Resolution to Tilt technical problems costing me several k in equity

[Bond18]

So as some of you know on Sunday i made the final table of the Tilt 150 and during an extremely key hand tilts connection dropped out and folded my hand. I said i'd be speaking to them, here's what happened:

First i emailed them this:

I have never emailed you before in regards to anything concerning the
quality of your software . However, last night there was an instance
that I feel your software is to some degree responsible for.
While playing Tournament 25997611 I was chip leader at the final table
the connection to your website became repeatedly disconnected not only
for myself but for several other members of the tournament. Of special
and crucial importance my disconnect occurred during the second I
clicked "Call" during the following hand history, which I do not have
from my own records as it was never recorded:
Full Tilt Poker Game #3516953753: $55,000 Guarantee (25997611), Table 8
- 4000/8000 Ante 1000 - No Limit Hold'em - 1:39:57 ET - 2007/09/10
Seat 1: Weberweberweber (103,280)
Seat 3: muckthenuts (725,071)
Seat 4: bearw8 (61,084)
Seat 5: WHENTHUGSCRY (404,475)
Seat 7: Jay_Fiedler (129,612)
Seat 9: rjmgrace (148,478)
Weberweberweber antes 1,000
muckthenuts antes 1,000
bearw8 antes 1,000
WHENTHUGSCRY antes 1,000
Jay_Fiedler antes 1,000
rjmgrace antes 1,000
bearw8 posts the small blind of 4,000
WHENTHUGSCRY posts the big blind of 8,000
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Jay_Fiedler folds
rjmgrace folds
Weberweberweber folds
muckthenuts raises to 20,000
bearw8 folds
WHENTHUGSCRY calls 12,000
*** FLOP *** [6s 8d Td]
WHENTHUGSCRY bets 12,999
muckthenuts raises to 44,000
WHENTHUGSCRY calls 31,001
*** TURN *** [6s 8d Td] [Th]
WHENTHUGSCRY bets 49,999
muckthenuts raises to 150,000
WHENTHUGSCRY has been disconnected
WHENTHUGSCRY has reconnected
WHENTHUGSCRY has 15 seconds left to act
bearw8 has been disconnected
WHENTHUGSCRY raises to 339,475, and is all in
bearw8 has reconnected
muckthenuts has been disconnected
muckthenuts has 15 seconds left to act
muckthenuts has 90 seconds to reconnect
rjmgrace has been disconnected
muckthenuts is sitting out
muckthenuts has timed out
muckthenuts folds
Uncalled bet of 189,475 returned to WHENTHUGSCRY
WHENTHUGSCRY shows [Tc As] three of a kind, Tens
WHENTHUGSCRY wins the pot (438,000)
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 438,000 | Rake 0
Board: [6s 8d Td Th]
Seat 1: Weberweberweber folded before the Flop
Seat 3: muckthenuts (button) folded on the Turn
Seat 4: bearw8 (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 5: WHENTHUGSCRY (big blind) collected (438,000)
Seat 7: Jay_Fiedler folded before the Flop
Seat 9: rjmgrace folded before the Flop
In this hand I held AT offsuit, and would of course never fold on this
turn. My opponent also held AT, but this pot going to him instead of 219
k to us both results in a 438,000 chip swing, massive in terms of our
equity in the tournament.
After I reconnected I came back and rebuilt only to get heads up
with that same villain who was of course 438,000 more healthy than it
should have been.
Further evidence that this technical error was not simply on my side is
that my opponent also became disconnected while heads up but I was
polite enough to use my time bank until he reconnected. There were
also addtitional disconnects at the time of my disconnect for other
players at the table.
I feel it highly inappropriate that I suffer the financial brunt of
your technical difficulties and my opponents profit, and believe that
while I 'm not sure what is appropriate, he owes me some form of
reparations.
I have been a very long time customer to your site and play on it every
single day. I'm also a large affiliate, generating around $175k in MGR
for Full Tilt. I'm quite loyal to Full Tilt and love playing on and
promoting your site. I would hate to have my trust be decimated due
to a technical error that was clearly on Full Tilt's side.
Thank you for your time

Then today, Wednesday, Tilt responds with:

We sincerely apologize for the delay. We are currently receiving a large
number of emails and are responding to each one as quickly as possible.

We have reviewed your history and see you may have had some connectivity
issues.

Unfortunately, Since you placed in the money for this particular
tournament we will not be crediting you for the buy-in, nor will we ask
the winner to transfer you funds. When you sit at a table or tournament,
you accept the potential problems with playing in an online card room.
You may be disconnected through no fault of your own (or ours) and lose
whatever money you may be playing for. We cannot be responsible for
conditions in the Internet and possible problems with connectivity.

If you are constantly being disconnected, please let us know so that we
can assist you in fixing any technical difficulties.

Thanks for your understanding Rob, and if there's anything else we can
help you with, please feel free to ask. Best of luck at the tables!

Regards,

Danny
Full Tilt Poker Support

Most interesting is that they make no mention of the fact that the other players of the table had drop outs, including the guy i was heads up with. They would prefer to gloss over the issue with "you appear to have had some connectivity issues."

I didn't really go into this expecting anything back from Tilt financially, that was obviously a huge long shot. HOWEVER, what i would [censored] like is a little admission of some fault on their side, instead of this corporate cover our ass bull [censored] talk.

I don't think thats to much to ask, do you MTTc?


Cliffnotes:
Tilt connection [censored] me out of huge pot. I email them with "you guys have technical issues which cost me 1000's in equity, what are you going to do about it?"
Tilt responds with
"Connectivity problems, what me worry? LOL! Have a great day!"

I am not pleased.

[the alex]

I gave up on emailing them about my connection problems.

I used to be an MSNL player there because I could whore the most rakeback there. Of course, the constant disconnects would make me just tilt off winnings to make a massive 1bb/100 and all I was making was rakeback.

Solution: I started law school and switched to LOL donkaments.

[ASPoker8]

tilt support... one of the finest

[cobrakai111]

Did you try emailing/pm'ing FTPDoug directly? He's been way more helpful for me then standard Full Tilt support.

I've also found mentioning that you are a frequent poster on 2+2 and can reach out to 100s (or 1000s) of poker players never hurts.

[Bond18]

[ QUOTE ]
Did you try emailing/pm'ing FTPDoug directly? He's been way more helpful for me then standard Full Tilt support.

I've also found mentioning that you are a frequent poster on 2+2 and can reach out to 100s (or 1000s) of poker players never hurts.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good idea, he's always seemed like a smart and reasonable guy.

[cobrakai111]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Did you try emailing/pm'ing FTPDoug directly? He's been way more helpful for me then standard Full Tilt support.

I've also found mentioning that you are a frequent poster on 2+2 and can reach out to 100s (or 1000s) of poker players never hurts.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good idea, he's always seemed like a smart and reasonable guy.

[/ QUOTE ]

His email in case his pm is full or he isn't checking it, doug@fulltiltpoker.com (hope you don't mind it being posted Doug!)

[dcviperboy]

sign a petition?

[gettym]

i'll sign a petition to get bond more money

[NoahSD]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Did you try emailing/pm'ing FTPDoug directly? He's been way more helpful for me then standard Full Tilt support.

I've also found mentioning that you are a frequent poster on 2+2 and can reach out to 100s (or 1000s) of poker players never hurts.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good idea, he's always seemed like a smart and reasonable guy.

[/ QUOTE ]

PM Sean as well.

[Bond18]

Big thanks to FTPDoug for getting right on this and responding. Here's the PM he sent me:

Hi Bond,

I looked into your situation a bit, and I agree that the CSR's response was a little less than perfect. However, I have to disagree with you when you say that the problem was obviously on our end. There was definitely a small (in a global sense, obviously it affected a bunch of players) connection issue between some players and Full Tilt at that time, but these sorts of things occasionally happen. A hub or a router (or something, I'm not a network guy!) somewhere goes down (nowhere near FTP) and a bunch of people can't connect to a certain group of sites for a little while. That's what happened last week. Our servers were running just fine and the vast majority of players had no connection issues.

Having said all that, I totally agree you lost a bunch of equity in the tournament because of those connection issues, and while I can't just make up the difference (that sort of thing sets a bad precedent for something that wasn't either side's fault) I can give you a $500 bonus, which I hope you'll agree is better than nothing.

I just want to stress that I'm more than happy to take the blame for things when we actually screw up, but in this case I just can't, because it really wasn't us this time! On a personal note, I just want to mention that I read all of your trip reports from the WSOP and thought they were highly enjoyable (if more than a little brutal). I hope you get a chance to play as many events next year (if that's what you want!) and continue to write about it.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do. I'm sorry that tournament got tainted the way it did, that's extremely frustrating.

--
Doug