alert The fund can't be withdrawal from Epik.com via Masterbucks wallet

[enamebroker]

It happened on 23rd Aug 2022 and this matter lasted almost one month without any process. Masterbucks.com declined my fund withdrawal and disabled the button of fund withdrawal. And I contacted Epik.com and got no further action even if Rob Monster got involved in it for two weeks. All the time I was told in email by management review.

What is wrong with Epik.com? Do you think it is normal to disable fund withdrawal? How can I get back my fund from Epik.com? Thanks for your suggestion.

 

[karmaco]

These are some extremely high transfer fees.

Who pays a fee for ACH?

2.5% for wire + a set fee. That is ridiculous.

Are there withdrawal fees?

Yes. Please see the following fee schedule listed below. You can also find this information located in our Terms of Service.

• ACH – 0.75%
• Wire Transfer - $45usd + 2.5%
• Cryptocurrency - 2.5%
• Wise - 2.5%
• PayPal - 3.9%

If these fees did not exist before, I would demand my money is transferred without them now.

Unless Epik can produce a previous TOS that you expressly agreed to, they arbitrarily changed the terms.

Brad

I guess the 9% on the front end isn’t enough for them.

 

[DomainsGENERAL.com]

Last comment ,
I think we should give Brian a chance ,I dont think he has ever dealt with a company like Epik .

Is your screenshot recent?
Because I get "Epik's Affiliate Program is being redeveloped. Please check back soon." since a while when going into the affiliate program section. "Maintenance" there too. Or is it just for some users?

 

[Amansaifi812]

Is your screenshot recent?
Because I get "Epik's Affiliate Program is being redeveloped. Please check back soon." since a while when going into the affiliate program section. "Maintenance" there too. Or is it just for some users?

What is Epik affiliate program?

 

[enamebroker]

I will never use Epik again after I get back my money!!!

 

[karmaco]

I just contacted customer support and they said the fee existed in September.

September when nobody was allowed to withdraw… this is so sleazy. They must really be hard up for money. Nobody was sent notification of said changes. Its unethical to hold money for 6 weeks and change the terms after the deals.

 

[yardgs]

I read reviews about Wise, and people write that they have money blocked there, so I don’t trust Wise.

They’re definitely more reputable than Epik. I’ve been using it for about 5 years now, since when I lived in Asia and now in the US.

lol you are not going to reason with this guy. He really thinks there is a chance that epik copied and pasted paypals agreement because of a paypal requirement

1. You are in fintech compliance and you didn't know that for almost 10 years Braintree is owned by PayPal? Just like with Venmo (owned by paypal) you will see PayPal in their agreement https://venmo.com/legal/us-user-agreement/

2. The lawinsider link is a sample only, to see how it is really used, google the words "Limitations are implemented to help protect" and you will see that normal companies will put their own name in place on paypal.

3. If PayPal's legal department comes across the Masterbucks page, they will probably shut down their account. If they think the bad rep Masterbucks now has is causing damage to PayPal, they might sue. They might claim that people could be misled to think Masterbucks and Paypal are related because on the page it says " we may take action to protect PayPal, our users, a third party" https://masterbucks.com/restricted This looks like MB is paypal and there are third parties.

4. People risk losing their paypal account and destroying their business if they follow your advice. Please edit your post or ask for deletion because NP is high on search engines and someone might blindly think you know what you are talking about. You might even get sued given you claimed you have credentials in the world of compliance.

5. I am asking the users on here to use a little more common sense. A few hundred thousand sites including Dan, GoDaddy etc use paypal to make payouts. None of them have anything like this in their agreement. What happened here is Epic probably told developers they are the next paypal, and the guys went and copied and pasted from paypal. In their privacy police they are linking to the latimes, is that also something in compliance they need to do because on an api?

6. Just like companies get in trouble for using stolen images and they blame it on a designer, stealing text, agreements etc get companies in trouble too.

Man, I don’t know what to tell you. I said I did a simple Google search to find others that had the same addendum. Sure Braintree is now Paypal-owned, but what about the others? Is the woven fabric store also Paypal-owned?

I didn’t search too hard but if on first glance, there are others out there, it doesn’t make Epik a unique case to have the TOS addendum. From what I can guess, there’s been a precedent of illegal wrongdoing, which can cause Paypal to indemnify themselves and protect their users, if they want to. (e.g,, if someone transfers illegal money out of a service like Epik and into Paypal, Paypal will be accountable to the authorities too)

To be clear: neither of us know what Paypal’s legal team orders other companies to do. We are both speculating so there’s no point in even arguing about it.

You seem to think I’m white-knighting for Epik but I’m not. I can be both repulsed by the system and also be a logical person. That’s called cognitive dissonance.

 

[DomainsGENERAL.com]

If they want to earn more, then they needed to raise the escrow fees, and not set fees for the withdrawal of money.
Now it is essentially an escape from Epik tax.

I would guess there is probably some thinking behind this: Try to attract business transactions where people are incentivized to then leave the funds at E to spend them again, and try to prevent them from withdrawing with these withdrawal fees.

Good for "liquidity" at E. Or a bit "ponzi"-like if you take into consideration the "forever" registrations and such.

 

[DomainsGENERAL.com]

What is Epik affiliate program?

Like all affiliate programs: Send customers who buy some products from the company and get a small commission for it. It was only for NEW customers in the case of E. Or you want the precise terms? (it is also in "maintenance" right now, in any case)

 

[jberryhill]

I said I did a simple Google search to find others that had the same addendum. Sure Braintree is now Paypal-owned, but what about the others? Is the woven fabric store also Paypal-owned?

If you were a "logical person", you would realize that the several obscure sites one accumulates in that search ALSO copied the Paypal terms.

Confronted with the existence of the same text on a handful of obscure sites, one can choose two hypotheses:

(a) That Paypal has some contractual requirement for Paypal vendors to post this text which appears virtually nowhere else that one can use Paypal, or

(b) That other lazy people copied and pasted the Paypal terms.

 

[AEProgram]

They’re definitely more reputable than Epik. I’ve been using it for about 5 years now, since when I lived in Asia and now in the US.



Man, I don’t know what to tell you. I said I did a simple Google search to find others that had the same addendum. Sure Braintree is now Paypal-owned, but what about the others? Is the woven fabric store also Paypal-owned?

I didn’t search too hard but if on first glance, there are others out there, it doesn’t make Epik a unique case to have the TOS addendum. From what I can guess, there’s been a precedent of illegal wrongdoing, which can cause Paypal to indemnify themselves and protect their users, if they want to. (e.g,, if someone transfers illegal money out of a service like Epik and into Paypal, Paypal will be accountable to the authorities too)

To be clear: neither of us know what Paypal’s legal team orders other companies to do. We are both speculating so there’s no point in even arguing about it.

You seem to think I’m white-knighting for Epik but I’m not. I can be both repulsed by the system and also be a logical person. That’s called cognitive dissonance.

That site doesn't link to it, that page is part of the template that comes with a zillion sites. It's just filler. In fact, that page has a payday loan spam injection on it https://or-bey.com/en/paypal-user-agreement-restricted-activities-and-8/ if you took a second to look you would see that site doesn't even have any ecommerce on it, no shopping, no payments etc, like I said, it's a filler page that comes with templates

You are wrong and I doubt even after epik updates their page or gets shut down by paypal you will admit it.

Some more pages on that fabric site you think proves your point

A page about horoscope

https://or-bey.com/en/category/league-city-escort/

A page about beaches in italy and brides etc the same format as that other filler page with the paypal agreement

https://or-bey.com/en/category-archives-mail-purchase-brides-prices/

 

[biggie]

5. I am asking the users on here to use a little more common sense.

Hi

if some CS had been applied, this whole episode might have never happened.

there has to be someone on the inside of every business, who has the guts to speak-up.
individuals who have the courage to tell the ceo/boss/owner what he/she needs to know...
rather than what they want to hear.

who wants a crew of bobbleheads steering the ship?

imo...

 

[carob]

This is how it used to be on January 27th 2022, if anyone missed it with the screenshot in my previous comment above which I added/edited later, I found this via archive.org...

• Wire Transfer/SEPA – We process Wire Transfers via Transferwise, and they charge a fee that typically does not exceed $50...
• SEPA – We process SEPA transfers via Transferwise, and they charge a fee that typically does not exceed $50.

Thanks for posting that. As for SEPA transfer, it is normally free - at most it would be the price of a local bank transfer.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/integration/retail/sepa/html/index.en.html

Thanks to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), customers can now make cashless euro payments – via credit transfer and direct debit – to anywhere in the European Union, as well as a number of non-EU countries, in a fast, safe and efficient way, just like national payments.

Transferwise became Wise.com and allows account holders to have accounts in multiple currencies, and the accounts are in the respective countries, so if you set up a USD account is is a US bank account, and a EUR one is EU based.

When Dan.com use SEPA there is no charge for the transfer.

 

[Amansaifi812]

Did anyone get their money from Masterbucks?

 

[yardgs]

If you were a "logical person", you would realize that the several obscure sites one accumulates in that search ALSO copied the Paypal terms.

Confronted with the existence of the same text on a handful of obscure sites, one can choose two hypotheses:

(a) That Paypal has some contractual requirement for Paypal vendors to post this text which appears virtually nowhere else that one can use Paypal, or

(b) That other lazy people copied and pasted the Paypal terms.

I never discounted Point B. And yes, that is very possible.

I was offering another possible reason why they have it on there. Not sure why you guys are going for my head for having an opinion

 

[yardgs]

Did anyone get their money from Masterbucks?

Nope. My Seller hasn’t received my funds.

He was told that instead of Euros that is his current balance, the money will now come as USD, which is not great because now he’s likely getting hit with forex fees too.

Also I got a hit too because I sent USD and they converted that into Euros.

Edit: I just dit the math. The currency conversion issue will be $400+ lost in the abyss that I’m assuming they’ll pocket. I’ll be chasing this too

 

[Domain boy]

I never agreed to the new TOS

I don't feel comfortable doing the new KYC, especially following the recent data breach.

I remember verifying the old KYC and that would've been enough

Thus, I also never gave my consent/approval to the new and higher fee structure.

My money was in epik well in advance of the so-called 'maintenance'

I therefore expect the old kyc (for which my account is verified) and the previous TOS to be applied on the funds in my account.

If this doesn't happen to be the case, I will proceed by transferring all my domains to another registrar and write a well-detailed review on trustpilot of what happened to me and my situation as a whole... i'm sure many others have had the same issues. This i think could give a bright and clear picture of how epik is doing currently and be helpful to both people already at epik and people who want to give it a shot.

Very disappointing because I genuinely thought epik was a very good registrar, or at least with comfortable escrow, marketplace, and competitive transfer/renewal prices before their maintenance

I have informed epik of my inability to comply with the new TOS. They have escalated the matter.

Hopefully we can solve this amicably (given the amount in my account wasn't even that high) and I am succesfully able to withdraw the funds.

Best,
Domain boy

 

[70ym]

Did anyone get their money from Masterbucks?

no, the veriff do not support my ID card , and the epik support do not give me a solution for 2 days.

 

[Lox]

Veriff Status page <<

 

[bmugford]

I never discounted Point B. And yes, that is very possible.

I was offering another possible reason why they have it on there. Not sure why you guys are going for my head for having an opinion

Well, that question has now been answered as they removed the references to "Paypal" on their website.
https://masterbucks.com/restricted has been updated.

However, the ridiculous clause remains that everyone trashed Paypal over.
The $2,500 fee in damages, AKA fine or penalty for providing misinformation.

Also, on that page the term "sole discretion" appears 6 times. 6!

It seems like a very one-sided TOS, bordering on a contract of adhesion.

This is especially true for people who have an existing Masterbucks balance and did not agree to these terms.

Their money was simply frozen, then Epik tried to impose their own TOS with new fees and KYC requirements attached. No one was able to opt-out of this as their funds were frozen.

Brad

 

[AEProgram]

Well, that question has now been answered as they removed the references to "Paypal" on their website.
https://masterbucks.com/restricted has been updated.

@yardgs

 

[Mena]

All this stress is just too much, just for a simple withdrawal. I have been battling verification for 2 days, I didn't go through all this with DAN or Afternic.

 

[Amansaifi812]

All this stress is just too much, just for a simple withdrawal. I have been battling verification for 2 days, I didn't go through all this with DAN or Afternic.

Kyc verification?

 

[Mena]

Kyc verification?

Yes, ID not accepted.

 

[LoveCatchyDomains]

All this stress is just too much, just for a simple withdrawal. I have been battling verification for 2 days, I didn't go through all this with DAN or Afternic.

If the Epik Saga was due to regulatory demands including KYC, Afternic, Dan, and other marketplaces may soon follow.

 

[tonyk2000]

Just checked this "veriff" thing. One cannot simply send them watermarked images. They'll grab full biometric profile (face, eyes) as well as the ID card using the app. Their app asks a lot:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=com.veriff.demo

Most notably, as per veriff website:

Clients may have access to your Personal Data. We may share your Personal Data including identity verification data with the Client through which you used our identity verification service

"Client" above is Epik/Masterbucks.

Those members who were comfortable with providing the PII + biometric data to veriff and masterbucks may share their experience on trustpilot (2.7 rating currently):

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/veriff.com