troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

I was bored and was browsing pocketfives.com and saw the following post
pokerstar fcked me

first of all, I am a royal pokerstar player who pays thousands in rake every month, and sometimes 10s of thousands. I choose to play at pokerstar over ftp mainly because I thought this kind of things do not happen at pokerstar. Even though this matter does not affect me at all, I find that the way they handled it was terrible.

cliff note of from OP's post:
- I played 3 sngs on stars for first time in a year
- They revoke my playing privileges for 5 minutes
- I miss important hands in a TURBO sit n go
- They won't do anything to reimburse me for their wrong

stars response:
Hello Ryan,

Thank you for your email.

When reviewing a refund request, we do not consider how many hands a
player has missed. It is much more important to analyse how many chips a
player loses in relation to the blinds at the time of disconnection.

You lost 30 chips in one event when the blinds were at 10/20. This still
left you with 73.5 big blinds and plenty of time to play out the
tournament as you would normally.

If we can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.


Regards,

StevenB
PokerStars Support Team

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

lol

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

i agree with stars here...OP at pocketfives wants full reembursement which is pretty ridiculous when he only lost 2 big blinds

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

as for fairness, OP should be refunded by a very small amount. As a good business, star should probably refund the whole amount the mistake and a bad experience to the player (pretty small amount anyway). Either way, the way star handled it seem unacceptable and unfair.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

"I am a royal pokerstar player"


Is this a new VIP level?

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

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"I am a royal pokerstar player"


Is this a new VIP level?

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lol.. just that I used to play both FTP and stars, now only on star, and about to hit 200k vpp this year, and likely 500k next year.

oh.. and like I said, this did not happened to me, just felt strange/surprised that pokerstar would handle it this way.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

Pokerstars should refund this person.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

No way, this happens to many people. It's not pokerstars fault. Jeez!

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

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No way, this happens to many people. It's not pokerstars fault. Jeez!

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this happens to many people? this is not a disconnection on OP's part. This is someone disabled OP's privilege to play (wrongfully) while OP's tournament is running. How can this not be Star's fault?

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

I agree that there should be some sort of compensation. They told him his playing privileges were REVOKED at the beginning of a 3 SNG set.

Think about it from a customer service point of view - the site made an error, it caused panic, and it caused some small though not trivial amount of blinds to be lost. Now the site says something like "yeah, we screwed up, sorry about that - you weren't harmed that badly though so tough [censored], we are not going to do anything to rectify the situation."

It isn't like the guy just d/c'ed - stars REVOKED his playing privileges.

I think stars support is slipping - I got a pop-up on SUnday when my millions table opened saying that my all-ins protection had been revoked. I wrote CS asking about why, and they replied that there is no d/c available in tourneys - which obviously does not answer the question. I wrote back again and asked - specifically this time - that if I were to play a limit omaha 8 cash game, would I have disconnection protection or not. The reply was rude, but did say that I in fact did retain my all-in disconnection privilege in cash games. I decided not to ask why the pop-up told me that my privilege had been revoked (the first time I have ever seen the pop-up by the way, and this was certainly not my first stars Sunday Million).

There is either some turn-over and learning curve problems in ground level customer support, or stars is slipping customer service wise. I hope it is the former. The more stories I see like the P5's post, I fear it is the latter.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

This sounds like something you should write to the KGC about. Oh, wait...

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

i dont think he deserves any reimbursement for 30 chips

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

Gambling is intended to be entertainment. People play poker because it's fun. PokerStars is in the entertainment business.

When a good restaurant does something awful that spoils my experience, I expect them to buy me dessert, comp my meal, or somehow make up for their mistake. If they didn't I might not go back.

Revoking someone's playing privileges during a tournament is traumatic. To say that the EV loss involved is insignificant is beside the point. It's like a restaurant spilling soup all over you and then saying "Why should I pay anything? Your clothes are machine washable permanent press!"

The least PokerStars should possibly consider doing is refunding the fee portion of the entries. They certainly don't deserve to be paid for hosting those SNGs. But really a $50 bonus seems more like it. You spill soup, you apologize. It's got nothing to do with how many orbits were missed. Compensating any major loss of EV should be a separate issue.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

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and it caused some small though not trivial amount of blinds to be lost.

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What is your definition of trivial? Because losing 30 chips in the 10/20 level of a Stars S&G is pretty trivial.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

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and it caused some small though not trivial amount of blinds to be lost.

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What is your definition of trivial? Because losing 30 chips in the 10/20 level of a Stars S&G is pretty trivial.

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the amount really shouldn't be a factor here. what if the first hand blind vs blind, and hand checked down, I should have won with the best hand, but the pot is wrongfully awarded to the other player due to software bug in stars server. only 20 chips, so just treat it like nothing happened? what if it happened twice in a row? when should it matter?

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

This thread is just a level... right?

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

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and it caused some small though not trivial amount of blinds to be lost.

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What is your definition of trivial? Because losing 30 chips in the 10/20 level of a Stars S&G is pretty trivial.

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the amount really shouldn't be a factor here. what if the first hand blind vs blind, and hand checked down, I should have won with the best hand, but the pot is wrongfully awarded to the other player due to software bug in stars server. only 20 chips, so just treat it like nothing happened? what if it happened twice in a row? when should it matter?

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I didn't the amount should or should not be factor. I'm just saying that 30 chips is pretty damn trivial.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

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and it caused some small though not trivial amount of blinds to be lost.

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What is your definition of trivial? Because losing 30 chips in the 10/20 level of a Stars S&G is pretty trivial.

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30 chips = 2% of a total starting stack. I don't consider that trivial at all. You apparently do. I suppose we could propose the hypothetical HU match, assuming equally skilled opponents, and figure out how much of a chip disadvantage you would be willing to accept without taking odds. So if you are willing to play the rest of your SNGs spotting your opponent a 1530:1470 lead every single time, then I guess it really is trivial to you. It is not trivial to me. Small, yes. Trivial, no.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

lololol

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

Maybe since you are royal pokerstar member you can have the King round up a crusade to go punish these no good stealing villians. While they are at it you can learn to speak English why crushing some people in $100 play money games as you were before stars cut your power.

By the way, where the hell do you get cliffs notes for Pokerstars? I'd love to purchase some because I'm sure there's a section in there on disabling the doomswitch, which appears to have happened in your case.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

I never heard about Stars suspending play privileges in the middle of the tourney. Did this guy post any proof that Stars did this and by mistake?

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

I agree with stellar that something like a $5 refund of tourney dollars if it was a 50+5 or whatever the fee was would be the right thing to do. Or maybe a small $10 bonus or something like that.

Good customer support is not about deciding what is right, its about going above and beyond expectation.

mb,

Im too tired and lazy to find it, but ive heard of it happening before during an MTT - its really rare though for obvious reasons - usually the CS person looks at what youre doing before suspending play priviliges.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

Why would they suspend his playing privileges at all?

I read more than I post but I do read a lot of posts that do not supply the entire story.

Did they just randomly put the doomswitch on him out of 20k+ people?

If it is a total fault of PS I think they should reimburse his entry fees.
Who knows what cards & results he could of had in that 5 minutes...regardless of blind levels.

.02 (about what my post is worth)

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

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Maybe since you are royal pokerstar member you can have the King round up a crusade to go punish these no good stealing villians. While they are at it you can learn to speak English why crushing some people in $100 play money games as you were before stars cut your power.

By the way, where the hell do you get cliffs notes for Pokerstars? I'd love to purchase some because I'm sure there's a section in there on disabling the doomswitch, which appears to have happened in your case.

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lol.. so I was thinking about royal flush when I typed it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img], but maybe you should read the entire thing before you say something dumb, which part of the first sentence that you didn't understand?
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I was bored and was browsing pocketfives.com and saw the following post

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I don't play SNG anymore and personally I have never had any problem with Stars and I do think they are clearly the #1 in customer service among all the sites that I have tried. Nevertheless, what happened here was wrong unless the OP lied, but that seemed very unlikely with the letter and all quoted.. read the posts on P5 if you want more detail.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

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Did they just randomly put the doomswitch on him out of 20k+ people?

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I'm guessing they zapped the wrong person by accident and then realized their mistake.

Re: troublesome pokerstar customer service
 

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Nevertheless, what happened here was wrong unless the OP lied, but that seemed very unlikely with the letter and all quoted..

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It's more probable that the OP lied. Nowhere the letter talks about Stars removing his playing privileges by mistake or otherwise.