My inquiry to Pokermountain re: several issues & their response to me

[Greg J]

I had several questions I wanted to ask Pokermountain, and instead of posting them and asking people here, I thought it might be prudent to email them and ask, and then post thier reply to me on this board. This would not only answer my questions, but give me some idea of how they interact with thier customers. I will reserve my own opinions on the quality of thier correspondence on this post, though will probably express it elsewhere.

Here is the text of the email I sent at 7:02 tonite central time:
*********************************
Hello,

I'm considering signing up for a Pokermountain account. I have heard some good things about the games and the software, but thought I would ask a few questions of my own.

1) Pokertracker (PT) compatibility. As I'm sure you know, a lot of serious players keep track their stats via PT. I am one such player. Do you offer hand histories that are compatible with entry into PT? Are these only available via email request, or are they uploaded onto my computer ala Party and their skins (the latter I think being preferable)? If you do not currently offer hand histories compatible with PT, do you at least have plans to do so in the future?

2) Affiliate referrals. Many times a player will refer other people to play on a site and receive some sort of compensation. This is usually in the form of rake generated by the referred player. Do you offer any such programs? If not do you have any future plans of doing so?

3) Bonuses. I am aware of your 100% up to $500 deposit bonus. This is very generous. How often do you plan to offer reloads?

4) Getting you name out. PM is a new site, and you are certainly not up there with Party/skins, Pstars, or Paradise… yet. What plans do you have to get your name out and get the recreational players? Advertising on twoplustwo is nice, but will hardly attract the kind of player I want compete in a pot with (something I’m sure you can understand).

Thanks much,
Greg

*********************************
This is a text of the reply I got, send 10:06 pm central time:
**********************************
Dear Greg,

Thank you for your interest in playing at Pokermountain.com.

1) Our hand histories are not compatible whit this software and we will
take
your question as a suggestion in this regard.
2) We do have plans on the refer a friend program and we will let you
know
once is working.
3) At this time the bonus is a one time deal for the initial deposit
but we
will have more offers in the future.
3) We are currently working on Marketing Campaigns to build up our
customer
base and soon we expect to fulfill your needs.

Please let us know if you have more concerns.

Regards
Leo
Poker Mountain Support
******************************
Thoughts?

[gila]

weak-tight?

[Caruso329]

Raise PF.

[iMsoLucky0]

[ QUOTE ]
1) Our hand histories are not compatible whit this software and we will take your question as a suggestion in this regard.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, so what about how a player gets the hand histories? By email only or saved to the computer?

[ QUOTE ]
2) We do have plans on the refer a friend program and we will let you know once is working.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, that's a nice answer. Any details at all?

[ QUOTE ]
3) At this time the bonus is a one time deal for the initial deposit but we will have more offers in the future.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good job elaborating there.

[ QUOTE ]
3) We are currently working on Marketing Campaigns to build up our customer base and soon we expect to fulfill your needs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Aside from this being the second number 3, ummmmmmmmm DUH!?!?!? I mean, obviously they are going to advertise, but how bout where and how and how they plan on being successful?

Looked like the support was lacking here, as you asked some good questions and they gave you plain vanilla stupid answers.

[Greg J]

To be fair question four was on thier FAQ, and was answered much better there. They could have mentioned thier Cardplayer ad, or how photogenic Daniel N is (TJ not so much).

As for the other questions, I'm not sure what I should expect though. I was not impressed though.

[Brown Thumb]

[ QUOTE ]
To be fair question four was on thier FAQ, and was answered much better there. They could have mentioned thier Cardplayer ad, or how photogenic Daniel N is (TJ not so much).

As for the other questions, I'm not sure what I should expect though. I was not impressed though.

[/ QUOTE ]

My questions for Poker Mountain:

1. What happened to the afro, T.J.?
2. Is Daniel as tall in real life?
3. Does Daniel like Depeche Mode?
4. Do T.J. or Daniel like P.O.T.?

[scotty34]

Send a similar email to party, stars and paradise, then show us the results. This will give a better idea of what to compare it with. (obviously they can't be the same questions, but I'm sure you can come up with something creative)

[Greg J]

Good point. I'm really too lazy to do that honestly. They did send a rapid reply. I am more concerned with the substance of thier answer though, and thought that perhaps other people on this board would be interested in rakeback potential (or lack thereof), and thier plans for pokertracker.

No Pokertracker + no rakeback = Me being not so sure about this upstart site.

But I will keep an open mind. Maybe Mr. Pokermoutain zoo representative should respond to this thread-- I would love to hear what he has to say about this instead of some pothead barred from play money games!

[greatbrit]

Hey gimme a break, it's been a rough day [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Yeah, OK, the response wasn't the greatest, he would have been better off passing your questions along to marketing, support is really more to day with the day to day stuff. And he was probably having a rough day too with our cashout issues. But, no more excuses, could have been better.

I'm not going to be much help either, but here goes:

1) Right now our hand histories (once we get them running again, they got broken when we went live, right now only support can get to them) are not stored on your hard drive. I know they are doing a lot of rewrites on hand history code right now, I have already suggested that it would be good to store them on the hard drive. I have no idea about what poker tracker compatibility means, I thought poker tracker adapted their code to each site they wanted to work with, is there something we can do to make it just work with them? Our format is definitely our own, we didn't copy anyone else's hand history.

2) We will be having affiliates and rakeback programs, please email support and ask them to forward your request if you'd like to be an affiliate. In terms of "refer-a-friend", we don't have that right now, I'm sure marketing will want to add that later

3) No reload plans right now, I'm sure that will come too, but really this is the type of question we probably wouldn't want to answer anyway, it's not good to give away all your marketing plans

4) Same as above, there are many marketing plans in the works, but we don't want to grow too fast until we have all the infrastructure in place to support it, and all the kinks (like our cashout bug) sorted out. So, I guess you could say we are in a controlled rollout right now, when the time is right and we get going with the multi tables, I am pretty sure you'll see a huge increase in traffic.

Well, I don't think I did much better than Leo [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Paul
http://www.pokermountain.com

[Greg J]

Okay, that was actually much better to be fair. Thanks for the response. I do appreciate it much.

Yes, pokertracker will hopefully adapt to your particular HHs, but I also know that Party has configured thier HHs to make them PT friendly. That is they have worked with Pat and the guys at PT. I would hope PM will be willing to do the same.

As for the uploading HHs on the harddrive, it won't be a dealbreaker for most people here, but it would be VERY nice. Whatever pull you have I hope you use to lobby for this.

I understand the ambiguity surrounding my question 3 and 4. Plus, I don't expect you or anyone with PM to say we want to stock the fishtank -- someone here compared that to a bar bragging about how slutty thier women are -- you just don't do that (so forgive me if i do [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]). I did notice something though:
[ QUOTE ]
when the time is right and we get going with the multi tables, I am pretty sure you'll see a huge increase in traffic.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure what this means. Can you not play more than one table at once? If this is the case then you do apparently seem to want to fix this at least.

Again, thanks much for the reply. It was a good response and I appreciate you taking the time to make it.