Hello guys,
I know some of this has already been talked about in the past and might be common knowledge for some of you, but there are still lot of people trading for Skrill and Neteller here and I feel it's still something not everyone realises, and I think there should be a topic about it.
So as per title: be extremely cautious, if you want to use gambling related wallets: Skrill and Neteller to trade bitcoins. There are multiple reasons for that.
First, Skrill has an anti-bitcoin policy. This has been confirmed from sources outside and inside Skrill. If they will somehow find out that you are using your account to exchange bitcoins, most likely outcome will be closing your Skrill account permanently. This is most likely related to their
T&C (link), point 11.5 - prohibited transactions:
11.5. You may only accept payments for certain categories of business after approval from us in our sole discretion. Such business categories include but are not limited to:
money exchange or remittance businesses, including but not limited to bureaux de change, currency exchanges and purchase of travel money;(...)
It says you can do it after their approval, however, the common policy is still that everyone who is found to do it, has his account closed. There are multiple reports of that,
one of which is here. They will probably allow to withdraw you your remaining balance to bank account, but bad news if you need the account for other purposes, they might say goodbye to you forever.
I do not know what are Neteller's policy here. Please feel free to add anything you know and I'll update the original post.
Second. This isn't PayPal, but still transactions are easily reversible.Even if someone sends you first, there is nothing that will stop these transactions at Skrill or Neteller to be reversed anytime later. Moreover, your account will be locked and put into investigation that can take weeks or months.
I traded some of my BTC for Neteller at localbitcoins. The seller had very good rating and high volume, though he only had an account open for about a month, but I thought that should be enough to be spotted if he would be a scammer. I did 2 trades with him, both went very smooth. One thing that looked fishy was the money he sent didn't came from standard personal Neteller transfer, but from a merchant (some casino I believe?). After about 2-3 days these transactions have been cancelled and my Neteller account has been disabled. Calling Neteller doesn't help much - they ask you to write an email to their investigations team. I've done that - I have told them everything in details, sent localbitcoins screenshots. I recieved a "thank you" email, though after few weeks case is still under investigation and account is locked (with all other money that I had there).
The scammer had following accounts at localbitcoins:
johnso,
julianofavaron81,
oncata1021 and most likely more. I have written about this also at
localbitcoins forums. Please note that Localbitcoins isn't too helpful and only been disabled accounts oncata1021 and julianofavaron81 after I did my own investigation (they were very similar to johnso, who scammed me) and specifically asked them to check and ban them.
Therefore I encourage: Do not trade large amounts with people you don't trust on Skrill or Neteller. Escrow will not help. Even if you do a small exchange and you accept to lose the money, you are putting your account at risk. Both Skrill and Neteller state in their T&C that, by any reason, they can discontinue relationship with you if they choose to do so.
Stay safe. Any feedback is welcome.
