PayPal shy away from win a house competitions

Not only have house competition organisers had to contend with challenges from the UK's Gambling Commission in recent months, with the most notable case being the postponed Oldborough Retreat competition; they have also had to deal with technical complications relating to processing payments online. It seems that the regulatory uncertainty surrounding win a house competitions has led to a number of payment providers - including PayPal - to stop offering their services for such competitions. Unfortunately, in many cases this was done suddenly and without providing any prior notice to competition organisers.

Given how easy it is to set up and use, PayPal was the payment provider of choice for the majority of house competitions. For some time, everything appeared to work perfectly, with payments being processed in a timely and relatively cost-efficient manner. Following the postponment of the Oldborough Retreat competition, other competition organisers started reporting their inability to process payments. Their accounts had been frozen with no explanation and they were not able to access or withdraw any funds whilst PayPal reviewed the situation.

Of course, without being able to handle any payments on their site or even access the funds, many organisers were forced to abandon the project after a few weeks. Understandably, players became frustrated and started asking for refunds. Letters from lawyers ensued but it seemed PayPal was no longer happy to engage with house competition organisers.

Around the same time, it became clear that PayPal had updated their Acceptable Use Policy, outlining the types of activities that are prohibited by the e-wallet provider. Anyone wishing to use PayPal for any type of game of skill (whether or not it is legally defined as a lottery) was now required to seek prior approval from PayPal to do so. Unfortunately, PayPal is renowned for its poor customer services and we read numerous complaints online about both the approval process itself and the inability to reach someone senior enough to deal with the issues of frozen funds.

At the same time, with other house competition sites seemingly still working fine with PayPal despite being very similar in nature, a number of discrepancies emerged in its own implementation of its Acceptable Use Policy. With so much uncertainty in the air surrounding both the Gambling Commission and certain payment providers' policies on house competitions, there is little doubt that this will affect both players and competition organisers in a negative way - at least in the short-term.

Click here to read more about these issues on the original article on Win a House.