About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

Ladies and gentlemen, please put down your pitchforks and torches for a moment and hear me out.

Looking back at the response we have had since running the Christmas Tournament, we felt it was necessary to provide our players with a resolution and an explanation to the situation we have encountered.

On December 16th, PokerRoom.com held a tournament advertising a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000 and other prizes including PokerRoom.com merchandise. All promotional information given out to players stated the above information; players were able to view this in the promo section, through e-mails, and on the registration page.

Surely we would have mentioned it in our marketing if we had planned for the tourney to have a $19,000 added cash bonus? If we deliberately wanted to "lure" people in with that cash, as some posters have suggested, shouldn't we at least have mentioned that sum in our ads?

The fact is that on the day of the tournament, a software glitch caused the information in our game client to change to read that this tournament was a $19,000 guaranteed tournament, though all other promotional and tournament info pages still stated that the tournament’s first prize was a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000.

After the tournament, our staff discovered the error and attempted to correct it by removing the sum that wasn’t supposed to be there. At the time it must have seemed like the natural thing to do, just like they would have added the same sum if it instead had been missing from the prize pool.

We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since reconsidered. We have paid these players in full as of today January 3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this from happening in the future. We would like to sincerely apologize to our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.

Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little disappointed to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems that some people just want to read the things that support their already formed picture of "the big, bad corporation ripping off the little guy". But things aren't always that black and white in reality.

Over the almost 8 years that we have run PokerRoom.com we have made mistakes, a lot of mistakes even. But I can honestly say that we have never deliberately ripped off any of our customers.

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

Glad to see there are still problems at Pokerroom after ditching the U.S. players.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

It was your glitch, so it was your obligation to honour it.

If i went on your site having not seen the promotional material, i only see 19K gtd - the fact that you dont mention it in your promo material doesnt negate this.

In fact im pretty sure under ANY court of law you were obligated to honour the 19K guarantee.

For you to think it acceptable after the tournament is over to turn around and hold up your hands blaming a software glitch and take away the money that you clearly offered, THEN weeks later reverse your decision after there is huge uproar AND think people will just bend over and continue playing with you, i hope you will be shocked.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

Props to you for doing the right thing but the fact that you did this only AFTER a public outcry leads me to think that you weren't sorry about what you did, you were sorry about getting caught (so to speak)

I'm still not going back though

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
I'm still not going back though

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

This was the right thing to do, but the attitude in the post isn't going to win your lost players back.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
After the tournament, our staff discovered the error and attempted to correct it by removing the sum that wasn’t supposed to be there. At the time it must have seemed like the natural thing to do, just like they would have added the same sum if it instead had been missing from the prize pool.

We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since reconsidered. We have paid these players in full as of today January 3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this from happening in the future. We would like to sincerely apologize to our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why did it take three weeks to resolve this matter? Why did it take three weeks to post about it here? Is it because you felt that all of the negative publicity was costing you more than the few thousand dollars or because you appreciated your loyal player base? It seems to me the only reason you paid the players as advertised in the lobby was due ONLY to
[ QUOTE ]
so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate

[/ QUOTE ]

This was a nice Christmas overlay. However, other sites have larger overlays than this every week. Instead of ripping on the players and posters here you need to ensure your employees are double checking the lobbies and promotional material for accuracy. It is very nice that the payments were made right. It is a shame that it took so long and so much efforts from the player base and the media. I am sure you have lost many customers from this and deservedly so.

Thank you,

Jim Kuhn
Catfish4u
[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
Over the almost 8 years that we have run PokerRoom.com we have made mistakes, a lot of mistakes even.

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

[/ QUOTE ]

And it seems that you don't learn from them...

Oh btw, who got fired for costing the company 1000's of customers, millions in rake and the loss of any credibility you guys had left in the business?

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

Whose decision was it to take money directly from the players accounts without even informing them?

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

pokerroom is a joke and your post does nothing to change that.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
I'm still not going back though

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

Pretty much agree with Jim.
Glad the players are getting the money that THEY DESERVE, but the tone is pretty telling.


FWIW - I don't think many were specifically looking for a reason to jump on PR (although some clearly have other gripes there).

If this had happened on Prima or Crypto or even on Stars I think the reaction would have been pretty much the same.

The bandwagon of hate came from how absolutely horribly this situation was handled. And you guys are the ones that did that yourselves.


You raided players accounts AFTER THEY HAD ALREADY BEEN PAID, and took their money without saying anything.
And somehow you thought this was the appropriate action to take.
And continued to let that stand until the out-cry over this got to be too much.

You're honestly surprised that there was outrage over advertising one amount of money, paying that amount of money, and then taking it back?


I also am not feeling in the mood to go back and check the original-post, but weren't other players under the impression that this was a guaranteed tourney before it appeared in the lobby?

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

i hope you read this pokerroom reps and you quietly go [censored] yourself as you have been doing the same to players for a long time. your stupid post doesnt change anything. we should ban OP's account

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

Is it the same management for the complete network? cos if yes I should leave the sites with the same skin.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

They are a lot more independant than the other skins.

Fwiw, PokerRoom is a lot better in management decisions than the other skins have shown in the past because of their independence.

To put it in context, they respect the software provider so much they are the only skin in the network which has their own anti fraud team which works on top of the main one used across the skins (to protect their players better).

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little disappointed to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without first investigating the facts or background of the situation.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is pathetic. You guys screwed up and it took weeks for you to publicly acknowledge the issue. If people got the wrong impression, it's your own damn fault. Don't look for any sympathy from us.

And it would be obvious to even the most dim-witted of individuals that you are only "making good" on your mistake because of the public outcry and potential loss of business. Spare us your talk of "hurt feelings".

From the tone of your post, it's obvious that you hold your customers in contempt. You managed to completely undo any goodwill that may have been generated by you "doing the right thing". Awesome job, sir. You've lost my business, and that of quite a few others on this site. Keep up the good work!

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little disappointed to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without first investigating the facts or background of the situation.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is pathetic. You guys screwed up and it took weeks for you to publicly acknowledge the issue. If people got the wrong impression, it's your own damn fault. Don't look for any sympathy from us.

And it would be obvious to even the most dim-witted of individuals that you are only "making good" on your mistake because of the public outcry and potential loss of business. Spare us your talk of "hurt feelings".

From the tone of your post, it's obvious that you hold your customers in contempt. You managed to completely undo any goodwill that may have been generated by you "doing the right thing". Awesome job, sir. You've lost my business, and that of quite a few others on this site. Keep up the good work!

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

Hopey's tone is pretty strong here, but it's hard to disagree.


[ QUOTE ]
without first investigating the facts or background of the situation.

[/ QUOTE ]


If PR thought that not all of the facts were out they were more than welcome to participate in the discussion whenever they felt like it.
Geez, they didn't even need to use their official account. They could have sent some fake-account, shill guy here to 'speculate' on a couple aspects that had yet to be brought up.


I didn't feel like going to P5s, PR-forum and some Danish newspapers. Seemed like all the pertinent details were already brought from those places into this thread anyway.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

(I've just registered to post a response here as (I've just discovered) I don't have an account on PR to post there, and from this incident don't want to.)

At us for a minute give PR the benefit of doubt and assume the software glitch story is true. Even then, your (PR) own Tournament Rules states players are paid "in accordance with the prize list"!

It doesn't matter if it was a mistake. Your own terms state they should be paid as a 19K guaranteed plus extras.

What worse is of course as everyone have said, you DID paid them that, you THEN took it out of their account!

So a staff member screwed up, and thought it was natural to correct it by taking money out of the players account afterwards. Why has it taken until now to resolve? Remind me when this took place?

If it was honestly a mistake, you have only your own stupidity to blame. That's for both the initial mistake, and the subsequent handling of the situation. In that case, goodbye PokerRoom.com, as I rather trust my money with someone who know what they're doing. If it wasn't a mistake, well, goodbye PokerRoom.com as well.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hopey's tone is pretty strong here, but it's hard to disagree.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm just disgusted by the guy's attitude. He obviously takes us for granted. Had Pokerroom either:

1) Publicly addressed the situation earlier instead of taking 3 weeks to do so.

Or

2) Once they realized that their customers were getting upset, apologized profusely for the delay in publicly addressing the situation and promised to work harder next time to avoid such things from happening again,

Then I wouldn't have been so upset. But the post they made is just plain insulting. No matter what his "personal feelings" on the matter, he should have been more professional and at least pretended to be contrite.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

Please allow me to speak openly and from the heart here. I don't usually handle support or communication issues, but I felt that I had to speak up for PokerRoom.com now.

The way we have handled this issue up until today has been just plain bad, especially the lack of communication, no one is disputing that. (For what it's worth, we are going to greatly improve communication with our customers.)

But what bothers me a little is when people who weren't in the tourney in question, people who don't know the details behind the situation, people who may not even have visited our site, are very quick to voice an opinion about exactly what happened and what they think our motives were. One guy first says something like "They probably did it all on purpose to cheat us!". Then another guy joins in: "Yeah, that's right, they're crooks!" and a third guy says "Let's lynch 'em!".

We did a mistake and we made up for it (like we ought to). We messed up earlier and we'll do what we can to improve for the future. We're not asking for a medal or anything, just a fair shake.

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

You'll get a fair shake when you don't act like you did the players a favor when you *stole* funds from them, then took an unacceptable amount of time to return it to them.

Did you pay them the interest you made off of the money?

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]

On December 16th, PokerRoom.com held a tournament advertising a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000 and other prizes including PokerRoom.com merchandise. All promotional information given out to players stated the above information; players were able to view this in the promo section, through e-mails, and on the registration page.

Surely we would have mentioned it in our marketing if we had planned for the tourney to have a $19,000 added cash bonus? If we deliberately wanted to "lure" people in with that cash, as some posters have suggested, shouldn't we at least have mentioned that sum in our ads?

The fact is that on the day of the tournament, a software glitch caused the information in our game client to change to read that this tournament was a $19,000 guaranteed tournament, though all other promotional and tournament info pages still stated that the tournament’s first prize was a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000.

Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little disappointed to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems that some people just want to read the things that support their already formed picture of "the big, bad corporation ripping off the little guy". But things aren't always that black and white in reality.



[/ QUOTE ]

Your actions were pathetic, this post is pathetic. But I won't just jump on the bandwagon I will investigate the facts. It took me 2 mins to find numerous players confirm that you sent out a promotional email on the 15th December advertising the tournament as $19,000 guaranteed, plus the additional prizes.

So your apology/explanation is also bs.

You are a joke, your site is a joke. GG pokerRoom

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
apologized profusely for the delay in publicly addressing the situation and promised to work harder next time to avoid such things from happening again,


[/ QUOTE ]


Yup.
This is pretty much what FTP was doing at the end of that ordeal with the EricStone guy (or whatever his name was).
And, in that case, most people were pretty sure that the guy was full of it anyway and that FTP had probably taken the correct action (except for taking too long to do it and not listening to the guy).

treating your customers with some amount of respect on these forums as I believe FT, PS and WSEX reps ROUTINELY do does indeed win fans.


[ QUOTE ]
he should have been more professional and at least pretended to be contrite.

[/ QUOTE ]


I agree.

More along the lines of, "We understand that many of you have lost faith in us over our terrible mishandling of this incident.
You voluntarily put your money onto our site and you trust that when you see a tournament that says $19k it actually is going to pay out $19k.
You also trust that when you win the tourney and that money is paid into your account that it is there to stay and won't be yanked-out.
These are completely reasonable expectations of course. But we somehow messed up these very basic aspects of why one should put their trust in a room.

We have learned a lot from our mistakes here and from the feedback we have received about it.
We have admittedly taken a bad publicity hit here but we are determined to make things right. And perhaps our efforts will be good to earning your business and loyalty again in the future."


Anything like this of a "suck-up to the customers because we REALLY screwed-up" type attitude would have been far more appropriate imo.

Instead of the attitude of, "You guys all hate on us and you didn't even know what you were talking about."

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
It took me 2 mins to find numerous players confirm that you sent out a promotional email on the 15th December advertising the tournament as $19,000 guaranteed, plus the additional prizes.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would very much like to see that promotional e-mail you speak of (mentioning the $19,000). But somehow I doubt that it exists. This is exactly what I meant about rumours being spread, instead of facts. Should I be wrong about this, I'll gladly eat crow.

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
Ladies and gentlemen, please put down your pitchforks and torches for a moment and hear me out.

Looking back at the response we have had since running the Christmas Tournament, we felt it was necessary to provide our players with a resolution and an explanation to the situation we have encountered.

On December 16th, PokerRoom.com held a tournament advertising a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000 and other prizes including PokerRoom.com merchandise. All promotional information given out to players stated the above information; players were able to view this in the promo section, through e-mails, and on the registration page.

Surely we would have mentioned it in our marketing if we had planned for the tourney to have a $19,000 added cash bonus? If we deliberately wanted to "lure" people in with that cash, as some posters have suggested, shouldn't we at least have mentioned that sum in our ads?

The fact is that on the day of the tournament, a software glitch caused the information in our game client to change to read that this tournament was a $19,000 guaranteed tournament, though all other promotional and tournament info pages still stated that the tournament’s first prize was a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000.

After the tournament, our staff discovered the error and attempted to correct it by removing the sum that wasn’t supposed to be there. At the time it must have seemed like the natural thing to do, just like they would have added the same sum if it instead had been missing from the prize pool.

We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since reconsidered. We have paid these players in full as of today January 3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this from happening in the future. We would like to sincerely apologize to our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.

Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little disappointed to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems that some people just want to read the things that support their already formed picture of "the big, bad corporation ripping off the little guy". But things aren't always that black and white in reality.

Over the almost 8 years that we have run PokerRoom.com we have made mistakes, a lot of mistakes even. But I can honestly say that we have never deliberately ripped off any of our customers.

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

[/ QUOTE ]

The only words I can find are "too little ,too late"

The damage has been done and you handled it like a bunch of amateurs who don't understand the business they are in. Maybe you don't understand it because this business has perhaps left you behind. Today's players are much more sophisticated than they were a few years ago and won't put up with shoddy practices from a business that they fork over 10's of thousands of dollars a year to.
Just my 2 cent's.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

If the email exists, please post it in this thread.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
"We understand that many of you have lost faith in us over our terrible mishandling of this incident.
You voluntarily put your money onto our site and you trust that when you see a tournament that says $19k it actually is going to pay out $19k.
You also trust that when you win the tourney and that money is paid into your account that it is there to stay and won't be yanked-out.
These are completely reasonable expectations of course. But we somehow messed up these very basic aspects of why one should put their trust in a room.

We have learned a lot from our mistakes here and from the feedback we have received about it.
We have admittedly taken a bad publicity hit here but we are determined to make things right. And perhaps our efforts will be good to earning your business and loyalty again in the future."


[/ QUOTE ]

Had this been their response, I would have given them credit for acknowledging and attempting to learn from their mistakes.

They should consider hiring you as their PR man, Bob. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
Please allow me to speak openly and from the heart here. I don't usually handle support or communication issues, but I felt that I had to speak up for PokerRoom.com now.

The way we have handled this issue up until today has been just plain bad, especially the lack of communication, no one is disputing that. (For what it's worth, we are going to greatly improve communication with our customers.)

But what bothers me a little is when people who weren't in the tourney in question, people who don't know the details behind the situation, people who may not even have visited our site, are very quick to voice an opinion about exactly what happened and what they think our motives were. One guy first says something like "They probably did it all on purpose to cheat us!". Then another guy joins in: "Yeah, that's right, they're crooks!" and a third guy says "Let's lynch 'em!".

We did a mistake and we made up for it (like we ought to). We messed up earlier and we'll do what we can to improve for the future. We're not asking for a medal or anything, just a fair shake.

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

[/ QUOTE ]

As an unregulated industry it is important that the players share information about the companies. You are correct I have never played on PokerRoom.

I can't believe you are criticising the poker community for offering an opinion on this.

But please tell me which of these facts are incorrect:

1) The tournament lobby stated the tournament was $19k guaranteed.

2) The players in the tournament had a reasonable expectation this was correct. (i.e. it wasn't an obvious typo like $19,000,000)

3) At the end of the tournament you paid the players the amounts as advertised in the tournament lobby.

4) You then took this money out of their accounts without informing them.

5) You did not fully rectify this disgraceful behaviour for a number weeks - until after it was a major story on all poker forums, some poker websites had pulled your advertising and numerous players closed their accounts with you.

I for one am very pleased that the poker community has been very vocal on this subject. And I hope that anyone who is asked an opinion on pokerRoom gets this story relayed to them.

At least you don't want a medal!!!

A fair shake?? yep sure, on-line poker is a competitive industry and virtually unregulated. So with that in mind why should anyone choose to play on a site which now has a history of not paying its players the amounts advertised in their tournament lobby and going into a players account and taking funds without even informing the player, when the player has clearly done nothing wrong.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

I don't have anything to add, I was just looking to see if Brandi was posting in here after seeing the number of views....

Ray

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

I got the email in question.

The only mention of the tourney is:

[ QUOTE ]
Christmas is a time for giving, and we are giving away the best gifts this holiday season in our Big Christmas Tourneys. The festivities begin this weekend at PokerRoom.com:

Big Xmas Tourney 1
Sat Dec 16 at 1430 ET (1930 GMT)
Buy-in: $20+2
First Prize: HD Flat Screen TV worth $2000

Big Xmas Tourney 2
Sun Dec 17 at 1430 ET (1930 GMT)
Buy-in: $30+3
First Prize: Luxury trip to the Maldives Hilton Resort

Avoid the Christmas rush and register for the Big Christmas Tourneys as soon as you can because they'll fill up fast.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is of course irrelivent. It is their fault that someone screwed up when entering the details of the tourney when it went up in the lobby.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
If the email exists, please post it in this thread.

[/ QUOTE ]



Yes, we should see this e-mail.

Hopey - I did work some in media-relations. But I wasn't very good and it was only a side-duty in my job.
I'm not a very good writer, but I think their strategy in this situation coud definitely have been improved.


Just to clarify - PRRoom guy's 2nd response came while I was still typing the post that is a couple posts down from his.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It took me 2 mins to find numerous players confirm that you sent out a promotional email on the 15th December advertising the tournament as $19,000 guaranteed, plus the additional prizes.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would very much like to see that promotional e-mail you speak of (mentioning the $19,000). But somehow I doubt that it exists. This is exactly what I meant about rumours being spread, instead of facts. Should I be wrong about this, I'll gladly eat crow.

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

[/ QUOTE ]

Founder of Pokerroom

I recently claimed that PokerRoom sent a promotional email stating that the xmas tourney would have a $19k guaranteed prize pool. This in fact is INCORRECT and my statement was due to an error on my part. I apologise profusely for the error I made and hope that this post rectifies that error in a timely manner.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
I got the email in question.

The only mention of the tourney is:

[ QUOTE ]
Christmas is a time for giving, and we are giving away the best gifts this holiday season in our Big Christmas Tourneys. The festivities begin this weekend at PokerRoom.com:

Big Xmas Tourney 1
Sat Dec 16 at 1430 ET (1930 GMT)
Buy-in: $20+2
First Prize: HD Flat Screen TV worth $2000

Big Xmas Tourney 2
Sun Dec 17 at 1430 ET (1930 GMT)
Buy-in: $30+3
First Prize: Luxury trip to the Maldives Hilton Resort

Avoid the Christmas rush and register for the Big Christmas Tourneys as soon as you can because they'll fill up fast.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is of course irrelivent. It is their fault that someone screwed up when entering the details of the tourney when it went up in the lobby.

[/ QUOTE ]

i got exactly the same...

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
I don't usually handle support or communication issues

[/ QUOTE ]

You probably should have kept it that way. You're posts have only compounded the problem.


[ QUOTE ]
But what bothers me...

[/ QUOTE ]

In dealing with customers in any job/service/level it's probably good advice not to tell your customers what bothers you about them.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
I recently claimed that PokerRoom sent a promotional email stating that the xmas tourney would have a $19k guaranteed prize pool. This in fact is INCORRECT and my statement was due to an error on my part.

[/ QUOTE ]

Apology accepted. But do you see now how easy it is for negative rumours to spread? No one likes to be called a crook or a liar. We made a mistake in our tourney (and the way it was handled) but we didn't do it to cheat anyone.

As some of you have noticed, I'm speaking my mind here and I get a little personal. I don't work for support and I'm not within corporate communications either. I'm probably too involved in the company to have that cool distance that perhaps would be better for public statements. In the near future, we'll get someone like that to handle the public posting for us. The only reason I'm here is that I felt that the issue needed to be resolved and commented on right away.

I'd also like to think that, given a little time, we can improve the parts that need improving (customer communication etc).

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

I'm a US player so I'm completely irrelevant to you now, but let me say one thing: the reason I had accounts on 10 sites pre-ban (still do actually) but not PR was because, with rare exceptions, PR has always been shady and counted pennies.

Continuing involvement with rogue skins after it's been pointed out for months that they're rogue? Check.

Continuing and still ongoing involvement with Futurebet? Check.

Freezing high limit accounts with little communication back and forth? Check.

Highest rake in the industry to pay for the great CS? Check.

Right now, you're in here after 3 weeks talking about 19K. I will honestly say I never heard of the story before and this is the first chance I have to form an opinion. Okay, fine, a software glitch cost you guys some fraction of 19K...so you confiscate the money once it's been awarded. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you had no idea that taking out money from people's accounts on Christmas would be received negatively. But how on earth does a poker site, by default, act in such a cheapskate fashion? You know there's a site in direct competition with you that is likely to give away over a million in overlays this month alone, right? Congrats, getting back that 19K cost you that same million. (I'm not mentioning when Stars completely randomly and unexpectedly drops a grand per VIP to upgrade their hotel rooms in a tournament. I know that one'll never happen at PR. But jeez, the nickel and diming involved is just nuts.) Nobody else in this industry except UB pulls stunts like this, which is why UB is the only site whose numbers are not going anywhere post-ban.

But you know what? Forget the 19K, it's small potatoes. I just want to know why you're here over the 19K but not over Futurebet. Which one do you think is more important?

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you had no idea that taking out money from people's accounts on Christmas would be received negatively.

[/ QUOTE ]


I laughed.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

This whole thing pisses me off so much that I'm going to do everything I can for the US to reverse this gambling law just so I can sign up, deposit, withdraw, and email you to let you know that you lost a customer.

Seriously though, this part of PokerRoom.com's reply is really terrible:

But what bothers me a little is when people who weren't in the tourney in question, people who don't know the details behind the situation, people who may not even have visited our site, are very quick to voice an opinion about exactly what happened and what they think our motives were.

I don't need to be in the tourney, nor go to your site, nor need to know any details beyond the obvious to make my opinion here. You got players to sign up for a tournament thinking it was for $19,000 guaranteed and then you pulled it from them without warning. It's pretty cut and dried, regardless of whether it was done with any malice or unintentionally with a glitch. If it was just a glitch, then you should have honored it and considered it a $19,000 mistake that you can prevent from happening in the future with less carelessness.

Re: About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
 

[ QUOTE ]
Apology accepted. But do you see now how easy it is for negative rumours to spread? No one likes to be called a crook or a liar. We made a mistake in our tourney (and the way it was handled) but we didn't do it to cheat anyone.

As some of you have noticed, I'm speaking my mind here and I get a little personal. I don't work for support and I'm not within corporate communications either. I'm probably too involved in the company to have that cool distance that perhaps would be better for public statements. In the near future, we'll get someone like that to handle the public posting for us. The only reason I'm here is that I felt that the issue needed to be resolved and commented on right away.

I'd also like to think that, given a little time, we can improve the parts that need improving (customer communication etc).

Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com

[/ QUOTE ]

It is good to see that you are actively trying to resolve the situation via dialog. But what I fail to fathom is that it took well over two weeks before Pokerroom rectified the situation.

I honest believe that the time it took for you to act, plays a major part in the widespread and outrage we have felt (and still feel) towards your company.

The damage done by that passiveness will be more severe than you may even think at present.