Party and the Cryptos do this, but I've received emails from all of them beforehand. Also, I'm pretty sure it's nothing as egregious as 10%.

Hi,

Please give this guy his money back, this is ridiculous. It's even more ridiculous that I have to find out about this practice only through one of your players who has been victimized. I plan on keeping a much smaller balance on Pacific in the future.

Sincerely,

AC

---

Thanks for the warning, OP.

I'm also going to show my affiliate my Email and this thread, because this year Pacific removed my player points for a few months, costing me a good $1,000! They claimed the points were only for 'losing players' who needed incentive to play there. My affiliate busted their balls for me on the front page of his very popular rakeback/strategy site, maybe he'll do the same for you.

If you cannot write a coherent sentence, how are they ever meant to understand the circumstances. And best i can tell you didnt deserve to have kept the money anyway.

Dunno if its relevent to this case, but ive had like $6 sat in Ladbrokes for almost 4 years that ive never touched and they occassionally send me an email about. There is no justifiable reason whatsoever for a site to take money back off a player because they havent logged into the site. Data storage is virtually free its so inexpensive nowadays (plus would require a couple of kilobytes at most anyway) and its ridic to claim that this has anything to do with money laundering. In fact, i cant think of anything it is less likely to do than stop money laundering, other than keep customers once they hear about it that is

Actually, no. The "fee" remains constant as 10% of the balance at the start of the period it becomes labeled dormant. 10 months after being labeled dormant, every account will have a balance of $0.

Not to derail this thread, but, here's a contrast...

A couple years ago BET365 got a lot of heat for abusing bonus whores, changing bonus terms mid-bonus and refusing to pay out bonuses. At that time, I had twenty dollars and change on there. I never bothered to cash it out but I also stopped playing there (it was never one of my main sites, just some freeroll money I picked up or something and was gonna try to work up into a real roll when I wanted a break from my real games).

Anyway, I haven't logged on or played at Bet365 since Jan of 2006.

So this thread reminded me that I had that twenty bucks still there and I decided to go check to see if i would still be there. Obviously I expected it to be gone and the account possibly closed after more than 2 years of inactivity. I believe they've changed networks at least once if not twice since the last time I was there after well over 2 years.

But the money is still there! $24.08 not a penny short!

So there ya go, a site that was universally derided on 2+2 as scummy, shady and reprehensible. And even they didn't touch a dime.

If 888 does not suit then I believe there are a couple of sites out there looking for players with your skill-set.

I just had a quick look at Party T&C and it seems like they charge 5 Euro per month after a period of six months inactivity. Not 100% certain as I am on the 'Inactive Acount Fee schedule' page which also contains the following -

Note: The amount €5.00 EUR is used only as an example. You should consult the Inactive Account Fee Schedule for the Inactive Account Fee amount.

Pacific Poker will probably take all the emails of people who contacted them about this and sell them to a bunch of spamhappy sportsbooks.

QFT

Notice that I did say they should be sending notifications of dormant accounts. Your suggestion of snail mail also makes sense.

Saying this is clearly an attempt to steal money and nothing more is just wrong. That may be part of their motivation (although they would probably not decribe it such terms) but it certainly is not all of it. Even a bank in Canada doesn't keep your account on file forever. After 10 years of dormancy they turn the balance over to the Bank of Canada and they hold it for another 30 years. After that the money is theirs. We can't expect a business like a poker site to have this much leniency. The Canadian banks only do this because they have to by law.

Once again, someone didn't read my post. Note that I said that I think its overboard. I did not state it as fact. You are entitled to your opinion. Also note that I suggested their policy should perhaps be 12 or 24 months for dormant accounts. I agree that 6 months seems unacceptable.

I'm not on Pacific's side on this. I think their policy is bad. I think they could make some changes (like the time frame and their notification policy) and everyone could be happy. I just think any reasonable person should acknowledge that Pacific has the right to charge you/confiscate funds after a certain period of dormancy if they try and fail to get in touch with you.

We're all entitled to have an opinion. In this instance, your opinion is clearly wrong as is clear from the overwhelming number of responses which are both disgusted and disturbed by this unethical practice.

Of course they have the "right" to enforce such a policy. That doesn't make it ethical. Neither PS or FTP have a similar policy.

My opinion is not clearly wrong. I have an educated opinion that is not just based on a dream world where businesses do what is the best for their customers at all times. In the REAL WORLD businesses consider their own interests. In your dream world I guess Pacific would hire a private detective to find you and hand deliver the money in cash and thank you for your business while they are at it?

Seriously, how naive are people to expect ethical policies from online poker sites or any business for that matter? For example, Full Tilt's policy is they can change their terms and conditions at any time without telling us but its our responsibility to check their site for updates. This is standard for many companies. Is that ethical? Just think of all the bad things they could do with that policy if they wanted to.

All I am saying is Pacific should give accounts longer before they are considered idle and then try to notify people. I do not expect them to be ethical, I just expect them to be reasonable.

Here is a copy and paste from Cake's T&Cs. I guess we should all boycott them too.

http://cakepoker.com/Legal/TOS.aspx

15. ABANDONMENT OF ACCOUNT BALANCE: CAKE If You do not access Your CAKE account by "logging in" to Your account using Your E-mail and password for a period of three hundred and sixty five (365) days, Your account will be closed and the entire Account Balance and all promotional items including all of Your Share Cake referral bonuses will be deemed abandoned and forfeited; provided however, that this requirement for login and entry is not and does not constitute any condition whatsoever for You to play any game, deposit funds or participate in any activity at CAKE other than logging in.

why are you withholding this information from the public? so you can blackmail them in the future? just tell us, lol.

thats a pretty harsh penalty, i wonder if cake sends a warning email a few days before. something tells me they dont.

Just another reason to not play at UB (not that any of us play there anyway right?)

http://www.ultimatebet.com/user-agreement

12. ABANDONMENT OF ACCOUNT BALANCE.

If you do not access your UltimateBet account by "logging in" to your Account by using your User ID and password for a period of one hundred and eighty (180) days, your Account will be closed and the entire Account Balance will be deemed abandoned and forfeited; provided however, such requirement for log in and entry is not and does not constitute any requirement whatsoever for you to play any Game, deposit funds or participate in any activity at UltimateBet other than logging in.

And AP is even worse

http://www.absolutepoker.com/support/userAgreement.asp

12. ABANDONMENT OF ACCOUNT BALANCE.
If you do not access your AbsolutePoker account by "logging in" to your Account by using your User ID and password for a period of ninety (90) days, your Account will be closed and the entire Account Balance will be deemed abandoned and forfeited; provided however, such requirement for log in and entry is not and does not constitute any requirement whatsoever for you to play any Game, deposit funds or participate in any activity at AbsolutePoker other than logging in.

90 days wow thats insane, i stil get my rakeback referrals sent there, i hope it hasnt been 90 days since i logged in. unreal. 90days! wtf u gotta be kidding me. this needs to be stickied once this thread dies.

edit: good news my monies is still there. lol i dont have enough money to withdraw darnit. my only option is to transfer to UB. I guess I will have to wait until next month.

edit: yeah i bet you are right, bobo.

Don't panic yet. Just because it's in their T&C's doesn't mean they actually enforce it. I have a feeling that if they actually did this (with or without warning), we'd have seen more than a few outraged 2+2ers posting about it long before now.

Funny, poker sites taking the advantage of the privacy of the internet. I would really like to talk to people who made these policies IN PERSON and see them defend them. They keep quoting the T&Cs in emails like robots.

I mean could you imagine any live business that would have such a ridiculous policy or something similar? Im sure some would like to, but Im sure the thought of having to deal face to face with people about the policy is enough to scare them straight.

This is just an exploitation of the online privacy and legal blanket that online businesses receive, and its too bad that it gives other legitimate sites bad names.

Anyway, I sent them an email. The other two sites' (UB and somethin...) made me even more mad. 90 days?? Jesus. There has to be something that can be done about that.

/steam

I hope you get your money back OP.

Derail to give you an idea of the shadiness of 888: I strongly considered to come out of lurking 2+2 about 3 months ago when 888 screwed me over. It was a satellite where the tournament lobby showed conflicting payout info (!), I bubbled the sat (finished 4th) and should've received ~500$ but instead they only gave me 250$ and the other 250$ to 5th and 6th place. Their customer support took a completely ridiculous stance on that matter and they continuously promised me to 'get back within 48hrs' which never happened. Then some higher representative saw my case, agreed with me and admitted to their mistake, gave me a small bonus (15$, weee!) and promised me to forward my matter. Which never happened, so I withdrew all my funds. I was a bit scared not to be taken seriously back then and it was only 250$ so I didn't post it. After seing the overwhelming support OP got, I now know I made a mistake. Now it's my 5th post, I see the irony of this. \Derail

Seing all these emails reminds me of this time. I really, really hope you get your money back, OP.

"oh we're still keeping your money but why not check out our forum, oh and we have an $80K guarantee tourney"



So you go to their own forum and what do you find? Threads from other players getting scammed in the same way as OP

http://forums.888.com/shwmessage.asp...ssageID=102900

thats nuts, my friend is thinking about opening a 2nd account and he is pretty stubborn about Pacific , but I'm pretty sure after reading this thread he will change his mind.And OP I hope you get your money back

Someone mentioned it already but under English law these terms are most probably illegal under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 - I think this came about from an EU Directive so this would probably be illegal anywhere in the EU. In England the Office of Fair Trading can challenge these terms before they have been relied upon - you could contact them (probably wouldnt do anything). You could rely on the legislation as an individual though.

By the way OP, if they had given your money back, would you have kicked up such a fuss?

I once had the pleasure of interviewing a guy who'd worked for Pacific Support. One of the Q's I asked him, was how did he think they performed, and what they could do better? He told me that they were the best in the business at customer support. The rest of the interview was me going through the motions of a fair interview, with someone who had failed in a huge way already.

If after 90 days your Purple Lounge account shows no activity it will be considered dormant. In this eventuality, on the first day of every subsequent month, a dormancy fee of $2 (or currency equivalent) will be levied should there be an account balance. This charge will remain in place until the account becomes active again and no longer dormant or if the account balance reaches zero. Thereafter, should an account remain dormant or inactive with no account transactions for a period exceeding 30 months and where the account also has a balance Purple Lounge shall attempt to contact the account holder with a view to return any remaining funds. Should this not be possible, then the remaining balance (if any) within that account shall be remitted to the Lottery and gaming Authority(LGA) of Malta.

It´s not like perfect, but for me this is perfectly acceptable!
In opposition to pacifics utter bull****.