It sure is a shame that Lock had the chance to be a big player in the online poker world following Black Friday but like so many other sites out there, their business sense is horrendous. They seem to have no clear vision of the future and how to build a loyal customer base...which is what provides the action across the site.

Steps to running a successful poker site:
-Eliminate all current promos (Ronin).
-Shut off new player sign ups from the US, at a time where every player in the US is looking for a place to play. Why allow SOME players but not all?
-Provide horrible customer service, while promoting on the site that there is 24/7 customer service available. Hire about two people to be responsible for all emails coming into the site.
-Have stone-aged poker software.
-Require players to transfer money to a "casino cashier" to attempt to make cashouts. From an email I received from Lock, 1-2 weeks to process check on casino side, 4-6 weeks to process check on poker side. I have a check request from 20 days ago on the casino side that is still "requested" so those time frames aren't even accurate.
-Say a store will be available July 2nd...it's August 9th and still no store.
-Roll out a new VIP program without any planning.
-Add casino bonuses to the VIP program without knowing what they will even be. 10%..no 20%..no 10%...no play through required....play through required...40x play through required...still not even available. Yeah, we have heard they will be retroactive but honestly, what have we heard that has actually been true?
-Say there will be a rake race. Delay delay delay. Attempt to do a rake race for August then stop it after a day and say ooops, we thought we could do it but we really can't.
-Charge a $25 check fee. Sure you get one free a month but you have to email them and ask for this fee to be given back after you receive your check. Plus, how many players actually know about this? If I didn't post on 2+2 I would have had no idea.
-Provide the novel idea of a Vault. Took me several weeks to realize half the stuff on the players page didn't work well with Internet Explorer. While trying to set up this Vault with IE, it wouldn't accept any inputs and had me keep entering things over and over. When I finally realize the page won't work with IE, all the pins and passcodes I tried did not work...hence, locking me out of this super cool vault. Make deposits into the vault instead of the players balance because half the people on the site don't even know what the vault is and hopefully they won't realize they have all this money in the vault.
-Have a well known poker player post on 2+2 attempt to solve the 1000's of problems with Lock while providing him very little information. Eric, while I know you have done everything you can to make this work, Merge is either dicking you around or don't know what the hell they are doing. How can a poker room manager know so little about what is going on at the moment? Rake races, store, casino bonuses, etc.

Some of this is fair, some of it really isn't. The rules at Merge have changed DRASTICALLY since June 1st, it's been two months, while we at Lock need to do a much better job of figuring out what we can and can't do, and we certainly bear a fair amount of the responsibility on that, I think it will be much smoother in the coming months, and quite honestly I've already put some processes in place to make sure they do.

In regards to cash outs - I've tried to keep everyone as up to date as possible and have posted a couple of places in the last few weeks that casino side checks are taking ~3 weeks as are poker checks right now. This is largely due to a change in volume as more and more people are requesting via the casino side.

I understand the casino side isn't a perfect nor an elegant solution, but making sure our players got paid was a priority and at the time we put the solution in place poker side checks were taking 6+ weeks and that wasn't something that was acceptable for us when we could offer an alternative solution.

Store - yeah this is a cluster, I'm going to learn to manage it better. I've worked in development, and I know that we developers like to give timelines as 'best case scenarios' because we often believe that's what people want to hear, I'll probably start padding the timelines a little bit better and getting a better idea of how long things take.

I realize I haven't addressed everything below but I think most of them really fall into some overarchign themes. As far as your main question, I've worked in the 'business world' before and am in the 'poker world' now and can definitely say they are two entirely different worlds with different dynamics and politics. I would also say that navigating the current world poker climate is probably different than what any other major business has to deal with, and especially in these stages immediately after Black Friday.

as to your specific comments about me and how I can be so uninformed, I don't really think that's true. I think I'm a bit unusual among room reps in that I'm willing to admit I don't know something and go find the answer rather than make something up and hope I'm close. I talk to the right people every day and am as up to date as possible on everything. There are definitely times I know the answer to something but can't say it because I'm waiting on Merge approval or something like that, but I actually feel like i've been doing a pretty good job at this since I started just a few months ago.

I do, as always, appreciate the feedback and constructive criticism though. And Lock and myself will certainly try and always be improving in the future.

-Rizen

Maybe Rizen can provide some insight on the cashout timeline for me because I dont really understand what could cause 3 week delays on checks.

I mean, i understand the verification process etc. and how that might take a few days to a week to finalize.

But lets say i am a verified player, presumably you have all our deposits is some account that is seperate from other money. If I want to cash out $500 or something, why cant there be a check sent to me tomorrow? I know there might be alot of cashout requests, but hell for $25 a pop I will sit in my bedroom and hand write out these checks/envelopes and bring them to the post office for you. It cant just be that there is a "backlog", how long does it take a computer to print out a check with my address on it and stick it in an envelope?

Is there some limit that the processor has? Like only x amount of checks allowed per day?

I dont mean to come off poorly here, I really am just curious on what the exact holdup is, and what is occurring during these 2-3 week "processing" times.

lots - I think those questions, while probably somewhat simplistic and maybe even ignorant of whatever issues are really at play, are also kind of fair. I honestly don't get it as well. You either have the money or you don't. And if you have the money then just write the stupid checks and put them in an envelope, right?

I agree. This really shouldn't be hard. And I don't see what can be successfully done in 3 weeks or 6 weeks that can't be done in 2 days.

There are a handful of reasons for this.

First - It's not just as simple as us writing a check and sticking it in the mail. I don't really think it ever was, but certainly not in this environment. We have processors write the checks for us after we send them a list of the ones to go out. Any time you add more layers of beaurocracy there are delays. When I worked at Sprint and sent in my reimbursement reports, they often didn't show up for 2 weeks to a month depending on the pay cycle, even though they could have easily reached into petty cash and paid out some of the amounts I was requesting. There was also often a 2-4 week delay from the time I actually worked until the time i was paid for it.

Sure, in all those cases they could have easily written me a check right then, but there are processes it had to go through. To be perfectly fair though this part of the process (sending the list to our processor and having them cut the checks) only takes 2-5 days most of the time.

Second - Every cash out has to go through an audit process on the account prior to approval. So when you request a check, it goes into a queue, and our security team checks the account for any unusual activity prior to cash out. this is important for everyone's protection, as this is one of many ways we catch users who are involved with scams, hacking accounts, and other things of that nature as well as general fraud and cheating.

For most accounts this is a very fast process, for some it is more time consuming. Prior to June (or whenever exactly it was we started doing casino side cashouts for poker players) this volume was extremely low, and requests on the poker side were handled by Merge security. We've literally had a 1000% increase in casino volume in July and our security team has other responsibilities including the audits necessary for checks. Originally this was a ~48 hr process which is now a 7-10 day process just based on volume. For that number to change either the amount of incoming requests has to change or the amount of people working on the security team has to change. We're working on the latter, and now that the network/poker side is doing a little better the former should start to take care of itself a little. We take security VERY seriously as we should, so we can't really just pull people off the street and have them immediately involved, but we're working on getting them up to speed so we can bring the process back down.

so if you look at the things listed:

7-10 REAL days for requests (this is a somewhat vague number that could probably read 2-14 days depending on volume). This is typically the time you see your request in 'requested' status.

2-5 BUSINESS days (could be a few more real days, the processor is basically a bank and works banking hours) for the processor to process the check

3-5 BUSINESS days (although I think FedEx works on saturdays, I'm not 100% sure) for delivery.

This is where my ~3 week time frame comes from. When requests were taking ~48 hrs to get approved on our side that's when the whole process was taking 7-10 days. The extra time is on our end and we're working on bringing that down, but hopefully this adds a little insight into the whole process.

This is also why eWallet cashouts are so much faster. 5-10 days are cut out of the process as we don't have to engage a separate processor to cut the checks.

-Rizen

Thank you for this post Rizen, it was very enlightening.

Obviously it seems like that 2-14 day auditing process is what need to be streamlined and is what you guys are working on. Thanks for your time.

Yes, for a withdraw to be left as "requested" for 20 days tells me that no one has even looked at it. I understand the whole timeframe in sending it to the processor and having them mail the checks out, but it's pretty annoying to see that no one even acknowledged my request for 20 days. Like has previously been stated, thanks for the response on the matter.

I'm having the same problem with vault. It seems like support just doesnt give a ****. They are like if you can't get money out of vault that's your problem.

I think a lot of the blame is on merge, but here is a way to improve things:

Push for a formal merge approval board that holds regularly scheduled meetings. Make this the one body needed to approve skin specific changes such as changes to a VIP system. Add in rules that reversal of any approval takes place at the end of the following month. Proposed changes a skin wants to make need to be approved at least two weeks before roll out.

Stuff like that will cut a little bit into skin agility, but will add loads to stability. Things like the store might slip due to technical issues, but there won't be any sudden changes in things like planned rake races.

Basically I'm proposing a network wide change control board. Feel free to hire me as a cconsultant

Fnord, or they could just make easy to understand rules that don't suck and aren't misinterpreted all over the place. It's clear merge had no idea what they were doing and that the skins were having a difficult time understanding any of it..and that they strongly disagreed with it. The skins are the ones on the front lines trying to get customers and they're kind of stuck. The players think its bad, the skins think its bad, and merge simply doesn't care that they are screwing up their own network...which is really hard to do given the lack of competition in the us.

That's exactly why they need a CCB and why I suggested that once things get approved by it they can't get 'unapproved' without at least 1-2 months lead time. The skins need to be able to provide some predictability and stability to their customers.

btw, CCB's and their ilk are quite common across the commercial world. Change management is still something that gets hosed up a lot everywhere and can have a devastating impact on a business.

I really get the feeling that a lot of the sites and networks out there are run by people who just don't have much experience on the business side. This isn't just merge, it is most of the sites out there. In this case, I really don't think Merge doesn't care, I think they just don't know what to do to mitigate the damage. They appear to be making things up as they go along, but they don't seem to have anything in place to effectively manage all the changes, they look like they are completely in fire fighting mode and that is really bad for long term success.

Oh, and making a set of rules that are easy to understand and don't suck is not an easy task imo. If it were, legislation would be readable and we wouldn't have infinity lawyers arguing about what the placement of a comma means.

This is actually worth expounding on as it may be a big part of the problem. Say Merge makes their rules. Then Lock or some other skin reads them and does something creative. Then Merge goes "wait, that's not something we want to allow, but we didn't think of it." Or somewhere in the process Lock asked someone if it was ok, they said sure, but as it turns out they did not have complete authority to say sure or they changed their mind after talking to other stake holders. I think that probably describes where at least some of these headaches are coming from and brings me full circle to them needing a a better and more formal structure in place so skins and ultimately players don't keep getting jerked around.

To answer the title of this thread, I'm pretty sure Pokerstars knows what they are doing!