Hi all,

I apologize for the delay in my post to address the recent issues around the final events of our GSSS series.

You can find our official response to the community regarding the issues experienced on our blog:

http://nj.partypoker.com/blog/respon...day-night.html

As always, feedback welcome.

Kind regards,

Colette

Verizon has confirmed to numerous people that it was not a problem on their end. The connectivity issues have not ceased to exist. Many many many people are having the same exact problem. Keep passing the buck onto Verizon though. It's obviously them. That's why every other poker site, website, etc, works flawlessly. Again your piece of **** software costs tons of your customers money and your only response is to try passing the blame. Go out of business already, you don't deserve a god damn cent for your "services". ****ing disgraceful.

Is it legal to allow people to put money into play knowing full well that they will disconnect and be ****ed out of that money?

I am fuming a bit right now about some incorrect information posted in Party Poker's blog titled, "Our response to the last events of our 2nd Garden State Super Series on Sunday night"

The ISP Section of the post is incorrect and full of misinformation. Jeffrey Haas(Party Poker's Group Director), states the following(his comments are in bold, my response to each idea is italicized...

The ISP he is referencing, but will not name for probably legal issues or not to deter players/new players from still trying to play is Verizon FIOS. He is right users using Verizon FIOS have had connectivity issues for the past week, and the problem continues to happen as late as last night. At least he acknowledges that it was the biggest factor for disconnection issues. My problem is when Jeffrey, states, 'The problem is beyond our control." That statement is misleading and just false. Verizon FIOS is not to blame for the issue. It is a server side issue on behalf of Borgota/Party Poker. I say this because I have experience as a network administrator and understand how servers and networks connect/work. Verizon is the middle man between us players and the Borgota/Party Poker servers. One of two things occurred due to the network setup of Party Poker.., First, Verizon's DNS might have been rejected because of the overwhelming amount of users trying to access certain ports on Party Poker's server side, whether the firewall, proxy, or actually server rejected/limited the connections is only something Party Poker's network guys would know. It's a safety measure to limit port access to guard against DDOS attacks, and hamper down the system. The other possibility is that Party Poker's server's have not been configured correctly to accept certain addresses from Verizon FIOS. This would still be Party Poker's fault due to not configuring their network correctly. Either way both problems are on Party Poker's end and they still want to push blame on to Verizon. Unacceptable. I know user Niss contacted Verizon and they tried trouble shoot to no avail. I also called FIOS yesterday since they are my ISP provider and talked to actual Network Administrators who agreed the problem is on Party Poker's server side. This is such a big deal to me because the problem can only be fixed once Party Poker understand the issues is on their end!!!!

Careful, I appreciate and I am sure other players goodwill, but what happens when Party Poker realizes the issue is on their server side? Will they then reissue a new apology and admit that us players who had issues deserved to be credited, not because of their Goodwill? The lack of true responsibility for the issues is disheartening.

Lastly, I am happy that they are continuing to investigate what is going on, but I hope they keep us updated, whether it'd be this forum or their blog. This is a problem that needs to be resolved urgently, and I hope Mr. Haas understands that.


All feedback agreeing or disagreeing is welcome because I know I am not always right and there are things my mind might have missed. Thank you all.

If you have come to find that it is an isolated problem with all Verizon Fios users, why are you not announcing such problem publicly and suggesting that they DO NOT play on your site because they are guaranteed to be constantly disconnected and booted from the software. You are allowing tons and tons of customers to continue to give you rake with no chance of actually winning. People are getting timed out of pots in cash games over and over. People are getting blinded out of tournaments constantly. Your response to such issues is to call Verizon. Are you serious? EVERYTHING ELSE WORKS WITH VERIZON BESIDES YOUR SITE. WSOP works flawlessly. IT IS YOUR PROBLEM.

Again, this can't be legal to allow people to play on your site and collect rake from them when they essentially have no shot of winning. You are running a scam. I have been unable to complete a single tournament with all the disconnects.

I assure you that there are many people who work in IT in one form or another who are also users of Party / Borgata. Not all network engineers have the same level of understanding of the back-end systems that are needed to keep these sites operating properly.

I don't think it's wise for us to diagnose their problems publicly from afar. None of us has administrator access to any of their systems. And in the end it's their responsibility to fix it. Believe me I have my own ideas about their system, software and network issues.

I largely agree with the points you made. Yet I feel like we are missing a key point here. This announcement says that these problems started on the last day of the GSSS. Many of us have been reporting the exact same problems for weeks / months / etc. This is just another SLAP IN THE FACE to all those who were told over and over that there was no issue or that the issue was "our fault" in some way.

The issues were only further clouded by those who jumped the gun and assumed this was because they were on Verizon. Please note the following.

1. Verizon Fios serves millions of customers. It is not likely that all the people on Verizon's network had these disconnection issues. The number of complaints would be much greater if everybody on Fios was experiencing this problem.

2. I have had the exact same issues while connected via other ISPs including Optimum Online / Cablevision.

3. Many people who use Fios admit these problems do not happen all the time. This applies to me as well. I had problems a while back, and then went through a period where it seemed like the problems had been resolved. Just in time for the GSSS, not only did the problems resurface but it seemed like more varieties of them cropped up.

4. Every trace points to network servers / services controlled by Party / Borgata.

I think there are many people at Party who are working hard to try to deliver a great product to us. I feel for those people. But before we quibble over the EASY stuff, somebody needs to dramatically change the culture. Users who call to report a problem should not be blamed for the problem by default. Somebody trained customer service that unless every single user in a tournament is disconnected, any individual user who reports the problem is somehow the cause of it. I know I called less often because I was tired of hearing it was on "my end." Maybe if they had a real help-desk function they would have identified and fixed the real problems sooner.

Fixing network problems and technology problems are not the biggest challenges here.

A close friend was at the final table of one of the sunday 200s months ago. With 5 people remaining, 3 of them were disconnected. They were unable to log back in. All 3 were blinded off. Party's response was that it was their ISP and to call Optimum. This was probably almost a year ago. Optimum then, Verizon now. At no point has it ever been Party's fault though. They offered nothing in compensation for this. They were forced to blind out. Amazing..

FWIW they had the same problem that many users have had, myself included.. the inability to get a login screen to load after being disconnected. Also, Internet Explorer, Chrome, WSOP, etc. all functioned properly while Optimum was "messed up". Just like Verizon has every day lately. Zero connectivity problems with anything else, except for YOU, Party. (At some point, could it POSSIBLY be a YOU problem?!)

That is a very troubling story. I think it's also very odd how Party seems to randomly decide to compensate people in some situations and not others, like with this past weekend's problems.

Would it be possible to obtain a date for which weekend that final table occurred? That could be relevant information going forward.

All of this information does help in terms of troubleshooting what the problem is. I think it's important for us as users to report our problems. But we must respect the dividing line. So I repeat, I think it's better if we don't try to publicly troubleshoot why these issues are occurring. Let's do our job of reporting these problems in as much detail as possible, and hopefully Party will step up to the plate in fixing these problems.

You are correct, but thats why the first option I listed for port congestion being an issue, because once a port reaches a bandwidth limit they restrict access or start turnover. So of course not all Verizon customers would suffer disconnects, but a certain population would. Remember not all Verizon customers are on 2 + 2 to report such issues, so the group that has reported issues on here prob is small sample representing a much larger one.

This is interesting because you are the first user who I have seen that has posted with connectivity issues within the past 2 weeks using those ISP's. Are you talking about disconnection/connection issues for the MFC issue? Wanted to make sure we are on the same page. Also if the problem is happening with other ISP's then that could further prove my point. This is a server configuration issue on PP side. Ports aren't open or are too restricted. Def needs to be investigated further.

The same goes for me. This problem does not always happen. Usually it is during peak hours for traffic. Sometimes it happens during other hours, but for the most part it is during peak hours. I usually have to wait until 11PMish to sign-on with no issues. The problems have been happening for the past 2 weeks for me.

Agreed

I agree with everything you said, and you are 100% right about the culture issue being overlooked. There is a culture within PP where from what I have experienced and others have explained that the help desk people are being taught incorrectly. They quickly push the blame of issues onto the customers rather than doing the due diligence to see that some of the problems are actually on PP's end. That must change to improve the service provided, and solve the actual problems that exist.

The 2 diagnosis's I listed are such basic analysis of what I believe is happening on Party Pokers end and I stated in such broad terms for a reason. I know the PP rep and staff will read the post and have a starting point to look at my analysis. I didn't get into what Network/IT Certificates I have because it doesn't matter. The issues I listed are so easily understood by most basic techies that I want to speak in layman terms so hopefully most users understand me, and better yet PP does too. Thank you for your response and help.

Together we can solve the issue.

Why attempt to fix anything? This has been ongoing since their introduction to the market.

Move on guys

Switch to a different site. Even with the Fios "phantom", there are no disconnect issues anywhere else..

As evidenced in my thread about their top management straight up lying, they requested HH, screenshots, times, etc. for all of my issues. For a month I was collecting and giving them this data. They did absolutely NOTHING. When I met them in person, they assured me that the new customer service team being implemented on May 1 ( I believe that was the date) would be much improved and would absolutely handle my case. This has been going on for a year now. They have never looked into all of my issues. So no, I am not going to continually waste my time providing them with details. They continue to spit in the face of everyone. Over and over, they have essentially spoken into a megaphone "WE DON'T GIVE A **** ABOUT ANY OF YOU, JUST SHUT THE **** UP AND PAY US RAKE. IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, LEAVE."

It is my personal experience with Party Poker that I have had no issues until the last 2 weeks so that is why I continue to try to help, and want to stay on this site.

I like the quick and reliable withdrawal methods, and player pool during peak hours. I don't want to give up on this site yet because most of my experience has been pleasant.

I understand the way you feel. I never had any problem withdrawing there either. But the other sites are just as easy.

To each his own, I guess.

Pretty lousy response from Party regarding GSSS issues, as expected.

I have Verizon Fios and the only connection issue I have is on Party/Borgata. All other forms of internet connectivity are extremely stable, except for Party and Borgata poker clients. Clearly the issue lies on their side, whether they choose to admit that or not. Every statement they release comes with some form of deflection and it's getting old.

They GTD $30K for first in the $150K Main Event yet didn't have the proper payout scale in place in order to do so? Why time after time again, every series you have run there is some issue with structuring payouts? Party/Borgata staff need to be more prepared for the series they run, it's unacceptable. If you promote a certain aspect/GTD/highlight of your series - make sure it's in place, it should be on the top of your priorities.

The surge of players coming from Borgata getting kicked offline/having connection issues is pretty sad. Again, this just shows the lack of preparation on Party/Borgata side. Knowing there is a massive series going on at Borgata, one of, if not the largest series they run every year and the lack of protocols in place to handle the influx of players is just poor form.

Hey Party Rep . nothing about the unused gss tix issue? cool.

Got confirmation from NJDGE today that they received my official dispute and are reviewing.

Hi

We sent an email to all with details for added tournaments running until the 8th Feb which can be entered using unused GSSS tickets.

Regarding comments above and in other threads for the conversion of GSSS tickets to T$ I have collated these and sent them along to the PRM to review and feedback

Thanks,

Colette

Its infuriating to receive calls and emails telling me the problems are solved when they clearly are not. It takes me over a minute to open the software at home(I have FIOS) and the tables just dont load when you open them. Please a)fix it b)stop sending me emails telling me its fixed when it's not.

Really sad to see Party/Borgata admit to connection issues on their end yet do nothing about it and just deflect blame elsewhere. Did anyone else have connection issues during the $500 - $50? I find it hard to believe I'm the only player in the tournament that had connection issues. If so, should make for a case that I was the only player at a disadvantage yet Party/Borgata do nothing about it.

Not sure about anyone else, but I was blinded down in some of the GSSS events to the point where my call was an AI (or very close to it) so the fact that Party/Borgata says I went all in after having disconnection issues makes no sense and is yet another form of deflection from an unprepared company trying to run an online tournament series.

Of course I went all in, of course I tried to play, why wouldn't I? Do you expect me to just sit out while having connection issues? No we all tried as hard as we could to chip back up and ride out the connection issues until things were stable again. All of us who had disconnection issues were at a severe disadvantage against those who did not, and the fact Party/Borgata choose to do nothing about this is a complete disaster.

From what I gather it seems like they wanted you to sit out and just stay out of the game if you were having issues. I doubt agree with this at all. If this is the precedent and the case they should instruct players to sit out the rest of the game. I think any player would desperately jump back in and try to recover.

OF COURSE YOU WENT ALL-IN ,EVENTUALLY YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN BLINDED OUT SO SLOW THAT THE LAST ACTION IS AN ALL-IN, DUHHH PARTY POKER!!!

There is a lot of deflection here. Not very happy about it. I am starting to look into WSOP. They keep sending me tons of e-mail promotions.

Finally, someone had the good sense to take this to the NJDGE. Others should consider doing the same so they are aware of the scope of the problem.

It pains me to have to state what is obvious to me Colette. I always knew there would be problems with this policy of allowing tickets to be used on randomly selected tournaments till February 8th.

Never mind that players are having their choices taken from them. Add the fact that none of these tournaments are equivalent to GSSS events, in terms of guarantee or any other metric.

The even higher number of connection / login issues that are happening right now basically guarantee that many of us, including me, have no way to use our tickets by February 8th. And this only reinforces the point that more of these tickets would have been used in the first place if PartyPoker were not 1) Experiencing so many disconnection / crashing / software issues 2) scaring customers from playing by using a policy that basically is designed to never refund people if the software locks them out during a tournament.

A policy that cannot be used is no policy at all. There is only one solution. Convert these tickets to regular tournament dollars as has been done in the past. Let the players decide how and when they will spend them.

November 18th I emailed this (among other things concerning lack of presence on the boards, and the awful schedule) to Jordan Palamar (Customer Service Coordinator)

"Also, technically, have had issues with the client crashing literally every session I play. Locks up all my tables across all clients. Fixable when I shut down the task and start up again, but as I'm playing 8-11 tables usually it costs me dearly. I know I'm not the only one who experiences this so I hope its being worked on. "

November 30th

"Was in the middle of a hand in the lunchtime tournament, get the dreaded disconnect sign and after a short delay Im out of the tournament with no record of what happened. "

December 1st

"Is now locking up my whole comp and refuses to open. Im blinding out, losing equity on other sites when I get locked up and frankly Im sick of it. I started playing cash games to make up for your lack of a daytime schedule but Im ready to bring my rake to 888 because you arent worth the headache."


The only response I get from them include sending a screenshot and a tracer report. No real help ever.

Over the next month and a half I send a few tweets to them complaining about disconnects and lock outs. No response.

During GSSS 2 (before the last Sunday disaster) I sent them tweets on 3 or 4 different days complaining about disconnects and invisible cards. No response.

During Sunday disaster I tweet at them while I am locked out and the client wouldnt even load for me while Im 5 tabling GSSS Main events (22 and 23). Got disconnected in the middle of two humongous tourney changing hands, the same disastrous stories as a lot of others have.

They call me to try to see exactly what the problem is and get information from me.. Guy was pretty clueless but thats expected. He did get all the barebones info about the tournaments I was playing and told me I would be contacted for a follow up soon. Rest of the night was worthless and I ended up throwing hundreds of dollars away.

I wait a couple days and email them in reference to the well known Sunday disaster.... (Jan 28)

"So you guys knew it was a big enough problem to call me and get detail from me during the problems on Sunday, but haven't followed up or anything?

I, along with many other of your once loyal customer base, feel cheated. We want answers, what is going on guys?"

They tell me they are escalating it.

Meanwhile Im complaining about how everyone is being treated on Twitter almost everyday and they just ignore me.

I sent this to them last night

"ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZ ZZZZ"

And the response I get is

"Dear Richard,

Thank you for contacting Borgata Online Gaming Customer Service.

I would like to confirm that we still haven't received a response from our Technical Team regarding the issue with the GSSS #10 High - $10,000 GTD you have reported but I can assure it is being looked into and once we have an update we will contact you again.

If you have any other queries please specify them as your e-mail is unclear."

GSSS 10? What in the mother****? Over a week later and not only do they not have an answer but they dont even know the ****ing question.

I really hope nobody believes that players only had problems the last day of GSSS. That is a blatant lie. What a ****show.

My twitter is @Rich_Rodrigo if you want to go back and see how many times I tweeted at them about problems. Can provide screenshots of all emails too.

Hi all

Following on from our communication on the 29th Jan, I would like to share an updated statement posted today on our blog.

http://nj.partypoker.com/blog/gsss-ii-goodwill.html

Kind regards,

Colette

Colette, please forgive me but I am confused.

This statement is appreciated but it seems focused on the issues that occurred on the last day and after the GSSS, namely the ISP connection problems. For the record, though I have reported numerous problems I have never received any "goodwill" amounts of any kind.

These problems are separate and apart from those that created problems for many before and during the GSSS. While the original statement from 2 weeks ago mentions "goodwill" I have no idea how they determined who would receive that or how much it would be. Once again, I received nothing.

Finally, the issue of the tickets expiring was never addressed. Those who wanted to use those tickets in alternate tournaments were in many cases limited by the connection problems of the last few weeks. It's nice that there are less of them this week, but that is still not a solution.

Today is D-Day based on the original statement. Are the GSSS tickets going to be converted to tournament $?

obviously they will not convert. and at this point i hope they dont. that would just be another slap in the face at this point. saying " you now have to use the tix, AND you only have until the 8th to do so....and then now we changed are mind after the fact again and after everyone has already used the tix... yeah well now we will convert the tix."


I had to rearrange my schedule to make room to play my 6 unused tix this week. After having to arrange my schedule to play in the GSSS events in the first place. So yeah if they say they will convert unused tix past their bs deadline that would be one more BS **** up.

Ive already planned to WD all funds after my T$ and tix are used up. f PPNJ