My long-winded e-mail to Empire

[Jurollo]

Hmmm... with all this Empire collapsing talk I sure hope I still get my WSOP seat from them.
~Justin

[JasonP530]

Well said.

[istewart]

[ QUOTE ]
I predict the response will be somewhere along the lines of:

"Robert,

We're sorry, but the first time deposit bonus is only for people making their first deposits to Empirepoker.com. You may, however, refer a friend and receive a $50 bonus! Thank you for playing at Empire Poker. Good luck at the tables!

Raghib "

[/ QUOTE ]

ROFLMAO

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
Dear Robert,

Thank you for contacting customer support.

We understand your concern regarding closing of accounts.

This was a management decision made after investigating accounts that were found to practice suspicious and wrongful actions that we do not support at EmpirePoker.com

Please see our terms and conditions regarding our right to close accounts.

We have not confiscated any monies and have refunded players who write to us at vip@empirepoker.com

I have also forwarded this email to our Management team.

If you have any more concerns or suggestions please feel free to contact us.

Best regards,

Samantha
Empire Poker
Royal Flush Players Club
Customer Support Team
www.ep.com



[/ QUOTE ]


Dear Samantha (or other Empire respresentative) -

Thank you for responding in a timely fashion. It is greatly appreciated.

That's good to know that you are not confiscating any funds.

Still, I am concerned with the accounts that are being closed.
Many of the players I know have not done anything of a suspicious or wrongful nature. The only possibility here is whether Empire considers it wrongful to take advantage of the occasional reload bonuses your site offers. If this is a problem then why is your site offering the bonus in the first place?


The vagueness of the situation concerns me.
If they can have their account closed for 'wrongful activity' yet not be told what that 'wrongful activity' is then how is any player to know whether they are engaging in 'wrongful activity' at all.


Is my account there in jeopardy at all?
I don't think I have practiced any 'wrongful activity' at your site ....but neither did the players who had their accounts suddenly closed without warning.

Would it not make sense to provide some kind of warning to any player who has engaged in any kind of 'wrongful activity' so they at least can be told what they are doing wrong?

I have enjoyed playing on your site for as long as I have been a member. And I remind you that I have almost 25k in VIP points so that is evidence that I have been around for
awhile.

Can you at least provide some assurance that my account is in good standing there?
Can I also receive assurance that if somehow a problem is detected with my account that I can at least receive some sort of notice or warning about whatever those actions might be before it is suddenly closed?


Thank you

[otctrader]

Thanks Bob, good stuff. FWIW I sent them an email too along the same lines early this afternoon without any response, although I'm probably about 20,000 vip points shy of you.

If it comforts anyone, I was able to cash several thousand from Empire today without any shenanigans on their part, just the usual 4 hours to Neteller. No freeze on my account, but Empire is my principal outlet for play, and I've never had a month of net negative MGR from bonuses. I do however have accounts at every skin, hence my paranoia.

The really dumb thing is if this is related to having accounts at different skins, these sites never explicitly mention the names of the "shared systems." You will never see any mention of Empire on Party's site, and vice versa. Obviously any 2+2'er with half a brain knows this, but I can see how an innocent casual player can get caught up in this mess for nothing else than clicking on a banner advertising a bonus for each site.

While we're all speculating Empire is booting "whores," I think the timing with the IPO and the Pokernow fiasco is not a coincidence, and refuse to believe Empire all of a sudden had an epiphany that removing whores would be +EV for their balance sheet. This reeks of pressure from Party/IGM in my opinion.

Hopefully this blows over; good luck to all those affected.

[MicroBob]

I should add that my concerns regarding the safety of my money that I articulate in my e-mail are pretty gosh-darned exaggerated.
I'm not really that concerned but I would appreciate it if they would respond to me and those affected more directly on this matter.


I deposited my $1k a couple nights ago to receive my monthly $100 bonus (at 15k points you get a monthly bonus with no play-through requirement). The $100 bonus was transferred into my account today.


Empire is hardly going under. It's obvious that this just bad management and procedure and they attempt to clean-out the bonus-whores.
The sky is not falling and i don't believe my money at empire is in any jeopardy.

But they are accountable and I agree with William and Vern that accusing a whole lot of players of participating in 'wrongful or suspicious' activity when they really haven't done anything wrong is in especially bad form.


Online casinos when giving bonus-abusers the boot have no problem telling the bonus-chaser that they simply no longer desire their business because they are supposedly 'abusing' their bonus policy.
I find no reason why Empire needs to pretend like it's something else.


Furthermore...they need to realize that if others who have done nothing wrong can have their accounts closed then this creates confusion among the other players who are left wondering what exactly the rules are. Is there something I should be doing to keep my account from being closed?


Their intentional vagueness CAN be interpreted to mean that empire can and will just accuse whoever they like of 'wrongful activity' without bothering to tell anyone what that even means.

[sthief09]

did they bump you up for the Royal Flush Club liek they do for VIP? or do you actually have to earn the 15k points (i mean how when you hit like 1000 points they automatically make you a VIP. do they do this at 12k or something for the Royal Flush Club?)

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
Dear Robert,
Thank you for contacting customer support.

I can assure you that you account is of good standing with us as are the majority of our players and we have no intention of closing your account.

The decision to close without notice was made by our management as is their right as per the terms and conditions.

If you have any more concerns or suggestions please feel free to contact us.

Best regards,

Samantha
Empire Poker
Royal Flush Players Club
Customer Support Team
www.ep.com



[/ QUOTE ]



The part about this that disturbs me is this whole 'as per their right' crap.
Well....how exactly am I to know that they won't just decide to indiscriminantly exercise this 'right' on my account?


I'm done writing to them for now. The fact they actually responded to me is more than I expected.


Their vagueness really does bother me and we'll see what kind of mood I am in about playing there after I get my TV in the mail.


The fact that I also get the free $100 bonus each month (royal flush club member) for doing practically nothing means I'll probably be sticking around.

But I'll be keeping less on balance there for certain.


Again - I have no real concerns about my money there or about my account being closed. I play there fairly regularly obviously.
But I do go from being 99.98% confident in my monies and account there to perhaps 99.90% confident.

Meaning that I'm not THAT concerned about it...but their lack of professionalism in this matter does need to be considered.

[Vern]

They have stopped answering my e-mails, I may or may not try to call support. One of my concerns is that I can still get into other skins to play in those pools, which I fear would be jeapordized by calling the support line and jumping up and down. The latter may be satisfying, but may be -EV if they booted me from all skins as a result.

Vern

[Nick B.]

Bob, can I ask why you are doing this? It seems to me, you play there a lot and are a valued customer to them. I don't see why you are trying to defend the people that are only are playing there for bonuses. I don't understand why you would try to use your good standing in Empire to try to help out people who aren't benefitting you or Empire.