SportArbs continue to freeze out payments to members…

It seems that SportArbs is refusing any withdrawal requests from members until they are able to provide debit cards. This situation has been going on for several months and there is little news on when a resolution will be reached.

As with other investments the lack of timely and clear communication not only frustrates members but supports the belief that SportArbs are not that serious in providing a good service to their membership.

The frustration of course is that the business model is relatively robust and does offer a way to achieve good returns at relatively small risk.

Personally I am very disappointed and will be removing the banner at the top of the site as I don’t want anyone to join if the company are not fulfilling basic customer service.

It is increasingly frustrating when things like this happen as I try to recommend programmes that I believe have a better than even chance of succeeding.

I will keep an eye on how things are going at SportArbs and assuming there is positive news I will let readers know.

Question as to whether SportArbs are paying…

I had a recent comment suggesting that SportArbs have not been that prompt with payments lately. What’s your experience?

Personally I haven’t been in a position to find out lately. As the last investment with SportArbs matured I couldn’t make a withdrawal because the Global Digital Pay website wasn’t available.

Whilst this was somewhat frustrating I wasn’t necessarily concerned as SportArbs did at least make the money available for payment. I decided to re-invest and won’t make a withdrawal for another four weeks or so.

Whatever my situation I am somewhat concerned that other people appear to be having problems. SportArbs was an investment that I picked up on relativey early in its lifespan so feel somewhat responsible when recommending to others.

I’d appreciate feedback from other members in relation to whether or not you have been able to make successful withdrawals especially recently.

SportArbs are not that communicative with respect to updates so I’d rather get direct feedback before pursuing any other enquiry with SortArbs.

The most recent update suggested that withdrawals would be available via a debit card but I haven’t seen any further updates on this so there may be some relationship to this in regard to reported problems.

Gold Nugget Invest admit they could do better…

Hot off the presses is a new newsletter from Gold Nugget Invest (GNI). This has been eagerly awaited following the wholesale revamp of the programme in January.

During the week I visited the members forum and the tone was not 100% positive. Many people were airing their frustration at the time it is taking for payments that were requested in early January to be paid.

The GNI newsletter acknowledged that there is a problem and tried to reassure members that they are doing as much as possible to overcome the delays. Unfortunately some people only want their money and care little for the difficulties that GNI face.

To be fair to GNI they do have a sizeable chunk of funds held frozen in the Yesalda bank in North Cyprus. This has meat that normal operations have been severly constrained and has led to the slow payout rate.

The newsletter does provide a potential solution to those who can wait no longer. A specific area of the GNI forum will be set up such that existing members who want to leave can offer their investments for sale. Clearly, it goes without saying that if you wanted to go this way you would have to offer a substantial discount to a prospective buyer plus also stump up a 20% administration fee to GNI.

To me this option doesn’t look that attractive even for the buyer as they will be purchasing what is in effect a virtual sum of money in exchange for their own hard cash and even if the discount is good you would still be taking a significant risk given current circumstances.

I do feel somewhat guilty in perpetuating the rather negative tone that is currently being reported about GNI and I hope that things will improve over the medium term but online investors are fickle and if they sense a problem their tolerance drains away very quickly.

I’m leaving my investment where it is and will make a withdrawal request in the window that starts tomorrow but I’m not expecting to see the funds that quickly especially as they are still making payouts for January.

Somewhat reluctantly I wouldn’t recommend anyone make an investment to GNI at the moment. Better to wait things out and see where your funds could be more profitable.

SportArbs account winners…

Yes, the day finally dawned, Tuesday 29 December meant another birthday and to help me celebrate I asked readers to make a prediction about the daily return at SportArbs.

As it turned out three lucky readers got the daily return for the 29th spot-on, 2.07%. I’d originally announced that there would be two prizes, one for $50 and one for $25. But since three people got the right answer I decided to add a further $25 prize.

So, many congratulations to Jenny who was the first person to predict the correct return. Runners up were Ken and Tim so they should be congratulated as well.

All three have been notified and funds sent to them so they will soon be enjoying daily rewards at SportArbs. They won’t become millionaires overnight but given that returns are made 7 days a week it will soon create a reasonable income, especially if they use 100% compounding.

Thanks also to everyone else who entered and hopefully you’ll have better luck next year.

SportArbs account up for grabs but time is running out…

My wife and daughters have headed off to the town to bag some bargains in the Sales so I’m able to grab a little time to make this post.

I just wanted to remind everyone that my birthday is fast approaching on December 29th and I wanted to give everyone a chance to help me celebrate.

I’ve decided to run a little competition with two prizes. The first is worth $50 and the second $25. As I’m a follower of Sports Arbitrage as way to make additional money online I’m offering the two lucky winners the chance to have accounts at SportArbs. This is a managed Sports Arbitrage opportunity where you can earn on a daily basis.

To win all you have to do is predict what the daily return at SportArbs will be for December 29th. To make this as easy as possible for you I’ve added a link to a new page (see where it says Click to Win SportArbs account at the top of the page) where you can select what you think the return will be, enter your name and email so I know how to contact you if you win.

You can have a maximum of 3 submissions from any single email address (as the webpage only allows you to enter one prediction at a time you’d need to submit three times). Alternatively you can send email entries with your prediction to birthdayboy_at_onlineinvestingguru.com (replace _at_ with @).

As this is just a bit of fun to help me celebrate I can guarantee that I won’t bombard you with emails with all sorts of offers so don’t let the thought of that put you off.

You will need an account at Global Digital Pay so if you haven’t already got one please do this ahead of time.

Closing date is 4pm PST 28 December so make sure your entry is received before then or else it will be disqualified. Judge’s decision i.e. mine is final.

New website for PTV Partner goes live…

After what seems a long protracted process the new PTV Partner website is now uploaded. This has been quite a while in the making and in fact the upload has been postponed several times to make sure that everything is working fine.

Now, I am a big fan of PTV Partner but to be honest I’m not sure that the new design is to my taste. The background is black which I always find a little uninspiring. There are some good images on both the homepage and inside the site itself. In my limited testing there are still a few things that don’t work fully but I’m sure that these will be smoothed out soon.

Luckily, the investment plans are still in place and this is really the most important thing. You have the option to invest in up to 4 plans:

1. 110% for 10 days
2. 125% for 20 days
3. 145% for 30 days
4. 190% for 40 days

All above are business days.

There is a very lively chat room facility where you can take part in the more social side of the venture (although questions about PTV Partners are always welcome).

One good thing about PTV Partners is that you can join without necessarily making a deposit straight away. This will allow you to access the chat room and participate.

If you are something of a party animal (especially at Xmas) then you should know PTV Partner will be holding an online party on 22 December.

If you decide to make an investment the choice of processors is good with Liberty Reserve, Global Digital Pay and StrictPay available.

P.S. Don’t forget to check out my post of 19 December to have a chance to win one of 2 SportArbs accounts

SportArbs no longer use Liberty Reserve…

When I checked my account at SportArbs today there was a special notice to say that they no longer use Liberty Reserve. They say that the payment processor has had difficulties over the last few days culminating in SportArbs losing a sizeable sum of money.

However, this has not caused any disruption at SportArbs as they have what they call a Stabilisation fund for just such problems.

What it does mean though is that all members who had funded their SportArbs account via Liberty Reserve will now have to use Global Digital Pay. So, if you are a member affected by this you should make sure that you open a Global Digital Pay account as soon as possible. It is a very straightforward process and verification can be quickly achieved.

I did read of other programmes having difficulties with Liberty Reserve over the last few days and this seems to have been caused by a problem with the API interface which now seems to be solved. I’m not sure whether SportArbs had the same or other issues but the result is that Liberty Reserve will no longer be used at SportArbs.

STOP PRESS: It will soon be my birthday and to celebrate the occasion I am running a competition for readers of my blog. There will be two prizes, the first a $50 account at SportArbs and the second a $25 account at SportArbs. For your chance to enter make sure you read my post tomorrow, Saturday 19 December. Why not sign up at my Feedblitz subscription above to ensure you won’t miss the post.

SwapGold provides a reliable and fast service…

Recently I had to carry out an ecurrency transaction between two payment processors. Never having done this before I was a little wary about the best way to do it. There are many horror stories where people have been duped of their money and I didn’t want to be another of those statistics.

Doing some research I came across SwapGold and decided to see if their service was as good as the reports I’d read. As you don’t need to sign up it makes it very quick and simple to carry out a transaction. You just need to specify the to and from payment processors and the amount to transfer (in USD or EUR).

Given that there are quite a number of payment processors in existence the site is set up to allow quick access to the most popular ones. If you find a payment processor that may be new or not already listed at SwapGold you can contact the site and they will provide details of how they could complete the transaction.

SwapGold are based in Singapore and the service is available 24 hours a day 365 days a year so if you encounter problems then you should be able to receive help quickly.

I did my transaction on a weekend and when I’d completed the details the response I received was that it would be completed within 3 hours. After the 3 hours had passed and the transfer hadn’t taken place I went back to the SwapGold site and noticed that the message had changed to say that it would be completed within 24 hours.

I’m not sure why there was a change, perhaps it was because I was doing this over weekend but you should just take note if you are doing an urgent transfer. I’m still happy with 24 hours though and in fact it was completed well within this time.

Overall my experience with SwapGold was very positive and I’m sure that it will be a service I use in the future.

Sportarbs enrol 1,000 new members in less than 3 weeks…

I guess I’m not the only one who thinks that Sport Arbitrage is a good source of investment. When I joined Sportarbs just under three weeks ago they had nearly 6,500 members. This number has now soared to approaching 8,000 which is a very respectable growth rate.

Based in Dubai Sportarbs offer a managed arbitrage investment where you can profit from the work they do betting on sports, although I should point out that their betting involves placing wagers such that whatever the outcome of the event they will return a profit. Done properly and with sufficient knowledge, expertise and funds this is an excellent way to make money.

Another great benefit is that they trade seven days a week so you can increase your returns without having to worry about breaking off at weekends and this can accelerate your income markedly.

The return you receive will depend on the level of investment you make. As this is a relatively new offering I’ve taken the decision to be relatively cautious with my investment and the return is based on the daily earnings as posted on the website daily. If I’d wanted to invest more then the return would have included not only the daily return but also a percentage bonus based on the amount invested.

For investments below $10,000 the plan runs for 42 days and you have the option for partial or full compounding. As of today the returns over the previous 42 days has been 88.1% (this excludes any applicable bonus).

For those wanting to invest $10,000 or more and willing to leave the funds tied up for 210 days the rate of return is even more attractive starting at 6% per day.

Currently payments can be made by Liberty Reserve, Perfect Money and Global Digital Pay. Other payment processors are also being lined up.

My experience so far is very positive and their performance is very respectable so if like me you think that Sports Arbitrage has a lot to offer then Sportarbs is well worth investigating.

Why it’s important to have more than one payment processor account…

Back in the days when online investing was in its infancy newcomers found it difficult to understand just how you transferred funds from your bank account to a new investment programme. Normal methods weren’t feasible and e-currencies were a new concept that many found confusing.

As time has gone by knowledge and experience have made things clearer and now the majority of people are comfortable in using what are now more commonly known as online payment processors. These organisations act as an intermediary financial payment system helping you to deposit and withdraw funds.

As payment processors are virtual organisations opportunities were created for the less honest to profit by embezzling funds from their members. Even if criminal activities were not necessarily involved regulatory problems meant that some processors just couldn’t survive.

So, online investors not only have to deal with programmes that fail but they also have to be wary of the payment processors they use. Whilst things have progressed in the last few years and there is more transparency you will often see reports regarding payment processors and the problems they have to deal with.

Currently one of the most popular processors, Solid Trust Pay, has been subjected to a series of problem reports and it is not clear whether this is just an operational problem or whether there are more serious issues to resolve.

This example emphasises the need to open accounts with a number of payment processors as this will provide some mitigation if problems arise. However, it should not be forgotten that some programmes will only allow you to withdraw funds to the processor that you made the deposit with. If this is the case then you still have a potential problem. In an effort to address this problem some programmes are offering the ability to transfer funds internally from one processor to another. Assuming this doesn’t contravene any regulations then this option, if available, may be worth considering when selecting an investment.

There is little chance that the need for payment processors will ever disappear so it is important that you set things up correctly in the first instance and open a number of accounts that will provide a good degree of flexibility.

I have accounts with AlertPay, StrictPay, Liberty Reserve and Global Digitial Pay. So far I’ve not had any real problems with any of these companies and they do represent payment processors that are accepted by virtually all online programmes.