Wtf this is madness. Is this every email from them? Keep bumping pokerstars twitter or try make this public as possible. Never seen a case like this. Strange es allows u to.withdraw but .com /.eu wont.

Im sure there is some kind of error of communication? Or there is something we are completely missing/overseeing.

Hope you get this sorted

The emails from Stars have grammatical errors "witch" would not have happened in the past, so I am kind of with Josem that this feels more like a single person not being ideal in handling whatever this is (and usually these situations have more info than the <10 post OPs provide (which the emails cannot always show) so hard to remove that as a possibility). Removing +EV players beliefs venture into tin foil hat territory, and those detours usually distract from whatever the actual issue is, so hopefully more information will be forthcoming.

Still, the customer service has not been anything close to what it used to be, and that is disappointing.

Post #22 says they're keeping your money, and post #25 says they're allowing you to have it. Does that mean they're keeping your money on .COM/.EU and allowing you to withdraw on .ES?

I'd escalate this for further review, this just seems like incoherent nonsense from them, probably some poorly trained/performing staff member, rather than a deliberate and considered decision.

If i am not misunderstanding something OP in post #25 shows that he got email from .com (image shown is from @stars.com) that he can withdraw and noted that also got same email from .es and can withdraw from both clients.

Yes, I received the same e-mail from .es and from .com/.eu. They allow me to withdraw from both sites.
These e-mails came in right after I gave the support **** on twitter posting the screen of the e-mail stating my balance will stay frozen.

I also saw that with the grammatical errors. Super odd... Stars definitely lost a good amount of respect to me. Their support was always top. Not sure what happened in the past months..

It's probably hard to hire high-quality staff in Bulgaria:

Are you really saying that people from a particular country just aren't good enough? Really?

-BD

holy crap this thread scares me quite a bit. My account got frozen after I requested a time out for a week and now the account is still frozen. Only a day has passed so I think the support is just way slower then usually. but since it never took them longer than 1 or 2 hours to reactivate my account this thread makes things a bit more concerning...what bothers me most though is that I got no information about the freezing and support is so far not responding to emails.

OP, you are allowed to withdraw money, but are you able to play?

Of course I never said.

I'm comfortable saying that I believe it is much easier to find high quality, English-writing staff in England and Australia (and even Costa Rica!) than Bulgaria. That is, after all, a key reason for why Isai and Mark established PokerStars support offices in those places.

I can't play. My account status is frozen the moment I try to log in. I think they want to do the withdrawal for me and then permanently close my accounts.

Either way, not even having the courage to give me an explanation of why they are doing this, is something that should discourage players from playing there since this can basically happen to anybody for whatever random reason that comes to their mind.

@SickZac
I had this problem in the past as well, usually gets resolved quite fast, guess you won't have to worry about it. But who knows what's going on these days...

If you can't understand what Josem was getting at, then probably the internet isn't a good place for you to be. I can't imagine how often you must get offended/need to get on your moral high horse if you had to take issue with his post....

Well, maybe "who knows," but more likely there is something we do not know that would explain this better. They did not pick you because you were +EV or as some sort of let's ban a few users lottery. You did (intentionally or not) something that got interpreted as violating their rules.

I agree it would be better if Stars included more detailed information, but many times in threads like this (especially with new posters) there is an inherent lie by ommission element to it, and Cry Like a River is not here any more to investigate them (those were pretty funny when he did).

I suspect if you really think about it that you can figure out what you did (shared computers, VPNs, whatever) that is causing the issue, so I cannot see your post as any form of boogeyman for others, other than we all agree that the support level at Pokerstars is a fraction of what it once was, but even in the better days these threads happened all the time with <10 post OPs.

I agree with you, they must have a reason. BUT: I also disagree that I have to know the reason just by thinking about it. Because I honestly don't know why they did that. Logging in from my computer and then to my phone within the same country and area can't be the reason. I'm not using a VPN and certainly I never shared my account details with anyone. All the money I won was on my own.

Honestly, Pokerstars should rather ban guys like the $3 ABI Brazilian who won the $109 scoop event, and got obviously ghosted by someone the way he played, than people like me.

There is no obvious reason to me for all of this. Otherwise I would have not opened this thread and actively asked for help. What would you do in my spot? Just let people run over you and never fight for your rights?

Again, the issue you face is that the vast majority of <10 post OPs that start these threads are leaving out some information, and a ton of them preach their innocence as much as you have, or more. Nearly all of them were holding back some information (and it can be amusing when it comes to the surface, like when a guy logged into a second account to say he was the father of the OP, then posted again as the father but forgot he had logged into a 3rd posting account).

You sound a bit more genuine than the others, but given the history of these types of posts its hard for me to take someone with no posts/reputation that seriously, even though your posted emails show that the quality of service has dropped (years ago, an email with errors like that would generally be a photoshop).

Do what you need to do to get your money back and after that try again to escalate the matter to find out what the reason for the decision was, so that you can help Pokerstars by warning others not to do whatever it is they think you did, and keep this thread updated as things change, and good luck.

My account was reinstated on Wednesday, two weeks after it had been suspended following a routine security check. I wasn't given any reason but I am in a similar position to the OP in that I've been playing outside of my home country for years. Anyway happy that it's reinstated, but wary of similar happening again. There seems to have been a glut of suspensions and no staff to deal with it.

I will play on PokerStars again but might diversify my play a bit and be wary of keeping too much money in my account.

To the OP I hope you can get answers and a satisfactory solution. Sorry I'm on my mobile so can't write a comprehensive reply, but good luck.

Okay, has been more than 2 weeks now without response. I sent them my payment details immediately after receiving the mails. But even that is apparently too much for their irresponsible 2-member support crew. Still hoping to get my money back (at the very least). I really wonder what is so fkn difficult for them....

No idea what else to do. Guess patience is key? If some stars represantative reads this.. please give these guys a bump or something to finally move things forward. I'm really tired of the whole Stars bullsht.

Not much can be done AFAIK; you're just going to have to be patient.

You used to be able to appeal to the Isle of Man regulator, but PokerStars have shut that off by moving their regulatory jurisdiction to Malta.

I thought its illegal to play online poker from china? If its illegal you can't use a vpn to play online poker period. If someone told you that from customer service you should always screen shot it so they are now responsible for any action taken place against your account.

Sounds like you made yourself look like you were account sharing from someone in germany. If you move I would think its smart to tell poker stars your new address information before you play. They don't know you moved. I have read about this before people play from different ip address and account gets locked. You have to let them know your going somewhere. they just see new ip address. They don't know if your account sharing, been hacked or what cause you didn't let them know before hand. This sounds more on you then them. Poker stars has the best security so this is what is going to happen if you move to another country and not inform about it and start playing. It just sounds kind of odd you would play on german sim card from croatia

@iburydoscocaroaches

Ya, the thing is, quite early I managed everything with Stars Support. I told them I moved to Croatia, and I told them my address, sent them proof etc. My country got changed from UK to Croatia, and I got moved to stars.eu. Since then always logged in from croatian IP addresses: My friends place, the bar in our area, and my home router.
And that one time on my phone from a german simcard & mobile internet provider. But networks connect to the country you go to right?

But even with all that, why should they not give a simple response about the WHY? I mean that would not be anything tragic and be easily solved. (and it's still, honestly, the only reason that I can bring up in my mind)

Short Update on the situation. This might help some other people, as I see several new threads pinpointing the same **** Pokerstars does to people.

Couple of days ago I received this e-mail:



Okay, first of all this feels like a huge troll. They tell me they gonna close my accounts permanently, now this. Has them only taken 6 months to realize I actually didn't do anything wrong. So to anyone playing on Stars... be prepared that your account might get randomly flagged at some point and you won't get it back for eternity!

Cliffs:
Accounts still frozen, nothing reinstated yet.

Weird, unprofessional behavior from PS.

Anyway... thanks for the update TopBallerB! I would go to PS support chat right away if I was you.

I am taking it all back. Asking for my .es account. Get another response that states:

"Hello XXX,
Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately as said before your account will remain closed and we will not change our decision.

In line with our internal security processes, we carry out periodic business risk assessments on randomly selected accounts.

We regret to inform you that your Stars Account has not passed this recent screening process, which has resulted in its permanent closure."

Stars in full troll mode.

It's sad to see the company degrading their brand like this. I guess it's a consequence of sacking their long-term staff, and hiring staff in low-wage jurisdictions such as Bulgaria.

Despite this, I think there's a good chance PokerStars will be stronger in the long-term, since I don't think there's much evidence that recreational poker players will move their deposits as a result of stuff like this.