Important: Your Money isnt safe at AP/Vegas Poker!

xwowsersx · #1 08-16-2007, 10:39 PM

Absolute/Vegas Poker: My $2250 Cash Out that Disappeared

My poker dream started on Absolute. I played a ton of limit 3/6 on Absolute Poker. After seeing a rakeback offer, I signed for AP's new Vegas Poker room. I loved the rakeback (in limit its pretty sweet) and enjoyed playing on the site very much. The software was fast and the games were juicy.

After a while of playing limit and some NL on Vegas, I requested a cash out in the amount of $2250 via Vegas Poker's seemingly convenient "add funds" which was supposed to allow me to withdraw the money directly into my bank account. After a couple of weeks with no money showing up in my account, I sent an email to customer service. The response, after days and days of no response, was essentially - 'What cash out? Please let us know which cash out you are talking about so we can help you.'

Ok, so there was no need to panic, right? I'll just check my email account that I had set up exclusively for poker related communications to see if I could find the cash out confirmation. Well, to my dismay, there was no email with any cash out confirmation. It's possible that this was the one time out of thousands of emails that I deleted it, but I'm fairly certain I never received any email . So, I write an email to Vegas Poker's CS telling them that I cannot find the confirmatory email, but I told them the rough amount and the date of the withdrawal. An entire WEEK later, I received an email repeating exactly what the first CS representative had told me - we don't have any record of a cash out. So, apparently Vegas Poker was able to withdraw the money from my player account, but wasn't able to properly direct these funds to their proper place. What to do? I reached out to an extremely reliable and prudent representative from rakebacknation who had a relationship with some of the people at Vegas Poker. He lobbied them on my behalf. Finally, one of Vegas's senior level manager responded to the gentleman from rakebacknation, apologizing for the communication delays (apparently the whole team had deserted its role of customer support in order to attend a meeting in Amsterdam) and reiterating that there was no record of the cash out. My go-between guy communicated this to me and I told him how frustrated I was getting because Vegas would never admit that we were beyond 'we don't have a record' and, instead, needed to begin investigating why there was no record and where this money had gone.

In the end, Vegas said they had records of table buy ins and cash outs that said I never had the money I was trying to cash out. I didn't know how to refute this so I felt I was forced to accept my fate - I was out 2250 hard earned dollars.

I had started my poker "career" on the Absolute Network and had never had anything to complain about. I am still completely shocked, not only at how quickly my impression of the AP network as being a place I could trust my money at has disappeared, but also how horrific the customer service was in my time of need. I was simply bounced back and forth from one low paid, incompetent representative to another and fed the same line 'we don't have a record'.

All of this - the lack of accountability, the lack of diligence, and, perhaps most importantly, the vulnerability of AP network's funds tracking system makes Absolute/Vegas Poker rooms a pretty far cry from any reliable and enjoyable place for any profitable player to trust his money at.

My conclusion - my money probably won't come back - (if AP/VP decided to re-examine its ways and return the money back to a very loyal player, perhaps I'd also re-examine my stance), but that doesn't mean I should give up. At the very least, I owe to the rest of the players out there to share my experience as a warning to anyone thinking about playing on AP. My thoughts - do not trust any serious amount of money there and do not expect anything in the way of customer service.