it didn’t have to, to put the money back in your account.
None of this is shady or illegal. The only problems I see here are the usual failings of customer support to explain WTF is going on, but I routinely have that problem with all of the sites, including your new overlords, who have yet to explain why the check for my penultimate withdrawal bounced.
Gah how do you know everything about everything?!
I have my doubts about the legitimacy of UB’s accounting practices and in particular the practice of keeping player accounts separate from the company’s revenues and expenses, but even if your guess were 100% accurate, I’d say that they still have a higher burden for notifying me of both the disbursement of a cheating refund (if that is in fact what this was) and of the impending seizure of my funds, particularly when said funds are disbursed to an inactive account as a result of wrongdoing on the part of the company. Simply dropping money in the account unannounced and then pulling it back out some time later and leaving the burden on me to inquire about it is not acceptable.
There was a thread on P5’s recently about Carbon Poker (allegedly) clearing someone’s inactive account after they have gone beyond the amount of time listed in their ToC. The Carbon rep came into the thread and was very helpful, and it was never clear whether the user’s money was actually confiscated or not… user did come in and express that everything was fixed but refused to work with the Carbon rep to help find out why it happened. Either way, this brought this time limit clause into the light, and it’s found on pretty much every site whether or not it is enforced.
Glad they gave you your $1k back.
Well first i will like to start by saying that after quickly reading your thread i can verify that U.B. does and has always had this rule on if after 6 months of not loging into your account it will be deemed abanded and UB holds the rights to forfit any money as well as close the account. Now i remember reading this on there rule page doesn’t mean i agree or understand it being such a short period of time but after reading this rule i never kept over $1,000 in my account at anytime and if i did keep a large amount in my account knowing that there were alot of action in the high-stake games i then would make sure everyday that i logged into my account expecially when the $50/$100 stake’s were non-stop and at one point having just over $100k in the account and the high-stake games started to die down i made a withdraw but there was a max that i was able to do witch was only 5k a week so i remember sticking a note to my laptop to remind me to log into UB bein stressed out that i would be to distracted and forget then b4 i know it 6 months goes by and well UB not having the best rep. who know’s.
Well i guess what I am saying is that that rule has been inplace for years but to be honest it could have turned out alot worse with them not replacing the money witch in this case having it be U.B. Im a bit surprised that they even notified you let alone re-deposited the funds
Makes me wonder does U.B. just have a bad rap and due to the superuser account will never recover and maybe because most of the high-stake players stayin away from UB after the cheating scandal even though most if not all victims were reamburst hurts the site even more but maybe just maybe U.B. is not the untrusted taboo site everyone actually makes it out to be?
I’m just throwing this out here so bear with me, most if not every online poker site had a superuser account not just U.B. n just cause UB was the only site to have gottin cought i highly doubt that they were the only one’s that had shady workers that had access to the superuser account and i’ll bet any amount of money that this was running rampid on other sites.
Also UB is tbe only site that offers some sick kick ass perk’s best being the 5% interest on your money that is in ur account witch is higher than any bank actually being in most cased 4% higher the few times that i had a decent amount of money in my account for instants having 100k or so n making an extra 5k a month in interest on top of my rakeback i was earning n extra 12k-15k a month and one month i remember between the 5% interest n my rakeback i earned an extra 39k one month thats pretty sick not to mention huge for my B.R. expecially being a 19yr old kid at the time..
I wish that F.T. an P.S. would offer interest on my money that i keep in there site instead of them being able to earn interest on our money that is kept in there bank so yea these more larger popular site really should take a look into UB’s reward’s and how it really should be done…
But Im glad that you recieved money that u had no idea u even had its kinda like hittin a lil’ jackpot playin slots or something right lol..
Thanks for the thorough response, Tom. Given UB’s proven propensity for hiring shills and the eyebrow-raising claims you make in your comment, I hope you’ll understand why I’m suspicious. On the other hand, you write pretty well for a shill, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, leave your comment up, and respond to it.
First off, the important difference between what happened here and a slot machine is that in this case the money was (presumably) my money that was cheated from me by owners of the site, not some random mana from heaven. Because of this, I think they have a much higher burden for notifying me of the availability of these funds before they go seizing them. I never would have knowingly left even $1000 sitting inactive in my account, but in this case I was never even notified that I would be receiving a refund at all. It was just dropped into my already inactive account.
You make a few claims here that I believe to be false or at least unsubstantiated:
“most if not all victims were reamburst [sic]”- How do we know this? Given that UB has not released all relevant hand histories, and in fact have admitted that they don’t even have all the HH’s, why should we believe everyone has been reimbursed in full? Travis Makar has recently alleged that even the HH’s that were released may have been doctored.
“most if not every online poker site had a superuser account”- PokerStars at least has said explicitly that they never employed “superuser” style accounts for testing and that nothing like this would be possible on their site. There’s no evidence of anything of this scale occurring on any sites other than AP/UB. This “it happens everywhere” line is a (clever) PR tactic, not a fact.
“having 100k or so n making an extra 5k a month in interest”- 5% interest is not the same as earning 5% on your money every month. If they compound the 5% monthly, you’d earn about .417% each month, which would be $417 on 100K.
“one month i remember between the 5% interest n my rakeback i earned an extra 39k”- Even accepting your absurd claim of $5000/month in interest, there’s no way you earned 34K in rakeback. Standard rakeback for UB is 30%, so you would have to have paid 85K in rake in one month to earn that. That’s considerably more than I paid across all sites for all of last year.