About the PokerRoom X-mas tourney
sup...@pokerroom.com
moment and hear me out.
Looking back at the response we have had since running the Christmas
Tournament, we felt it was necessary to provide our players with a
resolution and an explanation to the situation we have encountered.
On December 16th, PokerRoom.com held a tournament advertising a flat
screen HDTV valued at $2,000 and other prizes including PokerRoom.com
merchandise. All promotional information given out to players stated
the above information; players were able to view this in the promo
section, through e-mails, and on the registration page.
Surely we would have mentioned it in our marketing if we had _planned_
for the tourney to have a $19,000 added cash bonus? If we deliberately
wanted to "lure" people in with that cash, as some posters have
suggested, shouldn't we at least have mentioned that sum in our ads?
The fact is that on the day of the tournament, a software glitch caused
the information in our game client to change to read that this
tournament was a $19,000 guaranteed tournament, though all other
promotional and tournament info pages still stated that the
tournament's first prize was a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000.
After the tournament, our staff discovered the error and attempted to
correct it by removing the sum that wasn't supposed to be there. At
the time it must have seemed like the natural thing to do, just like
they would have _added_ the same sum if it instead had been missing
from the prize pool.
We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since
reconsidered. **We have paid these players in full as of today January
3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this
from happening in the future.** We would like to sincerely apologize to
our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.
Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little disappointed
to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without
first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems
that some people just want to read the things that support their
already formed picture of "the big, bad corporation ripping off the
little guy". But things aren't always that black and white in reality.
Over the almost 8 years that we have run PokerRoom.com we have made
mistakes, a lot of mistakes even. But I can honestly say that we have
never deliberately ripped off any of our customers.
Sincerely,
Oskar Hornell
Founder of PokerRoom.com
Susan
on the bandwagon?
Maybe a little action on YOUR part would have helped to mitigate the
situation.
<sup...@PokerRoom.com> wrote in message
news:1167846991.7...@i12g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
A Man Beaten by Jacks
>After the tournament, our staff discovered the error and attempted to
EMPHASIS: AFTER
>correct it by removing the sum that wasn't supposed to be there. At
>the time it must have seemed like the natural thing to do, just like
>they would have _added_ the same sum if it instead had been missing
>from the prize pool.
So in other words, after paying out the prizes, you FUCKING STOLE THE
MONEY FROM CUSTOMER ACCOUNTS.
>We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since
Yes, being a fucking THIEF is a DOWNSIDE.
>reconsidered. **We have paid these players in full as of today January
>3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this
>from happening in the future.** We would like to sincerely apologize to
>our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.
>Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little disappointed
>to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without
>first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems
>that some people just want to read the things that support their
>already formed picture of "the big, bad corporation ripping off the
>little guy". But things aren't always that black and white in reality.
Your site's ripoff rake from Hell is already bad enough. But now you're
thieves too.
>Over the almost 8 years that we have run PokerRoom.com we have made
>mistakes, a lot of mistakes even. But I can honestly say that we have
>never deliberately ripped off any of our customers.
You most certainly did when you stole money out of client accounts after
accidentally having an overlay in a tourney. A legit site would have just
swallowed it, but that isn't PokerRoom, which is a thieving ripoff operation.
PATHETIC!
XaQ Morphy
> reconsidered. **We have paid these players in full as of today January
> 3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this
> from happening in the future.** We would like to sincerely apologize to
> our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.
Translation: As a multi-million dollar company we decided to remove a
$19k mistake that we made, and hoped no one would notice. Only after the
online poker world blew up at us and players left our site in droves did
we decide to do anything about it. We hope some of you suckers come back
and play with us.
Nice going.
Morphy
http://donkeymanifesto.blogspot.com
---
RecGroups : the community-oriented newsreader : www.recgroups.com
igotskillz com
You cheat players any way you can and it took you a month to devise this
lame explanation.
I am truly happy you did his to yourself.
Thank YOU
-----
dbel...@hotmail.com
The biggest issue is that you removed money from peoples accounts
without first telling them what you were doing and why. If the tourney
page said it was a guaranteed tournament and that is how it was paid
out at the time, you are a complete imbecile to think that you were
justified in taking the money back even if you quickly determined that
it was an error. Is $19K worth alienating this money customers?
igotskillz com
on the turn and badbeat me on the river.
Only a few people had this mystical ability. These few players did this to
numerous players.
Pokerroom is the only site that i feel deliberately cheats the players.
Stars has a lot of teams and used to have weak software. Wpx, has weak
software.
A few other sites have teams, collusion is what leads players to cry
rigged.
Pokerroom's greed has led them to steal in such an obvious manner that
hopefully they lose all of their customer base.
Thank YOU
_____________________________________________________________________
: the next generation of web-newsreaders : http://www.recgroups.com
jofo
- Oh, so it was a sofware glitch ? Well, while you're responding to
that issue how about the On Game ticket rip off ? Your own site
says "tournament tickets will be as good as cash" for those American
players who were booted as of November. However, when it came time
to honor that promise, we were told "Oh no, not THOSE tickets".
You screwed a lot of people out of a lot of money. Most players used
their player points to buy into tournaments based on info from your own
web-site.
I'm not sure if PokerRoom is dishonest or just incompetent. Either
way,
it should be avoided like the plague. By the way, I played on your site
from 2001 until last November. Even if you reopen to American players,
I
won't be back. I hope everyone does the same.
Care to respond ?
jo
Keith Willoughby
> Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little disappointed
> to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without
> first investigating the facts or background of the situation.
Well, it seems that people did indeed investigate the facts and
background of the situation. You messed up, and then tried to make your
customers pay for your mistake by taking money from their accounts. You
generated toxic publicity for two weeks before doing the right thing,
and even then you couldn't resist a final swipe at your detractors when
everyone knows that a simple grovelling apology is the order of the day.
Man, you're bad at this.
--
Keith Willoughby http://flat222.org/keith/
M. Khan Is Bent
Susan
"Keith Willoughby" <ke...@flat222.org> wrote in message
news:87bqlfh...@flat222.dyndns.org...
A Man Beaten by Jacks
>sup...@PokerRoom.com writes:
The only lesson here is "PokerRoom will steal from its customers, and will
only pay up when it costs more in bad publicity than stealing made us."
If they could rip off all their customers en masse and get away with it,
they would.
May they go out of business ignominiously.
Longines
>
> Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little
> disappointed to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of
> hate, without first investigating the facts or background of the
> situation.
>
> Oskar Hornell
> Founder of PokerRoom.com
Not content with just one foot, he takes aim at the other...
xyious
i'm thinking that you're a troll, but just for the chance that you're
not....
> Surely we would have mentioned it in our marketing if we had _planned_
> for the tourney to have a $19,000 added cash bonus? If we deliberately
> wanted to "lure" people in with that cash, as some posters have
> suggested, shouldn't we at least have mentioned that sum in our ads?
the people who played the tournament understood that there isn't a $19,000
cash bonus, but a $19,000 worth of merchandise bonus, as the flat screen
tv.
> The fact is that on the day of the tournament, a software glitch caused
> the information in our game client to change to read that this
> tournament was a $19,000 guaranteed tournament, though all other
> promotional and tournament info pages still stated that the
> tournament's first prize was a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000.
so you admit that the game client showed a tournament with a 19,000 dollar
guaranteed prize pool ....
> After the tournament, our staff discovered the error and attempted to
> correct it by removing the sum that wasn't supposed to be there. At
> the time it must have seemed like the natural thing to do, just like
> they would have _added_ the same sum if it instead had been missing
> from the prize pool.
that you then took back.
> We do realize that there are downsides to this solution, and have since
> reconsidered. **We have paid these players in full as of today January
> 3 and have taken the necessary steps to prevent a situation like this
> from happening in the future.** We would like to sincerely apologize to
> our affected players for the inconvenience this has caused them.
well i suppose at least you made good (in case this is true, and i'd like
to hear that from the people that were affected....). but with that coming
OVER TWO WEEKS LATER, i prefer to play at a site that will have a solution
WITHIN AN HOUR.
> Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little disappointed
> to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without
> first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems
> that some people just want to read the things that support their
> already formed picture of "the big, bad corporation ripping off the
> little guy". But things aren't always that black and white in reality.
i must say that i'm a little disappointed that it took two weeks, with
basically the whole poker community screaming. and the above paragraph
makes me think that it hadn't been the whole community screaming, you
woulda just quietly STOLEN MONEY.
> Over the almost 8 years that we have run PokerRoom.com we have made
> mistakes, a lot of mistakes even. But I can honestly say that we have
> never deliberately ripped off any of our customers.
actually....
but then you gave it back, so .... you can pretend it never happened.
> Sincerely,
> Oskar Hornell
> Founder of PokerRoom.com
the above makes me think it's a troll.... somehow....
-Alexander Knopf
http://www.xyious.com/?links
------
sup...@pokerroom.com
usually handle support or communication issues, but I felt that I had
to speak up for PokerRoom.com now.
The way we have handled this issue up until today has been just plain
bad, especially the lack of communication, no one is disputing that.
(For what it's worth, we are going to greatly improve communication
with our customers.)
But what bothers me a little is when people who weren't in the tourney
in question, people who don't know the details behind the situation,
people who may not even have visited our site, are very quick to voice
an opinion about exactly what happened and what they think our motives
were. One guy first says something like "They probably did it all on
purpose to cheat us!". Then another guy joins in: "Yeah, that's right,
they're crooks!" and a third guy says "Let's lynch 'em!".
We did a mistake and we made up for it (like we ought to). We messed up
earlier and we'll do what we can to improve for the future. We're not
asking for a medal or anything, just a fair shake.
Susan
negatively are indeed players on your site.
Second, you said you are disappointed in us voicing our disapproval? Why
didn't you post your reasoning here 2 weeks ago, told us what you were going
to do about it, and put our minds at ease?
Are you merely paying the players what is rightfully theirs, or are you
adding extra for ALL THE PARTICIPANTS?
<sup...@PokerRoom.com> wrote in message
news:1167860281.5...@i80g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
trang...@hotmail.com
Well Oskar, why the long wait? Why did you wait 2 weeks to correct the
problem? If WalMart mistakenly overcharged your credit card thousands
of dollars, then was silent about it for 2 weeks, would you be
patiently waiting by? Would you just trust them?
And what about the tickets that weren't refunded to American players?
I've considered depositing at pokerroom for some time, but then I hear
about ignorant-at-best, dishonest-at-worst business practices, and it
keeps me from depositing.
Anxiously awaiting your response...
Max Powers
sup...@pokerroom.com
>you said you are disappointed in us voicing our disapproval? Why
>didn't you post your reasoning here 2 weeks ago, told us what you were going
>to do about it, and put our minds at ease?
Like I said, we have indeed been poor at communicating with our
customers. We really should have acted earlier. I don't usually handle
these kind of things, so it wasn't really up to me to comment on it.
However, eventually I felt that things had gone way too far and that
the problem must be resolved and commented on. And this is what
happened today, hopefully we'll act much faster in the future if
another dispute should arise.
>Are you merely paying the players what is rightfully theirs, or are you
>adding extra for ALL THE PARTICIPANTS?
Everything has been paid out in full; the originally intended prizes as
well as the accidentally added cash. Plus I believe we also gave an
extra $11 ticket to each of the players.
Max Powers wrote:
>And what about the tickets that weren't refunded to American players?
I'm afraid that I don't know anything about that. But I will ask those
who do. Do you have the same e-mail address on PokerRoom.com as here?
Peg Smith
>Surely we would have mentioned it in our marketing if we had _planned_
>for the tourney to have a $19,000 added cash bonus? If we deliberately
>wanted to "lure" people in with that cash, as some posters have
>suggested, shouldn't we at least have mentioned that sum in our ads?
>
>The fact is that on the day of the tournament, a software glitch caused
>the information in our game client to change to read that this
>tournament was a $19,000 guaranteed tournament, though all other
>promotional and tournament info pages still stated that the
>tournament's first prize was a flat screen HDTV valued at $2,000.
Don't you suppose that some of those players didn't see all your ads
and entered the tourney just because they liked the guarantee they saw
on the tourney page? Why not just take responsibility for *your*
software glitch and pay the folks? The best way, I've found, to ensure
customer loyalty is to take responsibility for your fuck-ups. But,
hey, that's just me.
Peg
Peg Smith
>Don't you suppose that some of those players didn't see all your ads
>and entered the tourney just because they liked the guarantee they saw
>on the tourney page? Why not just take responsibility for *your*
>software glitch and pay the folks?
That should read, "...and pay the folks right away?"
Susan
or
<sup...@PokerRoom.com> wrote in message
news:1167862968.3...@i80g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
Elvis Henry
> Ladies and gentlemen, please put down your pitchforks and torches for a
> moment and hear me out.
I've heard. I still think you're a bunch of dumb fucks, and dishonest
dumb fucks at that. Pound sand.
E
Dave Dale
I am amazed and appalled that online poker rooms do not seem to
understand that they are not a normal business. They are 100%
dependent on the perception of fairness and honesty. If they lose that
trust they are out of business no matter how good the games, software,
promotions, tournaments, etc. There are plenty of other poker rooms
offering the same or better gaming experience. Consequently, they must
avoid even the slightest whiff of dishonesty at all cost.
Even if this was a software glitch, Pokerroom should have just honored
it - and then they could have cited it in ads to tout how honest they
are!
Bottom line, there are lot's of idiots running these sites, just look
at Party's decision to ban U.S. players and throw away $3 million a
day!
Hopefully, the other poker rooms are paying attention.
Dave Dale
www.epokertraffic.com
(near real-time reports on current
number of players and active tables
for nearly all online poker sites)
Palooka
<sup...@PokerRoom.com> wrote in message
news:1167846991.7...@i12g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
You have wasted your time and money paying people out now. As I posted here
two weeks ago, having made the appallingly stupid mistakes you did, you
might just as well have hung on to the money anyway. You have lost your only
stock in trade, which is trust. Now you have paid out the money, but far too
late. Just think how much positive spin you could have generated had you
paid up as advertised, published the error, and stated that you would honour
the moral obligation.
I have an account at your site, but thankfully have not deposited. Following
this episode I never will, either. And before you accuse me of jumping on
the bandwagon, I have followed the discussion on pokah, because when the
details were originally posted here (by Longines IIRC) I was frankly
incredulous.
Hoping your enterprise folds soon. What terrible business sense you folks
have.
Palooka
beerboy
Palooka <nob...@nowhere.com> typed:
I feel exactly the same way. mice post
--
Kurt M. (beerboy)
igotskillz com
> Max Powers wrote:
> >And what about the tickets that weren't refunded to American players?
>
> I'm afraid that I don't know anything about that. But I will ask those
> who do. Do you have the same e-mail address on PokerRoom.com as here?
>
riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight
Thank YOU
________________________________________________________________________
looking for a better newsgroup-reader? - www.recgroups.com
Michael Sullivan
> Personally speaking, however, I must say that I'm a little disappointed
> to see so many being eager to jump on the bandwagon of hate, without
> first investigating the facts or background of the situation. It seems
> that some people just want to read the things that support their
> already formed picture of "the big, bad corporation ripping off the
> little guy". But things aren't always that black and white in reality.
If you had made this decision within a day or two of the problem being
discussed on your own forums, rather than waiting for it to be picked up
by a pile of popular poker blogs and rgp and seeing lots of people
decide to abandon your site, I'd be more likely to believe that making
good on your fuckups was actually intended to be company policy, rather
than something you pull out of your ass a day late and a dollar short in
a desperate attempt to save your skin now that it looks like that
"mistake" cost you far more in business than it saved you money.
Michael
JohnnyYooper
Dave Dale wrote:
>
> www.epokertraffic.com
> (near real-time reports on current
> number of players and active tables
> for nearly all online poker sites)
i dont see partypoker on your list of the 17 largest rooms. surely
they havent dropped down that far? btw, theres something wrong with
your pokerstars total. you show 8000 players, they list 103,000 on
their site.
Palooka
"Michael Sullivan" <m...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:1hrduc5.1xhqkk9kbafneN%m...@panix.com...
late to regain the confidence of anyone with half a brain.
Let's say you were one of the winners. You saw your account credited with
the prize money one day, then the next day the poker site took it back. Two
or three weeks later, seeing such a furore, the site decides to pay up after
all.
I'd withdraw PDQ; wouldn't you?
Palooka
A Man Beaten by Jacks
><sup...@PokerRoom.com> wrote:
The "mistake" was underestimating the cost of stealing. Let this be a
lesson to other would-be thieves.
I think somehow that they picked a Christmas tourney overlay, of all things,
as the occasion of sin added a certain pungency to their vile crime.
They deserve the mob of peasants with pitchforks and torches at their
door.
xyious
> The "mistake" was underestimating the cost of stealing. Let this be a
> lesson to other would-be thieves.
>
> I think somehow that they picked a Christmas tourney overlay, of all things,
> as the occasion of sin added a certain pungency to their vile crime.
> They deserve the mob of peasants with pitchforks and torches at their
> door.
added bonus for taking the money out of people's accounts at the time they
could be shopping for christmas with it, and giving it back over a week
too late for any christmas shopping. very nice move for everyone who
won....
-Alexander Knopf
http://www.xyious.com/?links
Keith Willoughby
> But what bothers me a little is [...]
Stop digging.
--
Keith Willoughby http://flat222.org/keith/
Ceci n'est pas une sig
igotskillz com
>
> Max Powers wrote:
> >And what about the tickets that weren't refunded to American players?
>
> I'm afraid that I don't know anything about that. But I will ask those
> who do. Do you have the same e-mail address on PokerRoom.com as here?
First off I think you are a liar, but you are telling us that you don't
know that your people ripprd off almost every American customer ?
What else don't you know about ?
Gosh, how would anyone feel good about your company knowing that you
admittedly didnt know that your people ripped off all of the Americans.
Nice try, bunky.
I truly feel that you are the only site that cheats players
>
> Sincerely,
> Oskar Hornell
> Founder of PokerRoom.com
Thank YOU
______________________________________________________________________
Dave Dale
>they havent dropped down that far? btw, theres something wrong with
>your pokerstars total. you show 8000 players, they list 103,000 on
>their site.
We get the numbers we use from several sources. Some sites display it
on their web sites, others only in the poker client itself. Party
stopped displaying its numbers anywhere after it decided to stop
allowing U.S. players. They said it was because they didn't want it
used against them by their competition?! Very odd since nearly all
other sites display the data and don't seem concerned. Anyway, they
are now listed on our pending sites page
http://www.epokertraffic.com/site_pending.php until they start giving
out the numbers again. By most estimates, Party has lost 70% or more
of its players and would probably not be more than 6th or 7th place
now.
As for the Pokerstars numbers, once in a while the feed from them
misreports the numbers. It seems that the table numbers get reported
as the player numbers. They usually fix it within a few hours. I just
checked our site and it looks correct now. If you see that happen
again, click the link and go to their web site and I think you will
see the numbers are wrong there too. If not, it should be corrected on
our next scan - usually every 20 minutes or so. Of course, we have no
control over Pokerstars numbers, we just report what they give us.
Thank you for your questions. We will keep an eye on the Pokerstars
numbers to make sure there is no error on our side. Please let us know
if you see anything else wrong or have any other questions.
Dave Dale
trang...@hotmail.com
Oskar. You expect anyone to believe that you havent heard of Pokerroom
posting a message regarding tourney tickets that would be refunded to
American players, which were later taken without compensation, in a
very similar way to the way this scandel unfolded? Really?
You may post any response to this newsgroup, since the email address I
opened is a phony account.
thehomeofp...@googlemail.com
Dave Dale wrote:
> > i dont see partypoker on your list of the 17 largest rooms. surely
> >they havent dropped down that far? btw, theres something wrong with
> >your pokerstars total. you show 8000 players, they list 103,000 on
> >their site.
>
>
> of its players and would probably not be more than 6th or 7th place
> now.
>
the point of showing traffic if it includes a million freeplay morons?