Not paying fees

Ottoneu Fantasy Baseball
23

I love everything about Ottoneu. The grassroots history, the platform that it has grown to become, and especially the community. Ottoneu is the only fantasy platform I use and I don’t see that changing. At the end of the day, however, Ottoneu is a business with paying customers…many of whom have a number of questions/concerns about how their payments and distributions will be handled in the future with a new and mostly unknown payment processing provider. My biggest concern is why it seems like so many deadlines have been missed/pushed. The only response I got here was: “I apologize for not completely seeing the future, I guess?”. I’m not going to pass judgement on that response because it’s impossible to pick up on the subtle cues and nuances of language over the internet…so interpret that response as you may. But months of “this will be available next week” is worrisome…at least for me and many others.

I understand that some folks, maybe even most folks, aren’t worried about payouts. Hell…I’m not getting any prize money so I don’t even have a dog in the fight, but brushing it off like Ottoneu is just a fun fantasy league that your childhood buddy runs from his laptop creates a very slippery slope. This is a business with a large number of paying customers.

Like I said earlier, we aren’t owed an explanation to the questions that have been asked but it doesn’t mean we can’t ask them. If we didn’t care about Ottoneu, we probably wouldn’t be asking these questions to begin with.

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24

Did you take Niv up on his offer to answer any questions directly? Seems to me that may be more productive than these forum posts.

25

We were told in Slack to direct questions regarding the payment processor to the Community Forums. When we get to the Community Forums, threads are locked and we are told to e-mail help@ottoneu.com or buy him a beer. The can keeps getting kicked and it seems like a public discussion isn’t wanted.

While I can’t fly to DC and buy him a beer…I did offer to send him beer money but he didn’t accept PayPal. :laughing:

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26

“I am more than happy to directly address any questions or concerns via email (help@ottoneu.com)” Seems pretty clear to me. Anyone who has voiced their concerns on this thread taken Niv up on this offer? If not, I am sorry but I really don’t understand what purpose this public complaining serves except to try to stir up trouble.

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27

Hey everyone,

First off, I again appreciate that everyone in this thread is passionate about playing Ottoneu. I deeply agree that the amount of time it has taken to deliver your money back to you for doing well in Ottoneu Baseball leagues is unacceptable. I take full responsibility for the delays. Multiple times this past summer and into the fall I did not fully understand the scope of work required, took certain things for granted, or made incorrect assumptions that has lead to the current impression that prize delivery is on some sort of indefinite, infinitely delayed timeline. That is on me and I will do better with setting and meeting expectations going forward, starting now.

I also want to apologize for times that I come off as curt or unwilling to discuss things. Looking back there are two reasons for this that I can think of: first off, I have been deeply frustrated with our payments situation since April of this year. I want there to be better answers, and when I have to give the same bad answers over and over again, I have let this frustration out on people who do not deserve it, and I apologize for that. Second, there are potential legal situations that require me to say as little as possible about the regulatory situatuion or specifically PayPal, so from time to time it will seem like I am being curt but it is because I just can’t say some of the stuff I’d like to say in writing.

On the regulatory situation, I’d like to reiterate that the legal framework, both federally and on a state by state basis, is the underlying reason why all of this has taken so long and why I have been wrong multiple times on timelines. The intersection of the Wire Act with the UIGEA is a gray one, and tracking the requirements of every state is onerous. Again, I cannot put too much into writing here, the less the better, but it has become extremely difficult out there for a season-long fantasy sports provider to offer leagues with prizes. It is extremely frustratiing to have to talk to vendors and lawyers about my customers as if they are potential money launderers or terrorist financiers or problematic gamblers, and not just sports fans that want to have a little more engagement in team-building.

Finally, I’d like to directly state that we have everyone’s prize money and will have absolutely no issues delivering your money as it is in our bank account, but we cannot use PayPal any more - their services are not available to us, and we have lawyers continuing to consider all possible recourse against PayPal and their treatment of Ottoneu this past spring. As such, I cannot put too much more in writing here.

We are ultimately a small community and I’ve asked a lot from this community this year in terms of patience and trust. I hope to pay it back very soon by finishing our implementation of prize delivery. Until that time, I will have to ask one more time for a little bit more trust and a little bit more patience. As such I will keep this thread open and continue to monitor it for anything I can speak to directly in this kind of forum.

Thanks to everyone for supporting Ottoneu Fantasy Sports!

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28

Wellllllll. I could compare to every bad investment that I have ever made. The difference? OttoNeu is not an investment. OttoNeu is a game. OttoNeu is a great game. The best Fantasy baseball game. I am totally accepting of what is sounding like financial challenges. I do not understand the PayPal issue. I share all of the naysayers concerns. I also share the overwhelming support to let this play out for better or worse. Good luck.

29

Though it looks like this issue is resolved, my recommendation would be to partner with leaguesafe – Ottoneu would get an admin fee and leaguesafe would have its regular fee. Then payouts are allocated by the commish and approved by a vote of the league. Easy.

Outside of that, thanks to Niv for starting and running such a great platform.

1 Like
30

I really want Ottonue to prosper! I love my leagues here. I don’t want to be negative Nancy, but Payala is a bummer for sure. I have to attach a bank account to another institution just to get $200 prize? I’ve chosen to leave it in my ottonue account until a better system is in place, no matter how long that takes. I just paid for another year on my baseball leagues and it didn’t give me the option to take it out of my prize money, which was my plan all along. And then there is how long it took me to renew my leagues each separately with a fresh sign in and security code text. Paypal = click click done. venmo = click click done. To be honest, it gives off a bad impression. I bring a lot of people to ottonue and I have no answer for them about this. I’m hoping you’d consider adding Venmo or paypal as an option. Google pay? credit card direct? Card kept on file?

31

Just a few comments here:

Yes, you need connect your bank account to get your money into your bank account. I’m working on alternatives for payouts, but connecting a bank account to get money into your bank account is pretty standard for PayPal, Venmo, etc.

Paydala doesn’t store your information. This is for privacy reasons - they don’t want to store this information. This is, for me, a good thing, though I understand typing in your credit card number over and over again can be annoying.

Venmo doesn’t accept fantasy sports providers. PayPal no longer will work with Ottoneu because they felt we didn’t do enough age verification, KYC verification, or AML verification on our end. Google Pay does not accept fantasy sports providers. “Credit card direct” would require a level of scale that Ottoneu is not close to meeting.

Anyway I mostly wanted to point out that this is a fine approach to your prizes - sometime in 2024 we should have alternatives to Paydala for using your Ottoneu prize money, including but not limited to directly renewing your teams from that money. My last month+ has been non-stop dealing with payment edge cases and responding to emails and forum posts like this one, so I haven’t had a chance to dig in to those alternatives yet, but I am sure I will get a chance soon.

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32

I also want to be explicitly clear:

If you are renewing your team, all you have to do is give a credit card (or US-issued debit card) to be charged. There is no KYC check, no bank login to connect your bank account, no verifying your address. I worked directly with Paydala to remove those requirements on paying for your team, and I’m working on alternatives in terms of getting prize money to you beyond just the existing Paydala option.

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33

I’m having all kinds of problem and can’t get Paydala to work. Just awful. They also want all kinds of personal data, which I don’t care for.

34

You can email help@ottoneu.com if you need help withdrawing. The information they need is information every US bank requires to transfer money over the internet in 2024. I wrote about it at length here:

You do not need to do any identity verification to pay your league fees, which is what this thread is about. You do need to verify identity in order to receive money, for the legal/compliance reasons stated in the post above, which are well beyond anything Ottoneu has any control over.

Please email help@ottoneu.com - I’ve helped dozens of people dealing with prize withdrawal issues and I’m sure we can get your prize money sorted soon.

35

This new pay thing seems really sketchy.

36

This is so deeply unproductive that I think it is border-line trolling.

I looked up that you are in one $20 non-prize baseball league. Could you explain why you care about how your credit card is entered on this site versus any other site? Or what about this is ‘sketchy’? And if you believe it to be sketchy, do you think Ottoneu is sketchy?

EDIT I also recommend you read this entire thread including my many responses, as well as multiple other threads on the subject dating back to last year.

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37

If you think I’m trolling, that’s on you. I’m 100% NOT Trolling. Looking up this Paydala, it doesn’t seem legit. Its concerning, imo. What I pay isn’t the issue. Its what could happen after I pay.

38

Can I ask why you’re concerned? I’ve paid for my leagues, they’re not storing my credit card. This is like 75x less sketchy than handling my card to a waiter at a restaurant or something. I just don’t understand what you looked up that feels sketchy

39

Their payment form is just a credit card processor. They use Dwolla, an extremely established company, for payment processing. I shared their partner audits in another thread showing that no one stores personal information in an improper way. Many people have renewed their teams, no one has reported any incidents, and I’m deeply attuned to them because this is my company and I have no interest in working with partners that would abuse my customers’ privacy in any way.

40

Anything involving my money, I’m concerned with. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s the same. I’ve never heard of this company before & when I’m looking them up, google adds russia search options.

I understand what you’re saying about your own company working. Just googling this company & looking into it creates some concerns on my end.

41

What do you mean Google adds Russia search options? I certainly don’t see that when I Google them. I just see all their profiles with Crunchbase, etc. That profile tells you they’re a small start up but they’ve been around for 3 years, have funding, and there’s no evidence of any issues or security leaks or anything. Which is more than I can say for PayPal, just as an example. I get being careful about where/how you pay, but I don’t see anything that would make you concerned, especially given they process through a known entity in Dwolla.

42

I apologize for accusing you of trolling.

They are based out of Arizona and their dev team is in India. I know this because they are in a chat room with me in our Slack and I talk to the CEO and lead developer daily.

I don’t have this experience, and you have to remember that Google differs greatly based on the user using it, due to how Google’s business works.

If you have any other questions you can always email help@ottoneu.com (which is just me, but not in a public forum). Thanks