F#%!@ EMPIRE POKER!

[CountDuckula]

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its not my fault I'm a good poker player!

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What does that have to do with it? If you play only to clear the bonuses, you don't generate enough rake to pay for them. Winning players don't cost them anything, as long as they play long enough to cover the cost of their bonuses. I can understand why they don't want to keep dishing bonuses out to people who don't play unless they're clearing a bonus. However, I do think they could have handled this better; instead of banning them, they should have simply declined to offer them any more bonuses until and unless they started playing more.

-Mike

[wbrumfiel]

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Yeah it's a crappy business they run to give away money to whores who only play for bonuses and never any other time. Gimme a break. I want to see you run a business and watch people take advantage of you and cost you money. Lets see how long it takes for you to ban them.

God damn trolls.

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You are absolutely right. I kept going to Wal-Mart only when I got the flyer and what I wanted was on sale (bonus) and they just sent me the letter today that I am no longer allowed in thier stores. Guess I was a customer that was costing them money and they figured me out... wait, that didnt happen because it would be a BAD BUSINESS DECISION on the part of Wal-Mart. Do you see the point? If as a business you feel someone is "taking advantage" of you then there are MUCH better ways of dealing with it than banning those people from ever coming back. It doesn't suprise me that you and Empire don't understand that.

[Nato76]

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Yeah it's a crappy business they run to give away money to whores who only play for bonuses and never any other time. Gimme a break. I want to see you run a business and watch people take advantage of you and cost you money. Lets see how long it takes for you to ban them.

God damn trolls.

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You are absolutely right. I kept going to Wal-Mart only when I got the flyer and what I wanted was on sale (bonus) and they just sent me the letter today that I am no longer allowed in thier stores. Guess I was a customer that was costing them money and they figured me out... wait, that didnt happen because it would be a BAD BUSINESS DECISION on the part of Wal-Mart. Do you see the point? If as a business you feel someone is "taking advantage" of you then there are MUCH better ways of dealing with it than banning those people from ever coming back. It doesn't suprise me that you and Empire don't understand that.

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This is a very good point.

[DuggleBogey]

I can see a LOT of people who get booted from Empire (I'd do it too if I saw that you played at Empire for bonuses only and played another party skin the rest of the time) will move over to Absolute Poker. With the constant reloads, they can always be working on a bonus. With rakeback offers up to 27.5%, that you can earn AT THE SAME TIME as working on a bonus a $.10 per hand, that HAS to be attractive to those people who jumped on Empire bonuses so much that it got them banned.

As long as Absolute offers this deal, along with better customer service, I think they could do very well off this Empire event.

[dabluebery]

Yeah, this is a decent way of looking at it.

I think they handled this wrong. I'm not saying that they shouldn't address the problem of people costing them money, I'm saying they should have done something different.

If I had know that my status as a player there was in jeopardy, I would have played more during non-bonus periods. If they had identified me as a player who takes advantage of their bonus offers, and told me that any future bonus offers (for me) were 20x raked hands, fine. I'm just going off the top of my head, I'm sure there are other reasonable alternatives.

They decided to boot people who have violated their ambiguous policies regarding bonus clearing, which have at best been applied ex post facto. Shame on them for putting themselves in this position in the first place. Businesses like Wal-Mart offer "loss-leaders" all the time to encourage business, but they're nuts if they do so at a loss which significantly hurts them if enough people take advantage of it, or don't come back for repeat business. There's a balance to it that Empire hasn't addressed — they've just blamed their customers for it.

They're sticking to it, under their broader Terms of Service, which allows them to do whatever they want. You can argue that the people they're booting are insignificant peons — "who cares if they alienate you? you just play $1/2 for bonus purposes......[insert analogy about bonus hunters stealing and being cheap scum]......" That's fair, but I play $2/4 now, and am steadily trying to move up. I'm not totally worthless as a customer, and it's only going to get better.

Anyway, these are my thoughts. I hold out hope that I can return to Empire at some point under new guidelines. I have started to spread out my play among various sites, to give action to all of them more or less equally.

[nnoobi]

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Yeah it's a crappy business they run to give away money to whores who only play for bonuses and never any other time. Gimme a break. I want to see you run a business and watch people take advantage of you and cost you money. Lets see how long it takes for you to ban them.

God damn trolls.

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You are absolutely right. I kept going to Wal-Mart only when I got the flyer and what I wanted was on sale (bonus) and they just sent me the letter today that I am no longer allowed in thier stores. Guess I was a customer that was costing them money and they figured me out... wait, that didnt happen because it would be a BAD BUSINESS DECISION on the part of Wal-Mart. Do you see the point? If as a business you feel someone is "taking advantage" of you then there are MUCH better ways of dealing with it than banning those people from ever coming back. It doesn't suprise me that you and Empire don't understand that.

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This is a very good point.

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I disagree.

Walmart would not be making a "BAD BUSINESS DECISION". They might be making a less than optimal business decision.

They have identified a person who only shops when they receive a discount so great that they lose money on the transaction.

They choose to prevent that person from shopping at Walmart altogether.

Best would be to only prevent that person from shopping for specific items that cost Walmart money.

However, Walmart does not have the means or desire to optimize the situation. So they limit their losses by banning the problem customers. In actuality, Walmart chooses not to do this but either doesn't sell items at a loss or sells them in acceptable limited quantities.

Empire has the same issues, they have made the less than optimal (but still reasonable) decision to ban -EV players.

It's a shame that they don't move completely to user-specific bonuses. I imagine that is either a systems or partnership problem.

[nnoobi]

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They froze my account saying I only show up when they offer bonuses, WELL WHAT THE hell is the point of a bonus, to get people to play on your site!!!

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For Empire, the point of the bonus is to get people to play at their site AFTER the bonus is over.

[Synergistic Explosions]

Sounds like Empire is very low on cash. I wonder if we'll see withdrawal delays again?

Just to be safe, I'm pulling my money out as soon as I clear my bonus.

Oh wait, thats what I always do.

[dabluebery]

Companies that offer loss leaders / discounts / rebates generally don't go after individuals who take advantage of them like we've seen with Empire. Usually, the companies do a pretty good job forecasting the impact of the leader, and plan for some people to really not generate extra and repeat business. When it doesn't work, people get fired, and the company changes its policies going forward.

For example, I bought windshield wiper fluid at an autoparts store for $3 with a rebate that paid me $4. If you think that they were prepared to pay a dollar for everyone to try the fluid, then you're nuts. More likely is that they were willing to take a small loss, in aggregate, because they wanted to advertise their product. The small loss was heavily mitigated by the fact that many people don't send in rebates, so it's not as bad for them as you might think. In fact, I'm pretty sure I never sent in that rebate, I am such a sucker.

The last thing a company should do when it makes an unprofitable decision like this is go after individual customers with a vengeance. Why would Wal-Mart do this, even if they could? It's just not the customer's fault, and because they know this, they change their policies going forward. Hopefully, this has a better impact on their profitability in the long term, with respect to all of their customers as a whole. It does not seem like this is the way Empire is looking at things, and it's unfortunate.

[MrVanDresen]

its good to see this post getting alot of replys.

Empire's shaddy business practices should be exposed.