[Per PM from Jah Onion]

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Edit: To discuss a particular post later, in http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...shane-1353969/, give a link to the post by clicking on the number of the post, top right, and copy/paste the url of the single-post page that opens.

Alternatively, Quote a post, bottom right, as if you were going to post in this thread, and then copy it from the window that opens and post it in the discussion thread.

Questions:

Question 1

Question (Part A): Why won't Lock's CS, email team, live support, and/or anyone associated with helping players give an honest figure when asked regarding accurate cashout times from request to cash/check in hand? To date, the current cashout times when you approach a live agent is 4-5 weeks for WU, and 6-8 weeks for checks or ROW payments (Neteller, Skrill, etc.). This is an integral question, because this ends up bringing in new players (as they may be frustrated from other Rev skins, or Merge skins, for example) and then they are subject to some of the wait times we've seen in this forum.

Question (Part B): Since the answer to the above has been told to me to be rooted in the undesirable nature of using older cashout data as a barometer of current timeframes, why won't Lock get more publicly behind my efforts in tracking cashouts posted on this forum, and/or helping to make the data as complete as possible, instead of publicly denying its effectiveness (or defending others who misuse the data) as a general sample of player experiences? As Shane has stated to me, Lock is in need of someone who reports the facts as they are instead of slanting generalities to further their own agendas. I can think of few better ways to near this aim than to endorse these efforts and to at least acknowledge that it is somewhat indicative of current timeframes as a whole - moreso than most others who don't do the research.

I have included the data I have collected from May 1st until July 19th, 2013 with this question - this is all reported cashouts that have been received in various threads in this Lock forum, double-checked and verified by screenname so as to not have duplicate information.



Thanks.

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Question 2

Enclosed is a list of items Lock's "top officials" agreed to fulfill in their discussion with Mason earlier this year. Why have items 3 and 4 not been fulfilled and moreover why has Lock (either through any of their "top officials") or through Shane made an official statement adressing the reason for their failure to carry out this task?
Just to make things clear, a new Lock representative did appear and make 1 single post after which he/she dissapeared, however the post presented absolutely no new information and the community was outraged that this was the detailed explanation of the issues and steps to resolving them.

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Question 3

Can you compare your cashout process to that of your competitors (such as Bodog, Merge or ACR - sites that also cater to US players) and explain why there is such a disparity between Lock and these other sites?

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[Per PM from Jah Onion]

Question 1 (Part A)
We give players the best estimate based on the information on hand at the time but US processing is very challenging and things can change overnight with this type of processing.**

Question 1 (Part B)
As I have stated privately on this matter processors don't like any public statements and after evaluating ways we could give more information to players about the volume or number of cashouts going out each week and the progress being made there just wasn't a way we could do this without drawing the ire of our processors.

The report isn't indicative of the current timeframes as a whole, the data is collected in a very narrow fashion and the total data the report is based on is limited and the creator of the report has no knowledge of anything other than the small amount of information he is able to scrape from the forums.


Question 2

It was very clear very quickly that a new voice was going to bring limited change.

Also for a role like 2+2 you need to be experienced with a great understanding of how the business works but you also need a lot of time to be able to read through a lot of threads and be taking in a lot feedback and seeking answers for those questions. It was clear that Joseph wasn't going to have the time to give his normal role and the 2+2 role adequate attention, with my extra responsibilities already being cleared to give me more time for this role it has been left to me to be solely responsible for the forum.


Question 3

We went through a period where our process limits weren't able to meet our demand which got us behind with our cashouts, we have rectified this and are now working on moving forward. I understand this improvement hasn't been as obvious yet while we are still clearing that backlog and until it is obvious this question will continue to come up but all we can do is keep working through the cashouts.

In the recent period where we have worked to increase our processing and work through our backlog we have actually seen our competitors take a little step back with Bodog losing Skrill and Merge losing WU. We feel we are well positioned now with our current processing limits to work our way back to where we should be and measure up far better against our competitors than we currently do.

Q1 Discussion Thread

Q2 Discussion Thread

Q3 Discussion Thread

Question 4

Why is there a long wait to receive items won in the Lock Lotto or items purchased from the Lock Store? There are examples in this sub-forum of people waiting 2+ months for items from the Lock Lotto and Lock Store. Why is sending items such as sweatshirts, Ipads, and other "prizes" taking so long? There shouldn't be any "clogged pipes" with regards to sending those items.

Question 5

What is the current status of "Fair Play Technology"? What types of segregation/if any are currently in place on Lock Poker or that would impact Lock Poker players OR players from other sites on the network from playing with Lock Poker players?

The lack of communication regarding the segregation problems on this network has been a major issue. It's largely been a customer service issue too. Lock Poker seems to always be playing catch-up and reacting to information players are sharing regarding their inability to play with other players. How do you plan to remedy this situation going forward? Can you explain what methods of segregation were previously in place and how that differs from what is currently in place?

Question 6

Your online support is still quoting 4-5 weeks for WU. This is clearly not a best estimate as you have been receiving emails, FB responses, and inquiries from 2+2ers that are waiting 3-4 months. 4-5 weeks is beyond optimistic and does not seem to be a best or even accurate estimate for current or new customers. Do you plan to update these estimated times and when do you plan on doing this?

Question 4

We have just had a changeover in the team member who was looking after the store, there was a delay while we hired someone new and they got things organised. They have just been put in place so Im not sure how quickly things will be back to normal.


Question 5

The Fair Play segregation has been constantly evolving. The network puts changes in place as frequently as weekly with no information passed down to us.

As far as Im aware there should be no Fair Play levels between players on Lock, so all Lock players have access to all Lock Players but fair play is still in place between the different rooms in some manner. Again I get no details on this it was just confirmed to me that there is both skill segregation and room segregation at different levels for some rooms.

Previous we have had just Lock players segregated at certain levels, then we had segregation based on skill level network wide, which was then tweaked several times and now has been dialled back so the effects for many players will be minimal but not all players from all rooms on the network have access to each other.


Question 6

The old cashouts had such long waiting times because we weren't able to process the volume we needed to process. At that time checks were pretty much at a stand still and WU just couldn't cope with being our only US option.

Now with checks working much better the WU load is far easier to manage and as we have seen already if there are problems with WU we have been able to move some cashouts over to checks to get them out faster.

So while the old cashouts are terrible, they arent indicative of what we can achieve right now.

Question 7

You say that Lock is confident that its cash outs will meet the time frames given despite the fact that over the last 8 months or so a large number have not. If you are confident in this, why not offer a significant cash award to players whose cash outs exceed the time frames that are given?

For that matter, why not offer awards to those players whose cash outs have already exceeded those time frames over the last few months? You have claimed that these cases are more unusual than people think, so it shouldn't be a problem, and it would be a nice gesture to atone for the great inconvenience that some customers have experienced as the result of delayed cash outs.


Question 8

Could you please explain why it takes so long to get verified for either wu or checks? Surely security checks don't take that long. Perhaps you could give a step by step answer to "verification" and why it is taking 3 month or more for this process on small simple cashouts?


Question 9


Let's assume for a moment that this is true, and that all of the super old cash outs are abnormal in some way, that something went wrong for those customers and their situation isn't normal.

1) Why does it take so long for Lock to fix issues for customers when they crop up, 2) why doesn't Lock communicate with these customers so that they know that Lock is working on their unique case, and 3) what changes is Lock going to make so that so many people don't have something go wrong with their cash outs?


Question 10

Shane, could you perhaps elaborate why other poker sites that cater to US customers don't seem to face the same processing issues Lock does?
Moreover, could you elaborate why a site such as Intertops, that operates on the same network as Lock and is roughly the same size, has skrill cashout times that are < 1 week when people are waiting up to 3-4 months on Lock?

Question 7

Blanket rewards would add to already high processing costs, but spot cash rewards are already in place and are given to some customers.


Question 8

If there are no security concerns a WU or check cashout might still sit in the processing queue if there is a backlog and we cant process more cashouts through to the processor at that time. The example of this would be if we have already sent a batch to every one of our WU processors and we are waiting for these to be completed.


Question 9

Its impossible to eradicate all problems just with the nature of US processing, the big problem right now is that the backlog really amplifies the problems and makes things much much worse. When many players complain about customer support they often are getting answered but the answers are the same "we are trying to rectify this cashout as soon as possible". The solution to that is to get cashouts under control, that we are definitely working towards.


Question 10

Well firstly Intertops definitely isn't roughly the same size, they are between 1/4 and 1/3 the size of Lock.

And they do face the same problems, one has recently lost all Skrill processing and another all WU processing.

That said one room in particular has done very well and their growth in this period is a reflection on that.

Looking at the reasons some rooms do better, the main reason is better balance in their player pool. By focussing on ROW player acquisition their processing is made easier as their eWallets have a greater amount of deposits allowing for much faster cashouts through those methods which in turn eases the pressure on their US processing.

The other obvious reason some rooms do better is volume, the processing limits that we run into aren't a problem for a tiny room as they aren't processing enough to hit their limits.

Which leaves us with 2 important weaknesses we needed to address, securing better processing volumes and diversifying our acquisition markets. We have made huge strides in the first and continue to work on the second.

Question 11

Does Lock plan on making things right with 2+2 and advertising again? If so, what steps are you planning to take?


Question 12

Could you compare your cash out process to that of Bovada/Bodog?
a) Why are their cash out times so superior (48 hours- week) to Lock's
b) Why do they communicate more closely and more frequently with their customers.
c) Why do people feel their customer experience with Bovada/Bodog is far superior to that of Lock?
d) Why is the owner of Bovada/Bodog more accessible and engaged with his customers than Lock's CEO?

Question 11

To be honest this is more of a question for the 2+2 guys but from our side we expected that when we get these cashouts back under control thats something we will address with them. It was their decision to remove the banners so the ball is somewhat in their court.

The steps we are taking are staying engaged with the 2+2 community and getting cashouts back under control.


Question 12

a) Their emphasis on new markets has helped reduce their US dependancy, and sportsbook gives them a great cashflow in product to help keep their eWallets stacked with deposits.
b) Im not that well versed in their communication with players so I cant answer this question with any decent response.
c) Right now their cashouts have held up better, you still see plenty of complaints against them but clearly our cashouts have been far worse and created a huge problem for us.
d) The Bodog owner says he doesn't own Bodog anymore and has sold out and his website in his own name uses other authors for his articles. Im not sure how that equates to accessible and engaged. We have seen people post here that they emailed Jen about cashouts and got a response, email Calvin about a cashout and see how that works out.