phenomenal job by stars, and they do deserve our praise for the speed and fairness they handled this whole situation with.

the people who are complaining about not getting a straight .16 conversion are way off base. no such conversion option ever existed. that was just the best rate you could get through optimal usage, right? i'm sure a large proportion of pre-black friday FPP purchases actually realized a lower rate.

i mean i suspect that the argument could have been made that fpp have no cash value, and tough luck, take it up with the DOJ. that stars instead chose to negotiate a reasonable cash conversion option and achieved it so quickly shows a lot of integrity.

So is it fact that the concierge service is fair game here? Could save people who are short on the $1,500 and $4,000 bonus some nice value...

Pokerstars Steve,

I was told in an e-mail from stars that FPP's had no value,but that I could purchase items with them from the store. I ordered merchandise on the 18th. Then I recieved subsequent e-mails saying that no purchases would be allowed. Today, 2 hours after my last e-mail saying that nothing could be done yet from the VIP team, a thread was started here saying the VIP store was open.

Today the FPP's I spent on the 18th were put back in my account, but my stellar award bonus which I had earned 98.5% of was not credited. I believe in your OP you stated people very close to getting an award would be paid, and that's not happening.

Stars is alleged to have committed bank fraud, not the DOJ

somehow this post made me more sad than all other posts combined. Hope you get some sort of gd news soon.

lol at the people who are arguing against those who are getting fk'd due to the sht conversion rates

stop posting trash you'd never post if you were in their shoes

Ending a sentence with "right?" in a paragraph where you are purporting others to be wrong isn't the best start...

While there is no argument that PS has been lightyears ahead of the other sites in getting our money to us, and I am happy that I have mine, the innacurate arguments and baseless trolling posts from some posters on here just makes PS (and certainly the other sites, for that matter) think, "well hell, why shouldn't we take advantage of these guys? There are plenty of them who are ok with getting screwed as long as they get at least something."

I mean are you guys seriously telling me that if you went to the supermarket and bought a twelve pack, got home and realized that one was missing, you'd be satisfied and say, "well at least I got 11! I don't know why anyone would be pissed that they didn't get 12. It's not like the box was empty!"

I realize I'm talking to a brick wall, because those of you posting naive and ignorant one-sentence comments expressing surprise that anyone would have the gall to point out that EVERYONE is getting screwed will never care that they are being taken advantage of, and will continue to happily be walked over for the rest of their lives.

I have no problem saying Thank you! to PokerStars and PSSteve so far in this process. Hands down we are months ahead of where I thought we'd be at this date. We are also closer to getting our money off of FT thanks in part to PS expediting their own response (being fully aware that the sites are facing different issues despite the players all wanting to lump them together). PokerStars isn't the devil here, but they aren't squeaky clean, either. They made a business decision that harms the players and turns a pretty profit for them. Remaining ignorant/accepting of that as a population of players is a sad reflection of the mentality that a lot of people here covet.

+1. also, why would stars use a straight conversion rate when fpps clearly have always been more valuable the higher your vip status and the larger amount you have?

there would have been no need for fraud without the govt's shifty passing of the uigea in 06...it's like the guy who steals bread to feed his starving family...kinda lol

People that get behind the DOJ and that total BS law in 06 are just ridiculous sheep. Blindly following the rules and just saying the government is right because they are.

WHY did Stars have to do this? To give us our money that's why. The government in the "Land of the Free" decided they would SUPER shadily make it tough for us to play online poker and then the DOJ went after these sites when NO ONE wants this. Who's walking around on the streets thinking... Man I wish our government would spend their time and money oppressing people and telling them they cant do something that is morally identical to things that are already legal ie playing poker in casinos.

The DOJ is way out of line and so is that law. People that actually think that anyone should obey these laws is ridiculous. Those laws are just plain and simply corrupt and wrong.

Steve,
I am quite happy how stars handled themselves through this keeping the players informed regularly. I would love stars to convert all fpps at the rate they can get their highest bonus.

For example:
I have 10,661 fpps at silver star level.
Highest bonus I can purchase is $50 bonus at .011 conversion rate.
Why doesn't stars allow the players to convert all fpps?
10,661.52 x .011= $117.28
As of now I can only withdrawal $100.
I do not mind not getting the $17.28, but for complete transparency sake it would be ideal for stars' players to get full value of everything they have on stars.

I would in fact be willing to ship that $17.28 to stars as they work towards a settlement.

As a lowly bronze/occasional silver star who played there over five years, just wanted to stop by and say thanks to Stars for handling this so well and converting my years of accumulated FPPs.

No concierge:

No

Because until all this happened, there was an implied understanding that FPPs would never expire and you could always go back later and earn a higher status before spending them at a crappy conversion rate. Just because a person is bronze star at a given moment doesn't mean that their FPPs are suddenly only worth 0.01 each forever. That's only the absolute bare minimum they could be worth. If none of this had happened, most people who had 1 million+ points would never have cashed them in for that pathetic rate, they would've at least grinded up to platinum for a month to get a decent one. Life isn't fair, be happy we're getting anything, blah, blah, blah, etc., but don't act like players deserve to get shafted on their conversion rate just because they picked a bad month to let their status lapse.

Even at silver star you could convert them to tournament tickets worth 0.016 per point, so getting only 0.01 is pretty bad.

These guys might be better off leaving them in their accounts until U.S. players can play at stars again. They were pretty happy with them sitting dormant before, why not a little longer?

This really sucks that you can't convert all your FPPs at your VIP level rate or at least be able to concierge anything, very disappointed .

The way I read it, he was referring to people willing to relocate out of this ****ed up country ..

If you are supernova, should you request conceirge service? How do you do that?

I could claim I lost value too...Im a supernova who had 87k FPPs...so I bought a 50k one, a 25k one, and a 10k one and cashed out. I could be complaining that I wasnt given Supernova rates on that money but thats the most rediculous argument ever...I didnt have enough FPPs on April 15th to get the better rate on conversion, so I dont get the better rate. Someone needing the money "badly" doesnt matter to Stars, nor does it matter if someone was "close" to getting a better rate. All that matters is how many FPPs you had on April 15th and what your VIP level was on that day.

People claiming Stars should cut them breaks because it was Stars fault for allegedly breaking US law, the key is the word "allegedly". It's not proven and Stars hasnt admitted guilt so why would they cut breaks for people. Barry Bonds says hi.

Typo, obv. 1.494 million.

Great job pokerstars, Caleb, steve and anyone else from stars reading this Thanks for being so quick about the return of our money and working long and hard to get us our money back. Screw the haters and complainers, If they pass a poker bill and we get Ipoker back in the states Stars will be getting my business.

Thanks again.

I'm reasonably happy with the decision since the alternative could have been we don't get our FPP's. I was hoping we'd all get 62.5 FPP's per $ rate. My next hope was we could redeem ALL FPP's at the VIP level we were at. My next hope was we could just use the store as they are allowing us to do now.

The only thing I think would have been a really good idea was for Stars to offer a limit of one per player instant cash credit for smaller amounts starting @ $40 for 2500 FPP's, $30 for 1875 FPP's, $20 for 1250 FPP's, $10 for 625 FPP's, $5 for 313 FPP's, and $1 for 63 FPP's. They offered deals like this all the time over the years and even did one like it this year. Offering one more to help players clear their account would have been nice, too. But, it's not the end of the world I'll have 2k FPP's unclaimed. Much better than having 235k unclaimed.

Today they sent me this:

then they sent me that

Anyone else having difficulty installing Poker Stars Client? Searched related threads without yielding results. Download page continuously relocates to USA-FAQ. Somewhat counterproductive enabling Frequent Player Point conversion while blocking United States Real Money Application downloads.