What happened to Poker Mountain?

[sarahbellum]

Bonus Whores has blacklisted Poker Mountain. Their reason being Poker Mountain is not paying players their money.

[greatbrit]

Hello Sarah, you'll probably be surprised to learn that Bonus Whores are actually waiting on me before they update their website, when I do contact them they will be removing us from the blacklist. The short version is that their employee who had an account at Poker Mountain was paid in full two or three weeks ago, but I was not happy with the solution for other customers as it involves us sending checks from Costa Rica, with a horrendous 6 to 8 week hold on the money at some U.S. banks.

The longer version is that our current finance software interfaces through third party software (this will not be the case in the new software, this is one of the things I was refering to in a previous post when I said we are taking back control of our company), the third party has a problem they can't resolve, devastating to us on two counts, one is that it shows a zero balance to some of our customers who have money in their accounts (the balances are not really zero, we have complete records of the money in each account, and the money itself is not in any sort of jeapordy, the third party does not have access to any of the funds), the other, even worse, is that it means we currently are not able to handle withdrawals through Neteller and FirePay. We are expecting a solution within the next few days which will give us back those two options, but until then the only solution available to us is to issue checks, but with the insane wait time for them to clear we didn't consider that a practical solution. I informed Bonus Whores of this dilemma (this is all verifiable if you care to contact them) and said I would let them know as soon as we have a real solution, at which time they have promised to remove us from the blacklist.

There are only a handful of customers at this point who are still trying to withdraw, they were of course all contacted and informed of the problems, but we fully understand how deplorable the situation is, and when we relaunch we will be offering some generous options (such as freerolls) by way of an apology to those customers who have been put through all of this grief.

Best regards,
Paul

[greatbrit]

I am not involved in any of the rake issues (that's another department), but my personal opinion is that I don't think reduced or zero rake is currently that much of an issue for the poker masses, it seems to be much more discussed on the forums by the more serious players and pros and semi pros. I know that I'd personally much rather play at a site with casual players and few pros, so I think that maybe the way to go is to increase value in other areas (freerolls, player points, etc.) to encourage the masses. But I could be totally wrong and am glad to not have that issue to deal with [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

As for EEA, I am pretty sure that hasn't been discussed much yet, Poker Mountain is currently like most of the others, Kahnawake for the servers and offshore for the support, but I'd personally love to see it in Europe as it might mean more trips home for me to England, so you've got my vote [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Paul

Paul

[greatbrit]

right Fishy, I think that's exactly where our investors are coming from too, it costs a lot of money to have that much control, but we are, hopefully not misguidedly, looking long term, and having total control gives us a huge amount of flexibility that we wouldn't get as a skin, that's pretty important in an ever changing industry.

Paul

[greatbrit]

right, I think we did ourselves in without any help from anyone else, we simply had awful software (but ironically great support), we were never going to be a contender with that first launch.

Paul

[greatbrit]

[ QUOTE ]
Brit, I think you're doing your site a good deal of help in this thread.

I would suggest the following:

Lots of advertising with funny commercials. Leave the serious stuff to Stars.

A downloadable Mac client. It's a niche market that could use a little more competition as it's pretty much pokerroom skins and Full Tilt.

Lots of bonuses and rakeback at least in the beginning.

A rewards system that lets players buy stuff they might actually want. I like Full Tilt but the only things in their store that I might want are the books and I already have them all. I may end up with cases upon cases of travel mugs.

One thing I have suggested to a number of site folks is the ability to buy bonus dollars. If I can spend points on bonus dollars then I can readily convert the dollars to cash but I have to play at the site to do so. Both the site and the player get what they want out of that.

Oh, and it would be cool if there were an option that would allow me to see wads of cash on the table rather than chips.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks very much for the kind words [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

funny commercials: I agree 100% and hope that's where we go, I just look at Full Tilt and see the most incredible marketing job they did to come from nowhere to one of the poll positions, I think we could do a lot worse than to follow their lead.

Mac: I'm not sure of our schedule, probably not everything right from the start, but Mac (and other platforms) are definitely preplanned in our design. The one good thing about coming back into the game this late is that we get a much clearer view of where the poker industry is headed, so we are able to build in all the hooks we think we'll need as we move forward.

Bonuses and rakeback: I talked about this in another post, my personal opinion (which will not count for much as it's not my department) is that rakeback may not be the best way to bring in novice and amateur players, I think that more attracts the pros. But we will definitely be very competitive overall, we've got a lot of catching up to do!

merchandise store: I know exactly what you mean here, almost everyone in the company plays online a little or a lot, so between us we know what we like and don't like about the other sites, I share your opinion that most of the stuff I can get is nothing I want, hopefully we'll do a better job of that.

Buying bonus dollars: I love that idea, we already have that ability in our new design, but I don't know for sure if and how it will be used just yet, but I can tell you we are going to be extremely flexible in many aspects of the site.

Wads of cash: I like it! Players will have the ability to change many visual aspects of the game play, but I never thought of that specific one, I'll do my best to get it onto the wish list.

Thank you so much for all the time you put into coming up with these suggestions.

Best regards,
Paul

[greatbrit]

[ QUOTE ]
Paul/GreatBrit, I thank you for the frank manner in which you are addressing these concerns. Clear talk from Poker Rooms is not the most common of things. I wish you good luck with getting the site back up and I'll certainly give it a look when you relaunch.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you very much prrmike. That's something I always liked about Stars, when Lee Jones would always reply to posts in the forums. I think it helps a lot to know there are real people who are actually listening to their customers, we are going to do our best to follow in their footsteps of giving outstanding support.

Paul

[kdog]

[ QUOTE ]
Buying bonus dollars: I love that idea, we already have that ability in our new design, but I don't know for sure if and how it will be used just yet, but I can tell you we are going to be extremely flexible in many aspects of the site.



[/ QUOTE ]

This is the best idea around for using FPP's and to my knowledge the only site currently offering it is Pokerroom.

I used 10k in points there last week to buy a $150, 6x bonus. They got about 15 table hours of play I'd have spent elsewhere, I got the $150 and everybody's happy. More sites should do this.

[HSB]

[ QUOTE ]
Mac: I'm not sure of our schedule, probably not everything right from the start, but Mac (and other platforms) are definitely preplanned in our design. The one good thing about coming back into the game this late is that we get a much clearer view of where the poker industry is headed, so we are able to build in all the hooks we think we'll need as we move forward.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Bonuses and rakeback: I talked about this in another post, my personal opinion (which will not count for much as it's not my department) is that rakeback may not be the best way to bring in novice and amateur players, I think that more attracts the pros. But we will definitely be very competitive overall, we've got a lot of catching up to do!

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Buying bonus dollars: I love that idea, we already have that ability in our new design, but I don't know for sure if and how it will be used just yet, but I can tell you we are going to be extremely flexible in many aspects of the site.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think your posts in this thread have been enough to convince me to give you guys a shot when you get back. Give me a mac client, the ability to buy bonus dollars, and rakeback, and you'll get a very very long look.

[HSB]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Buying bonus dollars: I love that idea, we already have that ability in our new design, but I don't know for sure if and how it will be used just yet, but I can tell you we are going to be extremely flexible in many aspects of the site.



[/ QUOTE ]

This is the best idea around for using FPP's and to my knowledge the only site currently offering it is Pokerroom.

I used 10k in points there last week to buy a $150, 6x bonus. They got about 15 table hours of play I'd have spent elsewhere, I got the $150 and everybody's happy. More sites should do this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Is it just pokerroom proper or do the skins do this as well?