Crazy Mike your name suits you well, you are a Crazy douchebag.

yes, beatme1 was beating 100/200 + 200/400 on ftp before he got busted.

pokergirl z is a winning high stakes HU LHE player but she's almost definitely not a bot.

In Gatorspeak, I think everyone in this thread is not trying to tell you that you are not an idiot.

i had decided the last time i saw one of these threads, never to play on full tilt again. This one confirms that decision.

Do you prefer the situation at ft, or places like ub and ap where bots can run freely?

These sites have way too much control over what they can and cannot do with our funds. There is no accountability and their decisions are always final. There should be 3rd party company who handles situations like this, or at least a company based somewhere where we as players have rights. Back when I lost over 40K on Full Tilt they told me that my comp was compromised and that someone did access my account and dump all the funds but there was nothing they could do. Their word is always law and it really frustrates me, I've had money frozen on Ongame as well without even getting an email about it. My situation with Ongame worked out but it was very frustrating. I hope everything turns out ok for you.

Given their existing revenues it is strongly in FT's best interests not to confiscate funds without extremely good reason. I am confident they will do the right thing here.

You're right. Sites shouldn't control what you do with your own money and I don't think most sites do. They haven't confiscated the funds yet, the funds are most likely just sitting in the account awaiting a resolution one way or another.

One recommendation I can make to OP to expedite the investigation is to speak with your lawyer and perhaps issue an official legal letter stating that immediate action needs to be taken by Full Tilt Poker to reopen the account. If it is one thing that I have learned from many years as a CS manager, it is that poker sites do not enjoy receiving threats of legal action against the sites. It should give more than enough incentive for Full Tilt to finish off the case, or at the least to give better communication as to what is going on with the account. I would recommend this to all players if you feel you are being treated unfairly and poorly by any site's policies when they are holding your account under suspension and you have no idea why.

I appreciate your post as well as those who have posted in hopes of helping me find a solution. I believe it is time to make a change in the way Poker sites have dealt with situations similar to this one. Don't get me wrong, I understand the sites have a responsibility to the players, and that protection of all players should be paramount. The way it's being done now, is just wrong.

Perhaps, we as a community can find a way to make communication a two way street. Maybe an outside unbiased auditiong company. Maybe a phone line where we could actually talk to a live person, as bouglas suggessted. This would help assuage the stress level of a person who is in this position. I'm throwing it out to you all.

Clearly , there have been situations where a site has frozen an account. This person was left in the dark from days to up to 6 weeks. Only to have their account reinstated with no explanation and then expected to resume playing as if nothing ever happened.

If it were that easy to get my lawyer to write a letter, I would do it in a heartbeat. As the sites are not on American soil, American lawyers have no jurisdiciton. I'm a poker player, not a law student so if I'm off base here,let me know.

It is my understanding that I have 2 options. Either I sit and wait till the site contacts me, or I contact the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. I know nothing about the latter. For all I know , they are controlled by the sites, in which case, I'm back to square one.

Has anyone , for whatever reason, contacted the Kahnawake Gaming Commission. If so, why and what was the outcome.

I am not big on regulation, but I do believe that from the tone of these posts that we all are ready for some kind of structure. Situations like mine are only going to increase.

While I'm not a big fan of our current administration, I know that if this situation happened on US soil, I would not be treated like I live in a 3rd world country.

Pretty obvious he lost to 2 people this week, they must be the same account.

Maybe you should just quit playing on a site with substandard customer service.

Well, a few comments about jurisdiction. An internet web site which is accessible in a certain forum can be subject to personal jurisdiction in the forum even when the web site has no physical presence in the forum or even in the US. This gets a little complicated, but to make a long story short, a web site doing business with residents of a particular forum entering into contracts with the repeated transmission of computer files over the internet will likely to be found by a court in that forum to be subject to personal jurisdiction of the court. It is likely that a court in your state would hold that it had personal jurisdiction over FTP based on your situation. So a letter from an attorney may have some significant affect. A suit over defrauding a player over a substantial sum could have severe adverse consequences, including bad publicity and the threat of US government crackdown. This is the last thing they want.

That being said, your lawyer may advise you not to take such action for other reasons. If FTP does not resolve this, you may want to talk to an attorney.

This is not legal advice, although I can point you to cases on personal jurisidction conferred by web sites if you want more info.

Johny Poker.... Thanks so much for that info. If this does not get resolved shortly, if you don't mind, I will be contacting you. Thanks for your post.

We are only hearing a one-sided argument here and don't really know what is being investigated. If this involves a complex chain of events then 2/3 weeks to investigate is not unreasonable.

sillysal, I don't know you but others here obviously do. It sounds, from what you are saying, that you are innocent of any wrongdoing. If that is the case then I hope this gets resolved for you as soon as possible. That said, the sites need to ensure the honesty of their games (would anyone be objecting to Absolute having blocked accounts in their recent scandal?).

The real issue for me is the customer service and this is where Stars excel. The sites can't give out too much information as to what is being investigated for obvious reasons. But keeping you updated on realistic timescales would go some way to allieviating people's concerns.

IMHO firing off solicitors letters at this early stage would achieve nothing except costing you money. They will still complete their investigation.

Surely nobody here is suggesting that FTP is trying to rip sillysal off. She has been an excellent customer to them over a number of years. They would hate to see her go - even so, something is amiss and they want to get to the bottom of it and personally I am ok with that.

sillysal, I sincerely hope they sort this out for you as soon as possible but the timescales at the moment are not unrealistic considering the complexities that may be involved. FTP's lack of information as to how long this is going to take is not right however.

I can understand that FTP do not want to publish phone numbers because they would be innundated with all sorts of minor issues. However, for something serious like this I cannot see why they cannot telephone the player and speak direct, keeping their number confidential.

Yes. But one thing I would point out is that in a few states online poker is probably illegal, unlike the majority of states where it is probably legal with the DOJ claiming it is illegal. If you are in a "probably illegal" state, that could impact you as well.

No problem, you can pm me, let us know if they resolve.

In certain situations I can see how 2-3 wks is necessary.

But in those situations they should be able to tell you that ahead of time instead of saying "94 hours" or whatever they said and then apologizing for the delay and please be patient, etc.
Refusing to answer any e-mails on it for 4+ days at a time is inexcuseable. I really don't care if they are under-staffed or over-worked or what. For a customer keeping $47k on there they should be able to have somebody give SOME kind of an answer within an hour for EVERY single e-mail.

Of course it would be better still if they had a phone #. But I'm being practical here and it seems they just don't want to do that.
And I think responding to e-mails within an hour is realistic. Responding 4+ days later with a casual "oh...don't worry about it. just be patient. all your $47k are belongs to us anyway" is really really awful.

They seem to have very little awareness that this is cause for a major freak-out on the part of their customer...and somehow don't seem to realize that their customers need to actually have faith and trust in their site in order to be able to play and deposit there and that their lazyness to simply respond to their customer basically accomplishes the opposite effect.

My hunch is that if they had simply told their customer a LITTLE BIT of what was going on without giving away the entire investigation and also kept her updated and communicated with her she would be far less stressed about this and might not have even felt it necessary to come to the forum with this problem.

I am pretty confident in my ability to game select, bot or no bot. The security of my funds is something that I can only control by choosing to put it somewhere safe. Any site that freezes large amounts of money with little or no explanation will not get my business.

This is really bad. Keep telling us the events that becomes.

I want to start playing on ftp but now I dont really fell confident.

No site will ever hire a 3rd party auditing company to come in and perform investigations. This would mean that outsiders would have access and privy to very confidential information and more importantly financial information. Remember, poker sites are not regulated under the same bodies that govern other financial institutions.

There are truly some great suggestions here. A phone line for VIP, high stakes players is definitely one of them. If this were not possible, even a special email address to which inquiries are immediately escalated and dealt with would be a good idea. The bottom line is that someone with VIP status needs to have much better treatment than what OP is receiving right now. I will say it again. The customer service that OP is receiving is completely unacceptable.

Basically what Johny Poker said above. You also have nothing to lose, except perhaps some legal fees.

KGC is a body that supposedly governs the sites, but in reality the KGC doesn't do much. I have answered as a CS manager many KGC inquiries and never once have they ever followed up with me. As long as they receive an answer from the site within the usual 2 week period then that this all that usually matters. So really, you are back to square one.

This is one of the reasons why sites tell you to actually contact the KGC. It is a final resort to actually relieve themselves of having to constantly answer you and deal with customer service issues that go nowhere. Sometimes this deflection is justified, but really sites have an owness to take full responsibility in ensuring the player's concerns are met first before actually advising the player to go to the KGC.


If the site has poor policies on handling customer service issues, especially like the case here then no regulation is really going to help.

In my professional opinion, I think you still need to push hard on Full Tilt and take whatever action you think is necessary to have your account reopened as soon as possible.

Any updates on this situation?

Deja vu all over again?!?!

sillysal=BeatMe1?????

hey Sean,

It is now Friday 2 weeks after FT froze my account. Can you contact me either by phone, e-mail or through 2+2. I appreciate your help in this.

Thanks

nope

Dear FT,

The longer you go without even contacting this customer while she is VERY POLITELY begging you to do so regarding her $47-FREAKING-K...the more potential customers you will scare away.

For $47k being locked-up I believe this customer deserves a phone-call or three updating her on the situation.
Yeah yeah yeah...you don't normally have phone-support. But obviously your e-mail stuff is pretty darned slow and I think somebody over there can take time out of their busy schedule to keep this customer informed. Sorry if it breaks up your day and all and you really don't feel like doin git because you have better things to do like fixing your laggy software or something. And I think it's great that guys like Doug and Sean make up for some of the lack of contact with your customers by appearing on these forums every once in awhile. But people are getting kind of sick of reading of all the situations like this where the communication is practically zero.

Several months ago there was a commitment made on these forums to improve in matters such as this. Well, picking up the phone and calling your customer who is likely really freaking out about their $47-FREAKING-K would be a nice way to START to make good on such a commitment.