anyone have a successful move to New Zealand ?

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!

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

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..

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

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

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!

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

Hi there, we have about 40 players living in Jaco currently and there certainly is surf almost everyday and more extreme further down the coast in Hermosa (10 mins drive). If you want to have a free consultation with us please drop us a line at info@pokerrefugees.com. We looking forward to talking to you.

I'm wondering why Belize is not a top ten destination for poker players. Is the internet or power grid too much of an issue?

Hola, despite Belize being a generally safe destination and English-speaking country, based on our research and speaking with foreigners who own property there, the infrastructure is considered unreliable with internet speeds slow and very costly compared to other countries. Since Internet is one of the most important factors we look at when considering a country for a possible option, we saw too many issues to offer Belize. There are also other countries in Latin America with better Internet in addition to the great scenery and climate.

Hope this helps!

^K

Thank you for the response. I'm not really a closed minded American, just not well traveled, and concerned about the language barrier. In your opinion, how much should I concern myself with this in your recommended Latin countries?

Should I simply start putting in as much time to learn the language as I have to learn poker?

You probably deal with this all the time, but my priorites in order of importance for moving are probably Safety/Cost of Living/ Internet/Language Barrier. As I'm older than the average poker player, I'm more interested in the laid back life than the party life.

Which countries would you suggest I look into?

Thanks,
Rick

Hi Rick,

I think that learning Spanish is a concern for many players because it can be intimidating to live in a country where you don't speak the native language. Despite this, very few of our players take Spanish classes and seem to do just fine. We recommend even some tutoring to learn the basics as classes are cheap. English is more prevalent in the coastal areas of Spanish-speaking countries where there is more tourism.

I became fluent in Spanish in 2002 and it has been valuable in my life, living in Central America and traveling throughout Latin America. It definitely can only help you to learn, even in the US these days as the Latin population grows. But you can go at your own pace.

Regarding countries, we've had to discount many in Latin America due to the crime rate and poor infrastructure. However, the top list for poker players includes:

Central America:
Costa Rica - Low crime rate, internet up to 10MB and friendly population; lots of foreign expats (people who have relocated); prevalent English on the coast
Mexico - The tourist towns in Baja and the Caribbean are safer than the interior; cost of living is very low
Panama - Has the best combination of infrastructure, safety and cost of living. The major con here is that opening a bank account can be costly and time consuming.

South America:
Argentina
Chile
Colombia

Most people prefer Central America due to the closer proximity to the US, more English-speakers and less expensive travel to and from the countries.

The countries with the most poker players are Costa Rica and Mexico.

Let us know if you need more detail!

I haven't been able to find information about "Hermosa." Is it Playa Hermosa (seems further than 10min)? Jaco doesn't seem like the place for me. Too much of a party scene. I like the idea of oceans, but would prefer a more relaxed scene. Or am I mistaken about Jaco?

It's true; Jaco is quite the party scene. However, there are quite a few areas just 10-20 min north or south with really quiet residential neighborhoods but it's ideal to have a car or be okay paying taxis when you want to go to "town". That's where Hermosa would be a better fit, or north of Los Sueños.

There are more relaxed beach towns with less of a party scenes but without the internet and infrastructure to handle online poker. The party scene usually goes where there are the most restaurants, clubs, tourism and hence infrastructure. That being said, there are beach towns with solid infrastructure but a more quiet community. Some examples are Samara or Flamingo in Guanacaste or Manuel Antonio in the SW.

Hey there, very cool service you're offering here. I've been wanting to travel/relocate quite a bit lately and I had a few questions about your services. First, I have never supplemented my income by playing poker however I have the money to make this move/afford living expenses. Is it easy to transfer $$ from US bank account to a Costa Rican bank or would I have to travel with cash? Secondly, I have never had a pokerstars account, is it easy/possible to open one with my new residence? Thanks in advance for any replies.

Hi!

Nice to meet you!

In answer to your questions:

1.Standard wire transfers from Costa Rican banks to US banks vary from bank to bank. Some require you to go into the branch to request the transfer, some have the facility to make transfers online and others require you to email your account handler to facilitate the transfer.

2. It is possible to open a new Poker Stars account in your new country of residency so long as you have the correct documentation as required by Poker Stars. We always ensure our clients have the correct documents and guide them through this process.

I hope this helps and if you want to speak with us directly please do hesitate to contact us at info@pokerrefugees.com.

Best regards

Nicki

Great, thanks for the quick and informative response. I'm 90% committed to making a move happen in my life in the next 2-3 months. I will be sure to get in touch with you guys when I decide to make it happen, thanks again.

You're welcome; we're here when you're ready!

^Kristin

This article about online poker features a large group of Poker Refugees' clients and gives insight into why they came to Costa Rica and how they feel about the state of US regulation.

Online poker may need some help from 2p2-ers in the comments section as it looks like people still may not understand what professional poker is...

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2012/0...companies.html

Hi All,

Just updating to say that Kristin has been in contact with me privately. While it didn't work out perfectly, think she did the best she could with it and was handled reasonably in the aftermath.

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to post that today is our 1 year anniversary of the founding of Poker Refugees.

We're really honored to have helped so many poker players, even though at the beginning, 'poker relocation' was a completely new concept.

Our goal has been to provide options for players to move and continue their passion of playing online poker while transmuting some of the negativity and effects of Black Friday. In addition, to help players outside of the US travel the world in a stress-free way.

Thanks to everyone who has trusted us with handling their big transitions to a new country and we look forward to continuing to help players as long as we're needed!

~Kristin Wilson

Care to comment on this thread?

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28.../#post34601258