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OrientXpress: a rogue casino operating with a Curacao license and multiple software providers. Management group has a history of illegal hacking.
OrientXpress casino showed up in the online gambling community in 2016, and it’s still up and running. They are licensed by Curacao and belong to the Equinox Dynamic N.V. management group. These are just a couple of things you can notice at first glance, but we’ll talk about this casino more thoroughly soon enough.
Some review websites don’t classify OrientXpress as a blacklisted casino. However, there are a lot of reasons to be cautious when it comes to playing on this gaming site.
First Impression
The casino website has a very eye-catching design. With a bit of a retro feel to it, the website is available in nine different languages and from home page, you can access a wide array of games, as well as their privacy policy and terms and conditions.
The terms and conditions section is divided into general and bonus T&C. However, the latter doesn’t disclose all the information about wagering requirements.
Business Practices
As we’ve mentioned before, this casino falls under the jurisdiction of Curacao. The Curacao eGaming Licensing Authority has a more permissive set of casino rules for its customers. Even though they do restrict the illegal conduct, this online gambling venue is still an open playing field for many manipulations, such as voiding winnings of the players, delaying payments and, in some cases, running a pirated version of casino games. This has led to the banning of OrientXpress operation in 33 countries all over the world, including the United States.
Another issue pops up concerning their owners, Equinox Dynamic N.V. Casinos. As a result of further research, you can find out that this is just one name in a long list of aliases for the now notorious AffPower Casino Group. This company (and its derivatives) has quite a few rogue casinos that continue to cheat players. Their business model revolves around scamming players by forcing upon them betting limitations and huge wagering requirements which they don’t state clearly.
What’s more, they hacked various blogs in order to place links to their casinos without the permission and knowledge of the blog owners. You can still stumble upon some illegally placed marketing content.
Further illustration of their fraudulent behavior is the fact that they neglect other jurisdictional bodies. For instance, if you want to generate traffic in the UK, you need to obtain a special license from the government of this country. Despite that, all AffPower casinos provided residents of the United Kingdom with an opportunity to make a deposit, which illustrates a direct violation of the law.
Additionally, a lot of their casinos were caught red-handed running a pirated gaming software. The biggest trouble with pirated version is that a player has no chance to find out whether he’s playing an official version of the game, or the casino has messed with the coding. A pirated game could mean that they’ve lowered the RTP, or that they’ve simply removed some game sections that you count on, like progressive jackpots.
Games and Software
OrientXpress offers an impressive assortment of 900 games from more than 15 gaming companies, such as NetEnt, NextGen, Playson and GameArt. They offer both classic and video slots, with three and five reels. If you venture your way into these games, you’ll encounter well-known titles like Pharaoh Fortune, A While on the Nile and Aztec Treasures. Aside from them, there are also countless slots which offer a different experience, both gameplay-wise and visually.
Apart from slots, there’s also a wide selection of video poker and table games. If you enter the video poker branch of the website, you’ll find games like Deuces Wild and Jacks or Better. Table games like Baccarat, Blackjack, Roulette and many their variations also offer an option to play live casino matches.
Added to that, there are also specialty and jackpot games. Keno, Bingo, Wheel of Fortune are all there to satisfy your further needs, together with jackpot game titles like Book of Tattoo and Cosa Nostra.
They have a very good spread of games, although you would be wise to avoid NetEnt games as this casino and their associates have a history of tampering with their software. There’s also a mobile version of the casino, however, its quality remains unsatisfactory. You can get access to only a handful of games this way, and the navigation system is laughable.
Bonus and Payment
The casino offers to its new members a 250% first deposit bonus, which goes up to €500. However, this is a sticky bonus with a wager requirement of 30 times the amount of bonus and deposit combined. For those who are unfamiliar with this term, sticky bonus means that once you ask for a withdrawal, the bonus funds will get removed from your balance. Basically, you can’t cash it out. Moreover, there’s a win limit of 20x deposit.
OrientXpress provides players with multiple payment methods. Withdrawal options include wire transfer, Neteller, Skrill, Bitcoin, and QIWI. On the other hand, there are only a few ways you could make a deposit. In addition to standard MasterCard and Visa credit cards, the casino also accepts transfers through EcoPayz, Visa Electron, Sofort, and several other services.
User Experience
When players face any trouble, they have the opportunity to contact the casino customer support via email, phone call or live chat, which is active 24/7. Many complaints revolve around the casino’s inability to send out payments on time.
They have also set limits on the withdrawals. For instance, you cannot ask for withdrawal less than €100. So they’ve pretty much locked you out of your own money, and your only hope is to get lucky rolls and exceed that number through playing games. Oh, and if they assume you’ve added more funds to your account just so you can cross that €100 line, they keep the ability to still deny you payment.
Furthermore, there’s a limit of being able to withdraw €5000 on a monthly basis. So, if you’re a high-rolling player, or you’ve just had a really lucky run, you’ll have to split your winnings above this number. So, in some cases, players have to wait for months and months to get their payments in full.
Having said that, their customer service seems to be actually helpful. They have worked on and resolved most online complaints in those instances where they deemed the player to be right. It’s worth mentioning, though, that online complaints also indicate the unresponsiveness of the CS service before they went public.
Pros and Cons
Although many players complained that communication with customer support was not always a two-way street, they’ve addressed the public complaints and worked on resolving them. Additionally, they have more than a solid game spread and the website runs smoothly.
On the other hand, they have set the minimum and maximum limits on withdrawals. This causes players to be unable to cash out their winnings unless their balance falls into the scale the casino has set in advance. Moreover, they use terms and conditions to further affect their ability to deny a player their payment.
As with other casinos belonging to the same management house, they are untrustworthy and have a list of fraudulent activities in the past.
Our Verdict
When you take the full scale of OrientXpress into consideration, it’s a shame that they’ve decided to go rogue. With an exciting selection of games and a willingness to resolve players’ complaints, it really leaves an impression that they could be a well-run casino if they corrected some their practices.
However, their management group is clearly not interested in changing their business values. The abuse of jurisdictional freedoms is coupled with the illegal placement of links to their casinos and a history of using pirated software. All of this is a guarantee you’ll get a one-way ticket straight to the Land of Blacklisted Casinos, a land of deceit, unpaid winnings, and disgruntled customers.
Casino Rating
Complaint resolution: 7/10
Cashout time: 3/10
Software: 6/10
Jurisdiction: 6/10
Overall rating: 5.5/10
