Winamax - 5 Year Cashout Battle
I wanted to shed some light on the situation affecting a certain percentage of Winamax customers that has effectively resulted in automatic confiscation of bankrolls due to a sudden policy change that occured in 2019. I'm also very grateful if anyone is familiar with the situation and can provide me with a working withdrawal solution.
Some time around 2015 I signed up to Winamax. Winamax do not accept players located in the UK. I was a UK citizen living abroad in an accepted (non EU) country, I'll just refer to it as XYZ since I'm not looking to dox too much personal info.
Winamax were ok with me using a UK bank account, but I was required to prove my address in XYZ. They sent a PIN to a physical PO box in XYZ. I have never had a bank account in XYZ (and no desire to). For a number of years I was able to deposit and withdraw via my UK account. My last deposit was in 2018.
Some time in 2019 I put in a withdrawal request, which was approved, but the transfer itself was rejected. They actually didn't bother to let me know the transfer was rejected and the funds were silently placed back into my Winamax account. For a long time, I just moved on, assuming the withdrawal had taken place. Eventually realised that the withdrawal was not successful. For the next 3-4 years I made multiple attempts to withdraw and also spoke with support on multiple occasions.
The problem with bank account withdrawal is that they suddenly started requiring proof of bank account documents to match up with the registered address. My address was registered in XYZ. It would technically have been an option to open an account in XYZ, but bank statements do not actually contain customer addresses in XYZ. It's actually a country without a functional postal system. There is a PO box system, but no personal mail delivery system and no bank statements with customer addresses. I decided opening an account in XYZ would be a last resort option, because I was doubtful it would work anyway.
I saw that Winamax were now offering Skrill and provided my Skrill details. Although they attempted to send out the transfer it was ultimately rejected because my Skrill account was UK based.
I did think about changing the address on Skrill but you'd need proof of address in that country.
In 2024, things came to a head when Winamax emailed to tell me they were closing my winamax.fr account because they no longer support XYZ country. My winamax.fr account is now closed and I have been given a link by Winamax support to try and process my cashout.
Now XYZ account is not an option and they are specifically demanding a European IBAN (nothing else will do aside from Skrill, which doesn't work as discussed). It's very hard to get a European IBAN without an address in Europe. I realise there are probably some unethical ways to get a European address, but I believe in doing things honestly. I've never lied to Winamax about my location and available withdrawal/deposit methods. It's unclear to me how I'm suddenly supposed to produce a European bank account.
Here are the withdrawal methods that have been tried to far -
UK bank account - Rejected because UK IBAN. They always used to process withdrawal here in the past and suddenly stopped in 2019 with no warning.
Skrill - Rejected because it's a UK based skrill account
Revolut - Doesn't provide EU IBAN to UK based customers, only GB IBANs which Winamax won't transfer to
Wise - Provides an EU IBAN to UK based customers but refuses to process gambling transactions
The last option Wise was actually recommended by Winamax support as a possible option but it failed. It seems even Winamax have no idea how I am supposed to withdraw aside from taking up residence in a new country in order to process a single withdrawal. If any readers of this thread have an idea, please let me know.
To be fair, Winamax are not deliberately attempting to seize my bankroll. They legitimately sent out the transfer request to Wise. Wise refused and said they would send the transfer back to Winamax within 10 days (!). However, I can't completely absolve Winamax of any responsibility here.
- They don't seem concerned regarding the impossible withdrawal situation they have created for a small % of customers.
Inaction here is just as good as deliberately taking the funds imo.
- Should they not give customers an option to withdraw before making a sweeping policy change that renders withdrawing impossible? Should they not honor a single withdrawal request to the original withdrawal method?
- Is it fair to demand a EU bank account when I have never at any point claimed to reside in an EU country?
I originally planned to post the support thread with Winamax, but it doesn't add much. There are a lot of circular discussions where support are evidently using pre-canned responses and not bothering to read the actual problem. I have to keep restating the problem every third or fourth email because a different agent appears to be assigned each time, and they may or may not have bothered to read the full email thread.
Anyway, maybe there is something obvious I'm missing here, just let me know. I'm reaching the stage where the time investment on this is -EV relative to the withdrawal amount.
