My long-winded e-mail to Empire

[MicroBob]

I will at least be considering pulling my business from empire in the future (probably not...but anything is possible).

I'm not really specifically trying to help the others here per-se.
I do think empire should be held accountable for their actions.

If they are going to close the accounts of a bunch of players and not tell them why then that concerns me. Accusing them of 'wrongful and suspicious activities' makes it even worse.

I feel I have a right to know what the policies are of any and every site I play at basically. They are basically saying that their policy is "we aren't going to tell you what our policies are...except that we can close whoever's account whenever we want."


Their behaviour in this situation has been deplorable and I will consider that as well as their vague responses to me in my decision on what site to play on for a given evening.

[Vern]

[ QUOTE ]
i've had this happen several times.

first empire was filtered out (didn't even make it to my spam-box)...then a couple months later empire was fine but party was being filtered out.


this happened to paradise as well...but they were on top fo the situation.

[/ QUOTE ]
Bob,

Just to clarify, my ISP applied a spam filter the wrong way and were filtering out my mail to IGM and skins. When I contacted my ISP and said my mail was being bounced back to me as spam, they were clueless. It was not the skin's e-mails to me that were not making it through, it was my e-mails to them. I had reason to e-mail them for some reason back in the fall, actually Multi, when I opened an account there, and I have been trying since then with my ISP to get the problem resolved. Back then I ended up having to talk to India to get the matter resolved which is was e-mail generally avoids. After 6 months I just decided to dump my ISP mail as it was getting too much spam and if I needed to e-mail out to any of the Party Skins, my outbound e-mail would bounce back at me. Had I not changed e-mails, my entire dialog over Empire would have had to take place on the phone as they would never have gotten my e-mails.

Vern

[M.B.E.]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not really specifically trying to help the others here per-se.
I do think empire should be held accountable for their actions.

If they are going to close the accounts of a bunch of players and not tell them why then that concerns me. Accusing them of 'wrongful and suspicious activities' makes it even worse.

I feel I have a right to know what the policies are of any and every site I play at basically. They are basically saying that their policy is "we aren't going to tell you what our policies are...except that we can close whoever's account whenever we want."

[/ QUOTE ]
Well put, Bob.

[Jim Kuhn]

I just cashed out my balance on Empire. I never play there anyway. I don't care for the Party skins. Intertops and Party will be my next cashouts.

Thank you,

Jim Kuhn
Catfish4u
[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

[MicroBob]

Interesting.

I'm not to that point obviously.
But if I were to decide to leave and then they were to try to entice me back I would probably ask them, "How do I know you aren't going to just close my account if I come back?"

[busguy]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not to speak for Micro there Nick, but if I actually played the majority of my poker at Empire (which I do not) and I had accounts at more than one skin (as most people do here at 2 + 2), I for one would want to know where (if anywhere) Empire was going with this.

Is Empire just closing some accounts that are consistantly - MGR or is there something more to it ??

What are the chances that it is actually Party that is forcing Empires hand in that Party is starting to crack down and demanding that the Skins close the accounts of any players that have an account at the skin in addition to Party (and had signed up there first)??

What if Party forces Empire to shut down all the accounts of people (who started with Party accounts) that have moved their play over to Empire for the sole purpose of getting rake-back ??

The fact that Empire will not give any explanation as to why they have closed any of these accounts today makes me think that there is something more going on here. How hard would it be to say, "Management has deemed your account to be one that is set up purely for the purpose of taking advantage of our occasional re-load offers and as such your account has been closed".

I think it will interesting to see what happens over the next few days/weeks/months. Let's hope there are not any more people singing the blues . . . but I have a feeling that we will be in for some more surprises in the near future . . .


[img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img] busguy

[jmgurgeh]

The overwhelming opinion appears to be that they are closing BW accounts, but I'm not convinced. There's no evidence of this, just speculation via the logic that it would +EV for Empire to do. But how would they even go about checking every account to see if you're strictly a bonus whore or an occasional player too? Wouldn't it make more sense that it would be easy to get a list of names with personal information from Party, freeze the accounts, and then close them when the information verified is the same as for a Party account? This is my own speculation, but I think it could be possible.

[TxBuckeye]

[ QUOTE ]
But I'm actually told that that is a bald faced lie.

[/ QUOTE ]
Does this imply they were well-shaven when you wrote?

[UncleDuke]

Nice job, Bob. The effort to dig up some info for us all is appreciated even if they're just sticking to their vague form letters.

It will be interesting to see if the Tuesday reload produces another round of bannings. I intend to take advantage of it and probably will not play many extra hands beyond the requirement. I haven't been banned yet; we'll see what happens. For what it's worth, the only non-bonus-related play I've done there lately was a few MTTs a couple months ago.

I completely agree that it's ridiculous for them to give no reason for the closings. If it really is due to them losing money to bonus-seekers, why not say so? It's their right to do that and isn't really unreasonable, so there shouldn't be much bad publicity if that's the reason. People could then make the choice as to whether they'd rather give Empire some extra play or lose the chances at bonuses.

[pretender2k]

I have just been informed that I have been banned and it is irreversible. I think your letter is well written and look forward to a response if you get one. I wouldn't have had a prob with playing a little more there if they would have warned us. I quess they didn't want my rake.

I wonder if Party has any power in this case like threatening to pull their skin status. If that happened I bet they would beg us to come back.

I just think it was a poorly thought out business decission.

One suggestion to the banned: I doubt they took us off the mailing list so next month at bonus time we all need to reply to vip@empirepoker.com telling them we would love to participate in the bonus but we are banned and flood them with emails again.

thanks Bob

Joe