[Pyrosis]

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Here's an example of something CSRs (this was PartyPoker's notoriously bad customer service dept. circa 2004) are not trained to handle:

My friend was in a large tournament, I believe a Saturday 200K guaranteed, somewhere near the bubble, on a somewhat short stack. Due to some programming glitch, he received the big blind on two consecutive hands (as he didn't get a table change this was contrary to the forward-moving big blind rules posted on their site... one or more players around him had changed tables causing the glitch). He emailed support wanting some sort of refund or compensation, and support asked if the issue hurt him in the tournament. He said of course, having a forced bet that he isn't supposed to is obviously bad. The CSR replied that since he made the money and profited in the tournament while the problem happened before he was guaranteed any money, the extra big blind must have helped him. Over a series of emails the CSR refused to admit either that the blind hurt him, and refused to admit that players weren't supposed to be double big blinded in tournaments.

Over the years this sort of incident was par for the course for Party. Some (most?) of Party's CSRs barely understood poker. No real question here, just explaining the sort of issue I think another poster was discussing.

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Holdem2000,

Unfortunately the response and situation you face here is not uncommon and apart from Partypoker there are quite a number of other sites that have under trained and undeveloped csrs who lack a thorough understanding for the game of poker.

Provided the site has some degree of training, there are two general possibilities as to why this is happening with their service. CSRs who do have a strong poker background are moved into other areas or promoted removing them from the front lines. If they are promoted then usually they provide the training themselves, but this isn't always the case.

Secondly, turnover rates might be high and that means there is a constant influx of replacement CSRs who arrive and have not had the time yet to understand this game on a level that a more experienced CSR.

There is also the question as to how much focus and emphasis management puts into customer service as part of what I call the core. We all see that Pokerstars has the best support in the industry and how it correlates to their success as being the best poker site in the world. Then there are sites like Partypoker and FullTilt that have placed more emphasis on marketing and have mediocre customer service at best. Such sites will always be playing the chasing game to be number one. Marketing gets the players, but without providing the right services that players want it won't keep them.