I was playing $1/2 Play Money PLO. A fellow asked if anyone had withdrawn any real money and I said yes. He asked if it was good. I said:
"If you call waiting for many weeks and never knowing whether or not you will get the money good then yes."
A moment later I received a message in the chat box that I was banned from chat.

seems ******ed

since this is an rpm thread, can you guys pls stop spamming my email all the time? ty

I'm tempted to move this thread to the RPM Poker Forum, to see what happens to it.

You can send a copy there if you like, but please don't move this one as it will likely just disappear from the RPM forum and then I'll have to start all over again.

Good game ... and yes Mike, please keep it here or RPM might "lock" this thread.

You do realize that its ok to play a game for fun and competition?

For what it's worth, Merge Gaming controls the chat restrictions for RPM Poker players, and presumably for all players across their network.

RPM Poker does not have an active role in determining whether or not a player's chat is banned. If you have questions about a chat restriction, you can get in contact with us via the forums, or you can e-mail Merge support directly via e-mail.

Merge's fraud and security team is a joke. So much collusion going on, and they do little to address the issue.

Merge's software is a joke. So many bugs. And forget about features other sites have found a way to code like rush/zoom

Merge's finances are a joke. Their policy on commenting on whether player funds are segregated or not is to not comment on it. Which means it's fair to assume that player funds are not segregated.

Merge's payment processors are a joke. 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 weeks to get a check? And often they bounce by the time they are received because the processor got shut down?

But at least they are monitoring chat boxes in play money tables.

Awesome

I can tell you what would happen. Seth would delete the thread or not respond for days like the current thread sitting in forum from a disgruntled player.

surprised no1 said the obvious"you are hurting business" lol, you are taking money out of merge's pockets by scaring away potential new customers who are looking to probably deposit and play for real $$$. Why would they let someone chat to make them lose business?

Discussing your experience on the site with other players is not against the rules or terms of chat. Banning chat becaue of this is censorship.

Interested to see what the site have to say about this.

The next question from the other player was, "But did you get the money?" I was going to say, "Yes, the check eventually arrived and was good" but got banned from chat before I could. Merge probably did more harm than good for themselves in this case.

And it never even occurred to me that discussing my withdrawal experience in chat would be a ban-able offense. I guess they feel that spreading the truth about their procedures and policies for withdrawals is bad for business.

It isn't but I am sure they could find a # in the TOS to justify it ... thank god there are still forums such as 2+2 where people can read about it in public threads. Of course only if they are in the open forum section

Lol at merge doing that.

They could just go with the RPM 2+2 strategy and have a shill account show up to talk about how awesome they are.

The Merge Gaming Network support and live chat has been awesome for years and always provided answers for every question in lightspeed. *

* This post may contain sarcasm and irony.

Sounds like a good network that Merge Poker

Copied thread to date from Internet Poker Forum, by permission of RPMSeth.

Thanks, Mike.

I have contacted Merge Gaming with regard to this chat ban.

I'd like to note that I do not believe this chat ban was made automatically because of the negative comment towards Merge, but rather because it was discussing real money play/deposits or withdrawals at play money tables.

I agree with this entire post except for bolded. Every check I've requested has cleared (5-6 of them since May). In that time, only one batch of checks were bad, fortunately for me I missed that landmine. The waiting time sucks, but it's not fair to state checks bounce often because in my small sample size of 9-10 months this has only happened once and not at all if your timing was lucky. Perhaps once is one too many, but meh #lolUSAOnlinePoker

Jon and Seth have been 99% on point with me. There are some operational things that are lol ******ed, but on individual dealings, they're batting 1.000

Exhibit A of the lol ******ed things Merge does.

I could very well be wrong so please don't take this as fact, but I'm under the impression that discussion of deposits and/or withdrawals at play money tables is prohibited on most sites/networks. I do believe this is why the chat ban was put into effect, not because of its negative content.

Regardless, we'll find out soon enough. It's also fairly obvious that PokerXanadu's chat was not offensive, so I'm confident this chat ban will be lifted as soon as it's brought to Merge's attention, which I have done.

PokerXanadu: Merge has informed me that your chat is active with no restrictions. Further, a look into your account isn't showing any chat ban activity at all. Do you have a second username that you use solely for play money? If so, please send me a PM with this information so I may pass it along, as the notes showing on your account does not show any history of a chat ban.

Edit: Your chat may have been blocked temporarily in the case that another player was all-in at the table. When a player is all-in, your chat cannot be displayed.

Also, my assumptions regarding the discussion of deposits/withdrawals causing a chat ban were incorrect as there is no such restriction in place. Please disregard!

PokerXanadu is not my username on RPMPoker. I am PMing you the correct one so you can find out the truth.

I know, but I wanted to confirm your screen name. I have received your PM and this is indeed the same name that we provided to Merge for this inquiry.

At this point, I think it's highly likely that there was a player all-in at the table, and you may have mistaken the chat box temporarily suspending chat for all players as a permanent suspension of your chat.

Nope, I believe you are wrong. It was not an all-in situation iirc. But in any case, my chat does work now (didn't yesterday when I tried it again). So, I guess they removed the ban sometime yesterday.