FYI: Lengthy Withdrawal Process

[hoos]

On my last set of withdrawals, I set my personal "best" for longest time from request to commit at 63 calendar days (46 business days). I am posting now, since I have very unfortunately broken that record with my current set of withdrawals. I have 7 withdrawals pending, and all of them have now been pending for more than 30 business days. In calendar days, I have been waiting 67 days, 62, 60, 57, 56, 54, and 44 days respectively, and in business days, I have been waiting 49 days, 45, 44, 42, 41, 39, and 33 days respectively.

Come on MA, please get your act together and instill some confidence in the deposit/withdrawal process. IMHO it will ultimately pay you dividends, as I know I will personally be thinking twice about future deposits when I know it could take me (approaching) 2 and a half months to regain access to the money if I need it.

Update: Today, MA committed all seven of my pending withdrawals. The calendar days from request to committal were: 74, 69, 67, 64, 63, 61, and 51 and the business days were: 54, 50, 49, 47, 46, 44, and 38.

Thanks MA for honoring every legit withdrawal as you always have for me. Now just please work on your internal business processes (or cash flow situation) to get to the point where these only take something like 7-10 business days instead of 5 times that long. You would reap large dividends in large depositor confidence.

 

[Rox]

I sold most of my equipment and cashed out on 5/21/11 for this very reason. Taking 2 months to receive my own money does not instill confidence that my money is safe. I used to play online poker professionally and bank wires from my favorite site pokerstars would be in my account within 2-3 days. This was even with all the hoops and hurdles they had to overcome to find a processor in the US that would work with them after UIGEA was passed.

MindArk has none of these hoops and hurdles to overcome. Cash outs take this long because, A) MindArk is financially unstable, or B) A long withdrawal time discourages cashouts. People are less likely to withdraw money when they know they probably won't be seeing it for quite some time. Might as well try to hit an All Time HOF and then cashout. Which usually in turn means the player ends up giving it all back.

I started playing this game right after it went gold. Every new update a new system is implemented to try and take the players money faster and faster. It's so sick these days. You can actually lose $50 a month hunting bottom feeder creatures with economical gear if you play enough hours. It never used to be this way. That is why I have hardly played much the past 3 years.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this. If MindArk is going to try and suck the players deposits into their pockets as quick as they possibly can they could at least have the professionalism to withdraw PLAYERS funds to them in a timely manner like 99% of legitimate businesses do on a daily basis. Until this is the case I will never deposit again. Every now and then I'll log in and get my fix swunting puny's outside PA.

p.s. still waiting on my withdrawal (45 Calendar days)

 

[M Rufen Power]

Yep, usually this would be the case of it being your first withdrawal like it was for mine, thats what I heard anyway from people the first is always the longest, but it doesnt seem to be the case anymore this year. I pretty much waited 8 weeks for the money to appear in my account. On the 6th week I sent a support case asking why its taking so long 2 weeks later I got it committed. I'am very seriously thinking about selling everything I have and never depositing ever again. To be honest I have not deposited into this game since the new year & I'm still hunting like a mad man on denge fever.

But I still have a lot of gear I could cash out if I wanted to, or just blow it all & never come back again or just keep on cycling for as long as possible. Not sure what to do but I like hunting as of now, so time will tell. I doubt I'll ever quit but that doesnt apply to my depositing as I dont intend or do deposit anything into EU now. Just waiting to see withdrawals taking at least 3 months before people start to panick.

 

[wizzszz]

Whats the point in making 7 withdrawals, one every 3 days? You wanted to keep them busy? Or do you just love to pay fees?

 

[Sirhc]

My first withdraw this year was fairly fast....the second withdraw....well its been much longer. Luckily I am not planning anymore this year but its a bit of a worry its taking as long as it is. Makes me wonder if I should quicken my liquidation pace

 

[Few Scars]

Maybe Kim|AskMindArk in Entropia Forum should be able to answer why the withdrawal process takes so long? It's not a secret or a question that they can't answer. A simple response of, we have one person processing 200 claims a day might be the answer, or that they only do banking once a month?

 

[Wisdom]

Here is a possible answer for you:

one can only withdraw as fast as money are deposited by others during the same time frame.

nowadays more withdrawals than deposits are made.

therefore takes longer and longer for MA to have enough money to wire.

 

[hoos]

Whats the point in making 7 withdrawals, one every 3 days? You wanted to keep them busy? Or do you just love to pay fees?

I was just withdrawing as I sold items and my card reached a certain amount. I knew from previous withdrawals that the process was getting longer, and I didn't know when my next sizable sale would be each time, so the plan was to get the lengthy process started and start seeing some money instead of just doing one withdrawal weeks down the road...and it's not like we're talking about withdrawals below $1k here...

However, it appears that MA is now batching withdrawals together, unlike what I had previously experienced. It looks like these will probably come in one wire transfer like I experienced recently.

 

[Mary Jane]

Im selling out for personal reasons Dome, DOA, and my taxes for 8 months and i need the money in 2 months maximum if that not happen maybe i gonna be in troubles in RL....

 

[billairboy]

Probably they have cash issues and must slow down the speed of payment. And people most understand, you can't compare having peds in EU with RL money on an account, not in the current set up that MA have anyway. I hope they change that in the future, but it will be a long way to that.

 

[slither]

I'm on biz day 50 now when they state 30 biz day limit on their website.

It's an absolute disgrace, and the only conclusion I can make is that they don't have the money (either to pay the withdrawals or to hire extra staff). I hope my conclusion is wrong, but if it is they need to sort this out asap or more players will lose confidence and that will lead to them not having enough money.

 

[hojlund]

MA's witghdrawel time are ridicoulos! Especially because they state one thing but do another..

Money out of the game, is one thing that holds game back imo.

 

[Stutoman]

I commenced a withdrawal 63 calendar days ago and still waiting ;(
(45 business days)

 

[hoos]

Update:

My withdrawals are now 51, 47, 46, 44, 43, 41, and 35 business days or 71, 66, 64, 61, 60, 58, and 48 calendar days old!

 

[Art Jennifer]

They are on holiday now!

 

[sententz]

My withdrawals are now 51, 47, 46, 44, 43, 41, and 35 business days or 71, 66, 64, 61, 60, 58, and 48 calendar days old!

50+ bussines days?..this start to scare me now

 

[ChairmanEdgewise]

Probably they have cash issues and must slow down the speed of payment. And people most understand, you can't compare having peds in EU with RL money on an account, not in the current set up that MA have anyway. I hope they change that in the future, but it will be a long way to that.

Tbh I had the idea that currency inside Entropia should be easily withdrawn to your real life earthbound bank account or w/e they say in each and every trailer of Entropia....


Seeing that the cash takes months to withdraw just isn't too encouraging...

 

[Neophyte]

Registered on April 25, so 77 calendar days for me. And still pending. Getting close to 3 months ) Anyone else from April?

It took less than a calendar month back in February, so clearly something happened there during spring/early summer.

 

[hoos]

I'm really not too "scared," more just frustrated, since I had timed the money (with what I thought was plenty of extra time) for our family move. My last withdrawal came through just fine on 2 June. On that withdrawal, it was only slightly faster than this one at 46, 41, 39, 36, 35, 22, and 21 business days or 63, 56, 54, 50, 48, 31, and 30 calendar days. As you can see, on that one they lumped a number of withdrawals together and did one bank transfer, so some of those withdrawals were actually under 30 business days.

 

[Rutabaga]

Ahhhh the egg

I got it.

Whoever is in charge of processing withdrawals at MindArk must be trapped inside the Atrox Egg...

AHHHHHH THE WITHDRAWALS!

But seriously... This is not giving me much confidence about the "real cash economy" of the Entropia Universe. All of those peds on my card don't mean squat unless I can cash them out like MA promised... maybe i should just be playing WoW.

 

[DoubleWolf]

Probably they have cash issues and must slow down the speed of payment. And people most understand, you can't compare having peds in EU with RL money on an account, not in the current set up that MA have anyway. I hope they change that in the future, but it will be a long way to that.

This would be the mostly likely correct answer. To further expand on why this is correct, there are a few things that we can be certain of on how MA operates. The first is this:

Corporate revenues consist of the net sum of deposited and withdrawn amounts from Entropia Universe made by users. The net revenues are presented in the income statement after deduction of reimbursements requested by participants in Entropia Universe.

Or in other words, "Deposits - Withdrawals = Net Revenue"

The other thing we can be certain of is:

Participants in Entropia Universe can at any time request reimbursement of their unconsumed assets in the virtual currency PED. MindArk then reserves the corresponding amount in SEK as an accrual.

An accrual means they will account for it in the period it's committed, but will pay out the actual cash in the following period. This is why it's supposed to take 30 days on average for a withdrawal, because like most companies, Mindark operates on a monthly basis.

Some of you may already be able to see where I'm going with this. If Mindark delays the withdrawal and leaves it as "pending" it wont count against their revenues for that month. Why would they do this? Because it is possible that more money is being requested to be withdrawn than is actually being deposited. They don't want to have a negative revenue, so instead, they simply delay the withdrawals until it can be absorbed by the money coming in.

Remember, Mindark does not operate like a bank. They are not keeping all the value of ped in their assets in the chance that we all might want to withdraw. They operate more like a retail outlet. We purchase ped, and have the opportunity to refund our ped, just like if we bought a pair of jeans from the department store. The money they would use to refund our jeans would come from the cash register, aka current revenues. But if everyone who has ever bought jeans from that store wanted to return them all at once, they would only be able to pay out what was in the register, and when that was gone, they'd say to the rest of the people "tough shit, wait til we get more money"

In any case, longer waits for withdrawals are not a good sign...

 

[Norbert]

.........................................................................

 

[wizzszz]

Remember, Mindark does not operate like a bank.

Not? Would make a bank license pretty useless then, don't you think?

They are not keeping all the value of ped in their assets in the chance that we all might want to withdraw. They operate more like a retail outlet. We purchase ped, and have the opportunity to refund our ped, just like if we bought a pair of jeans from the department store. The money they would use to refund our jeans would come from the cash register, aka current revenues.

This is exactly like a bank works, too - they do not keep enough cash to refund everyone's balance at once, i guess you know that.

In any case, longer waits for withdrawals are not a good sign...

I think we shouldn't panic yet: MA made a business plan for this year, and 100% sure it included the installments for the FPC sale - now these plan didn't really work out as expected, and the current withdrawal bottleneck is a side effect of this - this doesn't mean a thing.

 

[BruuD]

I have asked MA for an explanation on the other forum.
Awaiting reply...

 

[Xen]

This is exactly like a bank works, too - they do not keep enough cash to refund everyone's balance at once, i guess you know that.

A bank still has the assets (loans, investments). Yes, I know a bank has to keep only a certain % for payouts, but I think you know what I mean.

MA takes money as income as soon as it is deposited and uses that for expenses, when they should take the money when it is actually spent in game. The way it seems like it works now, everyone could just deposit for some months but not play, and MA would use most of that money for expenses (most expenses are fixed, not depending on activity of players). Then if everyone tried to withdraw just the money they deposited, they would not have it.

 

[DoubleWolf]

Not? Would make a bank license pretty useless then, don't you think?

No, a bank license would be EXTREMELY useful, because then MA's income model could change from that of a retail operation to that of a bank operation. A bank doesn't get revenue when you deposit money. Their revenue comes from interest gained from their lending activities. And like a bank, they would be in a much better position to allow people to withdraw funds as they choose.

This is exactly like a bank works, too - they do not keep enough cash to refund everyone's balance at once, i guess you know that.

Xen put this pretty well. If everyone at a bank tried to withdraw, they wouldn't be able to pay everyone out either. The big "however" though is that the bank has enough in assets to cover everyone's deposits, in addition to their other liabilities and equity. This is not the case with MA...

I think we shouldn't panic yet: MA made a business plan for this year, and 100% sure it included the installments for the FPC sale - now these plan didn't really work out as expected, and the current withdrawal bottleneck is a side effect of this - this doesn't mean a thing.

You're probably right here. While it's not a good sign, this is mostly likely the cause of it. Their expected cash flow from SEE kind of fell on it's face, so they probably have to go back to the drawing board to generate the lost revenue. People withdrawing funds have to suffer a bit because of it. It's not panic time just yet, but it does create some concerns. Something to keep an eye on for sure.

 

[wizzszz]

No, a bank license would be EXTREMELY useful, because then MA's income model could change from that of a retail operation to that of a bank operation. A bank doesn't get revenue when you deposit money. Their revenue comes from interest gained from their lending activities. And like a bank, they would be in a much better position to allow people to withdraw funds as they choose.

The line you refer to was meant a bit tongue in cheek... there are of course some differences, but they didn't show up in the post you wrote (i.e. that banks do not have to pay taxes on deposits, as the money is never really "theirs")

Xen put this pretty well. If everyone at a bank tried to withdraw, they wouldn't be able to pay everyone out either. The big "however" though is that the bank has enough in assets to cover everyone's deposits, in addition to their other liabilities and equity. This is not the case with MA...

Banks do have enough assets to cover everyone's deposits?
Only in theory, or how do you think banks could go bankrupt?

Banks only need to keep a certain percentage of their customers cash (somewhere around 10% only actually), the rest is used for all kinds of business activities, partially even very risky stuff... (maybe google for "book money").

See it like this: You deposit $1000, and the bank loans out $900 to me - if i don't repay my loan in time, they could not satisfy a withdrawal request from you over the full amount either... even if your money is still there (in the books)

 

[DoubleWolf]

Banks do have enough assets to cover everyone's deposits?
Only in theory, or how do you think banks could go bankrupt?

Banks only need to keep a certain percentage of their customers cash (somewhere around 10% only actually), the rest is used for all kinds of business activities, partially even very risky stuff... (maybe google for "book money").

I'm not talking about their cash only. You're right, much of what gets deposited goes to fund a lot of different things, and I agree that banks could engage in some risky business that could actually reduce their assets below a customer's deposits. This would absolutely reduce what they hold in assets versus what customers hold in deposits.

But to see the mechanical differences, you only need to look at a bank's financial statement versus one of MA's

I'll provide some links:

Citi First Quarter 2011 Earnings Review

Mindark Semi Annual Report Jan-Jun 2010

You see on page 2 of Citigroup's report that their largest source of revenue comes from interest. They receive no revenue from customer deposits. This is in contrast to MA where their revenue IS deposits. This isn't just an accounting trick at work. It actually creates a fundamental difference in their operations, and that can be seen on their balance sheets.

On page 3 of Citigroup's report, you can see that they list the total amount of customer deposits as a liability. That amount is balanced out on the asset side. Not directly, but has been spread around many different activities. But the fact is that the bank could still afford to cover all their customers deposits, in addition to their other liabilities. Shareholder's equity is derived from the difference between assets and liabilities so they get whatever would be left from that.

Now many people could default on their loans, which would obviously decrease their assets, but the first thing to decrease would be their equity, not the value of customer's deposits. Since customers are a liability, they take priority over shareholders. The company would go into a negative equity situation (which could inevitably lead to bankruptcy) before any of the customer's money is lost for good.

This is much different than MA. Our ped is not considered a liability. There is also not enough in assets to cover their liabilities, in addition to "unconsumed user holdings" which is what they list as the total amount of ped in the universe. Unconsumed user holdings does not even get factored into the balance sheet, and shareholders still have plenty of equity in the company. They have never been in a negative equity situation before because they do not count our ped as real money against their assets.

You would agree that a retail business works differently than a bank, correct? MA operates just like a retail business, and it all stems from they fact that MA counts our deposits as income, which a bank does not do. Like I said earlier, this isn't just an accounting trick. It actually creates a fundamental difference in the operations of these two types of businesses.

Ideally, MA should have started with a bank license and then things would work they way they should for this type of game. Instead, they have to climb out of a big hole and get enough in assets somehow so that they can turn what is listed as "unconsumed user holdings" into an actual liability. The reason the bank license was denied, or put on hold was due to a lack of funding, and I guarantee you it was because they couldn't afford to cover our ped in their assets.

 

[wizzszz]

Yes, you are right - as i said in my last post MA deposits are considered income, whereas deposits to a bank account are not.

I was only referring to what you wrote in post #21, more specifically to the part i quoted from there.
(or to sum it up again: banks take withdrawals from their 10% cash reserve, this works pretty much the same way as a store)


Being a real bank would MA allow to not deduct taxes on deposits (currently they have to, as deposits are considered PED sales), but then again, i think this doesn't go too well with the "MA is only liable for the deposits of the last 6 month" (<- taken from the EULA, i think it were 6 month, correct me if i am wrong please)

As a bank they would be responsible for all the deposits (and everything you spend to the TT or other players would be considered money transfers/withdrawals then, no idea about TT value of items&stackables...)
If this is really true, the banking would be a big step forward for all, the players AND MindArk, but this aint gonna happen anytime soon... and somehow i got the feeling they will find a workaround for the positive effect on the liability for all the PEDs i got on my avatar...

 

[DoubleWolf]

I was only referring to what you wrote in post #21, more specifically to the part i quoted from there.
(or to sum it up again: banks take withdrawals from their 10% cash reserve, this works pretty much the same way as a store)

Well looking at only the cash, yes that would be correct. But a store doesn't keep the value in assets of every pair of jeans they sell, just in case someone might return them. They're expecting that most wont return them, but they do keep some cash on hand just in case a few people do. That's the difference. It seems we agree, but I'm just taking it one step further.

Being a real bank would MA allow to not deduct taxes on deposits (currently they have to, as deposits are considered PED sales), but then again, i think this doesn't go too well with the "MA is only liable for the deposits of the last 6 month" (<- taken from the EULA, i think it were 6 month, correct me if i am wrong please)

I believe the "liable on last 6 months worth of deposits" is used more in the legal sense and can be viewed like a warranty on your ped. It's reserved for if something happens to cause you to lose your ped value (computer failure, server failure, acts of God) and Mindark agrees (key phrase: "if acknowledged") that somehow they owe you what was lost. In that case, you could only get your last 6 months worth of deposits. It doesn't go on their books as an accounting liability, however.

As a bank they would be responsible for all the deposits (and everything you spend to the TT or other players would be considered money transfers/withdrawals then, no idea about TT value of items&stackables...)
If this is really true, the banking would be a big step forward for all, the players AND MindArk, but this aint gonna happen anytime soon... and somehow i got the feeling they will find a workaround for the positive effect on the liability for all the PEDs i got on my avatar...

It really would be a big step forward. Mindark really could then take money from decay, as they could be seen like fees on your bank account. The players' money would be MUCH safer and better accounted for. And Mindark would no longer be driven entirely by deposits for their revenue. More deposits is good, as they could lend more, but the loot system wouldn't need to be so heavily geared toward trying to make people deposit more and withdraw less like it is now. But I say it wouldn't NEED to be that way. Whether or not they would actually change it is another story. It would seem like it would be good if they did though, since it's quite obvious that not many players like current system.

The game as it is now, if no one deposits for a month, Mindark loses money. But in a game with a banking model, if no one deposits for a month or even a year or more, as long as there is money in the game, Mindark can still generate revenue.