Official *Party Screwed Monster Seat Holders* Thread

[NewGuy]

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I have sent it to Bluff, CardPlayer, PokerPages, Mike Caro and a few more.

ToT

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Great to hear. I emailed 2 authors at Cardplayer as well.


For amusement purposes, a classic Party customer service give and take follows:

Date: 2006-10-19 19:53
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Response from PartyPoker.com [#]

Hello,

I would like to know how many Monster Weekly Qualifier seats Party paid $100 for.

I believe I am correct in saying that Party paid $1,800 for 1,000 Grand Final seats (since there was only the 1 Monthly Qualifier payed), and paid $350 for ~10,300 Monster Monthly Qualifiers).

Thank you,


[email protected] wrote:

Dear xxx,

In deciding how to reimburse players for unused Monster freerolls we looked at the perceived value of each different tournament; the weeklies, monthlies and final. Then using a formula, we calculated an equitable value for each unused freeroll type. Based on these calculations the total amount redistributed to the players is greater than the amount that the players contributed to the prize pool.

We paid out MORE money to the players than the amount contributed by the players.

We feel that we have explained our position several times very clearly, and are unable to offer you any more assurance that PartyPoker did not gain from the cancellation of this promotion.

We will be unable to reply to any further emails relating to this issue.

Rachel
PartyPoker Customer Care

[frommagio]

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We paid out MORE money to the players than the amount contributed by the players.

Rachel
PartyPoker Customer Care

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Thanks Rachel. I think most of us understand this very well, and we thank you for your standing up and giving more than anybody could have reasonably expected.

Although we're obviously not big fans of Party here on 2+2, this is not the fate that your company deserved. We would have all preferred a fair competitive environment where the best poker sites could compete for customers.

The things that matter to most of us are software quality, ethics/integrity, bonuses/rakeback, and customer support. Party's strongest suit was always the ethics and integrity. Thanks for proving it once again.

[NewGuy]

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we thank you for your standing up and giving more than anybody could have reasonably expected.


Party's strongest suit was always the ethics and integrity.


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Wow.

[FatalError]

isn't it possible that there were signifigantly more than 10,000 quarterfinal seats? some people could have as many as 60 or 70 of them if they played enough monster tables, i know people that had 20 or 30

[frommagio]

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we thank you for your standing up and giving more than anybody could have reasonably expected.


Party's strongest suit was always the ethics and integrity.


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Wow.

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People complain about their amazing incompetence, and justifiably so. But despite all the annoyances and screwups, you can search these boards in vain to fine even one example where they cheated a player.

[siralos]

You're in one right now...

Fact is the worth of the grand final ticket at 1800 is an logical impossiblity. If there were 8000 final tickets outstanding now, there could have been no more weekly and monthly qualifier tickets since the amount of "outstanding" final tickets were at the maximum. Do you think that party would have closed down any possible way to qualify if they wouldn't have shut down? Of course not. Since all the final tickets were paid out, all of them were in use now. This is part of the problem with partys calcualtion.

Even if they didn't screw the monthly and weekly holders (I'm not saying they didn't) they sure screwed the final ticket holders (and the cash game players)

[NewGuy]

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isn't it possible that there were signifigantly more than 10,000 quarterfinal seats? some people could have as many as 60 or 70 of them if they played enough monster tables, i know people that had 20 or 30

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I don't think it's very likely, but it is possible. For Party's claim that they paid out the full $14.4M of the Grand Final (on their website where you can convert seats into cash and also in their emails), there would have had to be 90,000 weekly seats outstanding.

$1,800 x 1,000 Grand Final seats = $1.8 M
$350 x (18,000 from 9 Weeky rounds - 7,700 used in 1st monthy) Grand Final seats = ~$3.6 M
$100 x Weekly seats woud have to be $9 M -> 90,000 seats

Party could have come forth publicly and openly stated that:
1) There were 40,000 Weekly seats outstanding
2) "We have made a business decision to withdraw 100% (or 80%) the $5M in seed money from the guaranteed prize pool, as well as cancelling the 23 guaranteed $100k weekly and 7 $1 Million monthly prize pools. While we regret this decision to pull out money from a guaranteed prize pool promotion, we feel this is warranted due to the UIGEA causing us to lose 80% of our market for the Monster promotion."

Were they to publicly come out with a similar statement, I for one would be disappointed, but at least reasonably assured that Party at least did not improperly keep money taken from and belonging to poker players.

Some of my biggest issues with Party handling of this payout at this point are:
1) they are being extremely disingenous in claiming that they paid out the full promised prize pool
2) they are stonewalling on the hard #s that would provide data to show they did not profit from / take extra money from the Monster rake / guaranteed prize pool
3) they are insulting our intelligence with the ridiculous assertion that it is "fair" to divide the $14.4M Final prize pool by 8,000 seats when only 1,000 actual and perhaps an EV of 1,000-1,500 additional Final seats have been won.
4) They did not automatically give players the cash, so I'm sure a good # of seats will never be converted, allowing Party to keep a good amount of cash from those players who failed to check the website expaining how to do the conversion.

This is often the case with Party- they managed to irritate customers and cause a good share of them to feel shorted, even while spending their marketing dollars on promotions that should and could have won them customer appreciation and loyalty.

A great example - their purely random VIP points for cash promos. Just like with the Monster seats, everyone in VIP was in effect getting "free money" or an overlay on their play. But by miscommunicating, handling inquiries poorly and treating people inequitably by randomly giving some customers much more value than others, they managed to alienate a good share of the VIPs getting "free money".

It's shocking how badly Party right up until the very end squandered their marketing budget / promotion $s, giving away money but still managing to disappoint a large portion of the very people receiving that money through incompetence, poor customer support, and truly horrendous communication.

Bottom line: they've provided ZERO evidence / no reasonable explanation as to why they paid out ~$6 - $7 Million of a heavily promoted and advertised $14.4 Million "Guaranteed" prize pool.

[frommagio]

I think what he's trying to say is, "Thanks for the big overlay, Party!" Unless, of course, he's just being "signifigantly" "disingenous."

Keeping this in perspective, we are seeing continued whining from a few folks who were given freebies, and who still aren't happy.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
isn't it possible that there were signifigantly more than 10,000 quarterfinal seats? some people could have as many as 60 or 70 of them if they played enough monster tables, i know people that had 20 or 30

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think it's very likely, but it is possible. For Party's claim that they paid out the full $14.4M of the Grand Final (on their website where you can convert seats into cash and also in their emails), there would have had to be 90,000 weekly seats outstanding.

$1,800 x 1,000 Grand Final seats = $1.8 M
$350 x (18,000 from 9 Weeky rounds - 7,700 used in 1st monthy) Grand Final seats = ~$3.6 M
$100 x Weekly seats woud have to be $9 M -> 90,000 seats

Party could have come forth publicly and openly stated that:
1) There were 40,000 Weekly seats outstanding
2) "We have made a business decision to withdraw 100% (or 80%) the $5M in seed money from the guaranteed prize pool, as well as cancelling the 23 guaranteed $100k weekly and 7 $1 Million monthly prize pools. While we regret this decision to pull out money from a guaranteed prize pool promotion, we feel this is warranted due to the UIGEA causing us to lose 80% of our market for the Monster promotion."

Were they to publicly come out with a similar statement, I for one would be disappointed, but at least reasonably assured that Party at least did not improperly keep money taken from and belonging to poker players.

Some of my biggest issues with Party handling of this payout at this point are:
1) they are being extremely disingenous in claiming that they paid out the full promised prize pool
2) they are stonewalling on the hard #s that would provide data to show they did not profit from / take extra money from the Monster rake / guaranteed prize pool
3) they are insulting our intelligence with the ridiculous assertion that it is "fair" to divide the $14.4M Final prize pool by 8,000 seats when only 1,000 actual and perhaps an EV of 1,000-1,500 additional Final seats have been won.
4) They did not automatically give players the cash, so I'm sure a good # of seats will never be converted, allowing Party to keep a good amount of cash from those players who failed to check the website expaining how to do the conversion.

This is often the case with Party- they managed to irritate customers and cause a good share of them to feel shorted, even while spending their marketing dollars on promotions that should and could have won them customer appreciation and loyalty.

A great example - their purely random VIP points for cash promos. Just like with the Monster seats, everyone in VIP was in effect getting "free money" or an overlay on their play. But by miscommunicating, handling inquiries poorly and treating people inequitably by randomly giving some customers much more value than others, they managed to alienate a good share of the VIPs getting "free money".

It's shocking how badly Party right up until the very end squandered their marketing budget / promotion $s, giving away money but still managing to disappoint a large portion of the very people receiving that money through incompetence, poor customer support, and truly horrendous communication.

Bottom line: they've provided ZERO evidence / no reasonable explanation as to why they paid out ~$6 - $7 Million of a heavily promoted and advertised $14.4 Million "Guaranteed" prize pool.

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[HavanaBanana]

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isn't it possible that there were signifigantly more than 10,000 quarterfinal seats? some people could have as many as 60 or 70 of them if they played enough monster tables, i know people that had 20 or 30

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23 weeklies left, so nobody should have been paid for more than 23, so I imagine incentive for 60-70 was minimal [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

ToT

[NewGuy]

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