*** Poker Refugees / OFFICIAL Player Relocation Thread *** - Page 4 - Internet Poker

Odds_Master · 06-27-2012, 08:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PokerRefugees

Thank you! We work really hard and love what we do; it's been a great year helping poker players from all over the world, not just those affected by Black Friday.

Thus far we've found that the flat fee of $1,200 really works for everyone as there is no time limit to the service and it's customized to each player's needs. We feel it provides a great value for the time and energy saved on our clients' behalf.

Depending on the country, there can be some additional costs when third party services are involved, as these vary from country to country. We can get into more detail on that and explain depending on where you decide to go.

An end-of-year relocation is more than realistic. We'll send you a PM to get started.

Mexico is definitely an affordable option, and most Latin American countries offer a low cost of living and some lively nightlife.

I can definitely feel the radiance in your voice by doing what you love to do. It's a great feeling.

The cost is more then reasonable and there is plenty of worked involved relocating just to another city now couple that with the move of a foreign country. It can definitely be a tumultuous experience without your assistance. I have my mind set on Mexico there is no debate there. We can start crunching the facts once you lay the path. Thanks again!

**PokerRefugees** · 06-28-2012, 02:18 PM

You're welcome!

Haha yes, many clients have told us we should raise the price. We like to keep it accessible for everyone but as we add new countries the pricing will vary according to local costs.

I sent you a PM so now it's just a matter of deciding where in Mexico before moving forward.

Talk soon!

**PokerRefugees** · 07-09-2012, 05:19 PM

Hi everyone we are at the QuadJacks booth at Rio for the rest of the week during WSOP.

If you have any questions about moving abroad to play poker, stop by and see us!

**PokerRefugees** · 07-10-2012, 11:06 PM

Kristin & Marco from QuadJacks @ Rio, WSOP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqOldaZenbo

We're here until July 16th!

idun215 · 07-11-2012, 04:18 AM

Seems like everybody on here move to Costa Rica. I would prefer Canada.

UUUUP · 07-19-2012, 11:37 AM

anyone have a successful move to New Zealand ?

**PokerRefugees** · 07-20-2012, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by idun215

Seems like everybody on here move to Costa Rica. I would prefer Canada.

Hi there, yes it seems like most of our Costa Rica clients post here more than the ones currently in Canada. About 20-30% of our clients move to Canada and we have moved multiple players to Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

Let us know if you'd like help with this!

**PokerRefugees** · 07-20-2012, 02:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UUUUP

anyone have a successful move to New Zealand ?

We have a player and his girlfriend from the UK who we are currently moving to New Zealand but they requested a customized service through us a few months in advance of the move. They are doing an around-the-world trip from UK to Costa Rica, then Vancouver and now headed to New Zealand, followed by Australia and Thailand.

If you'd like to set up a free call with us to talk about New Zealand and other potential destinations you can use this quick link: https://my.timedriver.com/7BF9H

Or just send us a PM or email to info@pokerrefugees.com and we'll help you out.

~Kristin

**AMT** · 07-22-2012, 04:13 PM

Hi All,

Felt obliged to post here after a somewhat rough albeit brief experience with PokerRefugees.

I emailed/facebooked Kristin as was advised by a friend and customer of the service. As I already had something of a support for transition in CR, I only sought out services to assist in finding a place in CR rather than use the "full relocation package". Thought having someone familiar with the processes/leasing down there would be useful for the fee charged.

Kristin remained friendly and relatively attentive through much of the process, but in the end I have to say I feel that she/PR didn't provide the service as advertised. Notably, for starters, an update or two took > a week to come through. 9 days seems like a long time to wait for an update after "we always work as fast as possible and are doing everything we can" replies when a couple of weeks had passed with no progress.

Kristin mentioned difficulties finding results in the specified area (The Coronado area). While I did give her a school as a specific landmark within the area Id like to be around, the area is relatively large and has plenty of residential options, especially so as I gave PR very light restrictions in the way of budget etc...

At this point I did some googling and had my girlfriend down there search for me to see if we couldn't speed up the process a bit. Googling "houses to rent Coronado CR" yielded several specific results, one of which I ended up pursuing.

I ended up emailing Kristin my frustrations in what had occurred and of what seemed like it could be a misleading display of their efforts when no results came through and when visiting the area itself seemed a "last ditch effort" for them. I mentioned the delays were a bit dissapointing given lack of results and the googling yielding better results than her service. I should've but didn't mention that the idea that the very last thing they'd do would be visiting the area in question is probably not great customer service if other methods weren't working.

I feel as though week + delays and results of "we're doing everything we can but still haven't found anything" has to be misleading/dissapointing at best given some quick googling seemed to yield valuable results. A professional relocation service with the reputation of PokerRefugees should ensure the methods used in their larger markets yield results in a timely manner, and should be as transparent as possible. I don't feel that they did a good job of that here, especially given I got no reply after expressing my dismay privately.

I understand that certain areas in certain parts of the world aren't what I'm used to in this process, but given talks with locals down there and results via means other than use of PR's service, feel something is amiss here with how they went about things.

I hope others have had better results but do appreciate Kristin's early attention to my queries and her stated efforts in trying to find me a place in CR even if the wheels fell off at the end..

**PokerRefugees** · 07-23-2012, 05:54 PM

Dear Alex,

Thank you for communicating your concerns and we regret that you had a less than positive experience with the specific service we customized for you.

Since Coronado is not an area we are familiar with as was discussed and is stated above, we decided the most effective way would be to communicate directly with local Costa Rican real estate professionals and rental agents who reside in that town as driving around looking for "for rent" signs usually does not yield productive results. Doing that would really be a last resort since we have always enough reach with phone, internet and email and specialize in filtering results appropriately. The other reason we do this is because we are not property listing agents, we are poker player representatives. Therefore, we don't manage any properties but instead seek them out objectively on behalf of our clients through various means. Our best interest is the interest of our client, not of any realtor, owner or property representative and therefore our clients receive objective opinions.

To summarize the work completed for others on the forum, we started with the Costa Rica Realtor Chamber of Commerce (CBR) and contacted 12 real estate agents on your behalf. We also "googled" and searched in the local directories such as La Nacion classifieds and encuentra24.com. We didn't see anything that was suitable to your needs. It's also important to note that this is an area that we would not explicitly recommend to our normal clients due to the inner city San Jose location, with inherent security issues, so we were taking a more critical eye than usual to the properties we did find.

In the end after following up with each realtor 3 times, none of them produced anything of value after assuring us they had appropriate properties. This caused delays in our correspondence with you as we were expecting to provide options fairly immediately. *

We then contacted the school to see if they could recommend any nearby communities or neighborhoods which might have available properties, or if there were any parents in the PTA who worked in real estate or property rentals but this was also a dead end.

The majority of the time invested was between June 10-25 where after frequent contact early on, I'll acknowledge that contact waned until our last update on June 25 as we focused on contact with property owners and realtors to come up with concrete options for you. We were happy that you found a place that seemed ideal using other methods and hope you continue to be comfortable there.

In sum, we invested substantial time and resources over 2+ weeks expecting to provide satisfactory results to you and are also disappointed that did not come to fruition. We always had the highest intentions to help you as we do all our clients and hope to communicate that this was not characteristic of our normal business outcome.

Regards,

Kristin

lrgatsby · 07-25-2012, 03:19 PM

Hi Kristin,

You either cannot use PM's or you're not interested in answering mine, so:
If on a tourist visa in Canada, would one be expected to pay Canadian taxes if filing as a professional in the US?

**PokerRefugees** · 07-25-2012, 04:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lrgatsby

Hi Kristin,

You either cannot use PM's or you're not interested in answering mine, so:
If on a tourist visa in Canada, would one be expected to pay Canadian taxes if filing as a professional in the US?

Hi There,

I see that you sent us a message last night outside of business hours. We do our best to respond to emails and PMs as promptly as possible depending on availability.

Consistent with most companies, our official policy within 24-48 hours taking into consideration weekends and holidays.

In your case, we are responding to your PM before 24 hours has passed and that is a reasonable and generally accepted timeframe.

Kristin

lrgatsby · 07-25-2012, 04:51 PM

Simma down now! I saw you had logged in this morning but hadn't responded, so I thought I'd come on here and bump the thread back to the top. I wasn't trying to accuse you of ignoring me, and if it came across that way I apologize.
I got your PM and thank you! I've recommended you to countless players, many on this site, and will continue to do so.

Take care, Kristin.

**PokerRefugees** · 07-25-2012, 08:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lrgatsby

Simma down now! I saw you had logged in this morning but hadn't responded, so I thought I'd come on here and bump the thread back to the top. I wasn't trying to accuse you of ignoring me, and if it came across that way I apologize.
I got your PM and thank you! I've recommended you to countless players, many on this site, and will continue to do so.

Take care, Kristin.

All good; thank you for the support and referrals. We do our best. We also stay logged into 2p2 so it's possible that the page was open in a tab on one of our computers but we were not active on the site.

We'll be in touch!

bryan knows · 07-25-2012, 08:32 PM

hey guys am planning on moving to costa rica to get back on the grind in september... looking into Jaco beach area... has anybody else relocated to the beach and have any advice or possibly a room open for rent? basically looking to surf every day theres waves while having the ability to be able to sign online and crush poker games. Let me know