PROBLEM: I sent a Western Union transfer but I have not
received the control number required to claim the funds at the
poker site I want to play at. What should I do?
SOLUTION: The easiest way to ensure that you have a control number instantly is to send the Western Union payment with cash at a retail location. If you use the online system to send a Western Union, you will have to wait for Western Union to do their due diligence in verifying all of your information. Typically this will take 10-15 minutes, however if you have a situation where your address or phone number does not match the address that is on your credit card or if you are not available to talk to a representative on the phone if they need to call you, there can be longer delays.
The problem that most players face when using Western Union and experiencing difficulties in getting their identity verified is that Western Union likely already authorized the funds from the bank account so the funds are on hold until Western Union goes through their process. If you find yourself waiting longer than you anticipated, you can go through some steps to cancel the transaction and make the transfer at a retail location in cash so that you can get the control number needed to claim your funds instantly. To do this, there are two steps required. First, you have to contact Western Union to cancel the transaction, and secondly, you have to contact your bank to release the hold on the funds. All banks will need some kind of verification that the funds are legitimately released. Some banks will accept a letter that you can get from the merchant (Western Union) while other banks require the letter to be sent directly from the merchant to the bank, and they will in most cases give you the fax number there the letter can be sent. Some banks will require a call to be made to them directly and if you get the phone number of the bank that Western Union must call, you can contact Western Union again and ask them to make that call. There are some hoops to get through, however if you decide to wait out the online transaction process, you may find that your subsequent transactions will go much smoother once you have established an identity and an account with Western Union.
PROBLEM: I sent the money to the gaming site and I relayed the money control number, however my funds have not yet been credited to my gaming account. What do I do?
SOLUTION: Once you have a money control number, the money has been transmitted to the recipient. The only reasons for your funds not being credited to your gaming account lies with the gaming site. Call Customer Service and request the funds to be credited using your money control number for verification of the funds.
The only way that you can recover funds that have been transmitted is if by chance the money has not yet been claimed, and then you can cancel the transaction. Any site with a level of customer service that is standard within the gaming industry should not take more than an hour to credit your gaming account once you offer them the control number to the transfer. If you are not able to receive your funds in a timely manner than you should reconsider the gaming site of your choice.
PROBLEM: I successfully cancelled a Western Union transaction that I initiated online, but the money is not in my account. What should I do?
SOLUTION: A very unfortunate aspect of canceling a Western Union transaction is that sometimes it can take 2-3 days for a refund to be credited to your bank account. Unfortunately, there is no logistical way for the funds to be instantly credited back if you used your debit card, unless somehow your bank is able to offer you a provisional credit based on documentation that you can obtain from Western Union certifying that the transaction was cancelled. The challenge that many Western Union customers face in these situations is that even if you are able to get the funds credited back to your account, if have a maximum cash advance limit, you may have difficulty in getting another transaction approved if you are trying you use your daily cash advance allotment.
Use the situation as a learning experience and in the future, if you are looking to have the funds available immediately, transmit cash through a retail location so that you can get a money control number instantly, and then subsequently claim your funds at the gaming site faster.
PROBLEM: I used the online system to send a Western Union and I was told to call Customer Service to answer some security questions. What kind of questions are they going to ask me?
SOLUTION: When contacting Western Union to confirm your identity, you can expect to answer questions related to previous addresses that you may have lived at. Western Union obtains this information through public records and they will give you the address and offer several cities or counties as a multiple choice response and you will have to respond back with the city or county that the address is located in. Additionally, they have also been known to ask what domain names you have registered under your name or what kind of cars you have owned. Again, they will likely offer you a multiple-choice list and ask you which of the names you have registered. It helps to be prepared prior to calling customer service as they only give you one chance to pass their security check. You can expect about 10 questions of which you are expected to get the majority correct. If you have a lot of domain names registered in your name, you may want to print a list to make sure you remember all the domains that you own.
Although the process may seem overbearing, ultimately the process is a protective measure to preserve your identity from being compromised so follow the process as best you can and remember that as a consumer, you always have a choice on which services you use.