Exchange Rates

Hi,

Did you try make a euro account also at stars? should be possible or atleast was, i have account in both currencies and using euro for deposit and withdrawls and not loseing any money at fees.

Rompas

I maybe just realized what I had to do. I think I should convert all my funds from USD to EUR in PokerStars account and then make a withdraw to the Neteller.

Originally posted by rompas
Hi,

Did you try make a euro account also at stars? should be possible or atleast was, i have account in both currencies and using euro for deposit and withdrawls and not loseing any money at fees.

Rompas

Yes, probably that would be a solution. I've just lost almost two buy-ins because of this mistake..

That sucks

Just make sure you keep this in mind next time you make a withdrawal. It's already cost you enough money

Well, that's yet a small nuisance in comparison with the discrimination of some countries like Russia where players are simply not allowed to deposit/withdraw in € (only $ and RUB here), even if their e-wallet accounts are in €. It's in your interests to ask them to stop this mayhem Microgaming and iPoker skins do allow to make transactions in € with no fees. Shame on Rational Services.

Guys, just to inform you that I converted the rest of my funds at PokerStars from USD to EUR and after that withdraw it into Neteller EUR account, but I still payed the exchange fee, two times, in fact. It went like this:
1) I converted 200 USD at PokerStars account into EUR and it was 178,20 EUR. I also made EUR as my preferred currency.
2) I requested cash out of those 178,20 EUR to my Neteller EUR account. Despite of the fact that it's an EUR account, I only had an option which said "Neteller in USD".
3) When the transaction was over, I saw that PokerStars sent 193,99 USD to Neteller (not EUR, despite I made it preferred currency).
4) Neteller exchanged rates and at the end I had 167,78 EUR from the original 178,20 EUR, so I lost 10,42 EUR when both, PokerStars and Neteller, made conversions. So, it seams that is cheaper to keep the PokerStars account in USD when you withdraw the funds into EUR e-wallets if it was in USD when you made a deposit.

I've probably made a couple of mistakes during the process of depositing and withdrawing, which I didn't know back then. The conclusion is that you have to avoid depositing to PokerStars in different currencies than your PokerStars account is. What I probably had to do is to convert my PokerStars account from USD to EUR before depositing from Neteller EUR.

The way I did it, PokerStars acted like my Neteller account was in USD, since my PokerStars account was in USD when I made a deposit. That's why PokerStars sent the funds in USD to Neteller, despite the fact I made EUR as preferred currency. Because of that Neteller charged me exchange fee when the money arrived. I made another mistake by making EUR as my prefered currency before withdrawing the funds to Neteller. Since PokerStars sent the money in USD, they charged me exchange fee for converting the money from EUR to USD. Hillarious. ♦

Overall, I lost 41,24 EUR (46,04 USD) just on exchange fees by withdrawing 896,05 EUR (1.000,44 USD), which is 4,6% of the transaction. So, learn from my experience how not to do it!

Read my post above; apparently, Croatia is also on the list of countries that aren't allowed to deposit/withdraw €. That's especially strange because Croatia is an EU member. I think that restriction will be removed when Croatia starts using € as a currency instead of kunas.

Meanwhile, your options are:

1) change the currency of one of your e-wallets, e.g. Neteller (before that, you'll need someone to escrow money because you'll need to empty the balance before the change and, if you were a net depositor to Stars from this e-wallet in the last 6 months, you'll also need to withdraw as much money from Stars to the wallet as you've net deposited, to be able to transact between Stars and the new (dollar) e-wallet account which will have a new number);

2) get an e-wallet VIP status (e.g. Neteller SIlver) that will allow you to have accounts in two currencies;

3) transfer money to Full Tilt, use it all for buy-ins (or rake 3%-ish of it in cash games, I reckon) and then withdraw € with a 2% fee instead of 2.95%; that's suboptimal if you have no decent Edge status yet;

4) play on € accounts at sites that allow to withdraw €;

5) try to sell Stars $ for Neteller € (via person-to-person transfers) to someone who is a Neteller Silver+ VIP or merchant and plays at Stars, with some vig smaller than 3% (ideally, 1% or less).

If neither of the options suits you, withdraw $ from the Stars $ account so that only Neteller charge the fee (2.95%).

Ok! Thanks! I have a Skrill account in USD, so will just use this if decided to deposit to Stars in the future. At the time I made my first deposit I used Neteller EUR because didn't have enough money on Skrill and wasn't aware of those issues with currencies. Would make sure to use Skrill otherwise. I also remember to contact Stars support and they told it's all ok. They didn't mention fees and I wasn't carefull enough to check it myself. Would be smarter next time..

Strange that they don't allow EUR withdraws to Croatia, indeed, since we are EU member and will probably soon be a member of monetary union, but as you said, they will probably allow it when the EUR will be our official currency.

EUR member , but no EUR currency, so.....lick the kuna cash ♦