Empire. The Worst Customer Service Ever?

[AnyutaDva]

Working in the customer service department of an e-gaming company I am reticent to criticise people in the same profession because I understand how hard the job can be. Today I am going to make an exception.

My wife opened her first online poker account last week, and decided upon Empire. I played poker for a living for a long time, hence I have already got an account with them amongst many others. I haven't played on their site for a while because the relatively large blind to the buy-ins don't suit my game.

She deposited money, played for a couple of hours, won a bit of money and all was well with the world. The next day she went to log-in and it told her that the account was frozen, please contact the payments processing team. She called them up and was told that the account had been suspended because her card had the same number as another card on a different account. The other account was mine, we have a joint bank account, and therefore the cards have identical numbers on them, I don't know if that is just the case here in the UK or all over the world.

Since I work in the industry I took over the call, and asked the customer support what we needed to send to get her account reopened. Either a copy of both our passports or a copy of one of the debit cards. I clarified that if I sent just one of the debit cards would that be ok I asked. Yes, I was told. I also asked which email address I needed to send it to.

The next day I crossed town to the flat of a friend who happens to have a scanner. I sent a copy of the debit card ( crossing out the numbers that they said it was ok to cross out ) and then I waited. I was told it would take an hour to reopen the account. When it hadn't been reopened after 24 hours, and when they hadn't contacted my wife I phoned them. Oh, that is the wrong address to send it to, was the operators response!? You need to send it to this address! The operator didn't seem to understand why I was genuinely unhappy at having to resend a acn of my debit card halfway across the world. I reclarified, if I send my debit card to this address will my wife's account be reopened? Oh yes I was assured.

To be fair to them, when I sent my debit card to the second address they sent her an email within the hour, saying that they hadn't recieved our passports??

I sent a very long email to them pointing out that when my wife and I had called them up originally, I was told that a copy of a debit card emailed to a given address would be sufficient to reopen my wife's account. This was incorrect information concerning both what I needed to send and where I needed to send it. I also pointed out that while I was hugely in favour of anti-fraud measures, it is pointless only freezing an account after someone has deposited money and played on the site. If my wife had been money laundering, or using a fraudulently obtained card, the 24 hours she was able to play would have been plenty to carry out whatever criminal activity she had intended. I asked for a manager to email me back and comment on the standard of customer service I had been given.

Again I got an email back within the hour, hurrah. Unfortunately it completely ignored everything I had written in my previous email, and merely restated that my wife and I needed to send our passports. Worse still it was an obviously canned email. All customer service companies have standard pre-written emails that are sent in response to the most common customer requests. This saves the customer service staff having to draft the same email 20 times a day, they simply make sure the appropriate customer name is on the top and their e-signature is on the bottom and send off the standard response email, hence it takes 30 seconds to answer a customer rather tha 30 minutes. To send one of these to someone you know is in the industry, and when it absolutely doesn't answer any of the issue's he has raised is nothing short of an insult.

So today we sent off the passports they had requested. Then I waited. Two and a half hours later we had received no response, my wife's account still remained closed. I phoned them again. I asked to speak to a manager. I was told that they were an extremely professional company and that therefore there were obviously no managers available at the weekend. I thought about pointing out that surely the weekends were their busiest times, and therefore had the most customer contacts, but what was the point. The operator, who it must be said was very pleasant, assured me that everything would be sorted out within two hours.

Two hours later, the account remained closed, but we got another email. Deep joy. It thanked us for sending copies of our passports... but asked us if we could send a copy of one of our credit/debit cards? That would be what we sent, twice, two days ago. It also asked for a copy of our authorization letter. This hadn't been mentioned in any of our previous contacts with there customer services.

There was eventually a happy endng. One further email from us telling them that we had already send the card, and could they please sort themselves out and reopen the account, and it was finally reopened.

How good do the games of a site have to be to compensate for this type of service? Exceptionally good. Are Empire's games this good? No site's games are this good! My wife is now playing on my Paradise account.

[byronkincaid]

I try to help them out and none of the replys address my point, perhaps I didn't word it very well? I understand from another thread that this is a poker tracker type thing not a cheating device but I didn't know that at the time. Won't bother again.



Dear Justin,

Thank you for contacting us.

We apologize for the incorrect reply sent to you earlier and the inconvenience caused to you in this regards.

We thank you for taking your time out to bring to our attention about the Affiliate spamming. EmpirePoker.com strictly does not encourage incorrect marketing methods that would cause inconvenience to others, especially on public forums.

We request you to send us the account name of the players who are spamming along with the Table ID. We assure you that the table will be monitored and the necessary action would be taken against the players who are spamming.

We appreciate you playing an active role in helping us resolve this issue. Please rest assured that this would not happen again.

Have a nice day!

If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Care Department at any time. We are here 24/7 to assist you via email.

Thank you for choosing us as your online gaming site!

Syeda
Poker Customer Care

--Original Message--
From: Justinxxxxxxxx@btinternet.com
Date: 2005-01-04 18:58
To: info@empirepoker.com
Subject: Re: Reply from EmpirePoker. [#2194198]

Wow Garima, I must play at least 50 hours a week at your site and you can't
even be bothered to read my email properly. Thank You.
----- Original Message -----
From: <info@empirepoker.com>
To: <justinxxx@btinternet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 9:28 PM
Subject: Reply from EmpirePoker. [#2194198]


> Dear Player,
>
> Thank you for contacting us.
>
> We do understand your concern but it is not possible for any player to use
any third Party software or any kind of card reading software on the tables
as the card information is always displayed real time; only at the
appropriate time. The information regarding the cards is sent to all the
player's computers by our Game Servers. The information of a player's hole
cards is sent solely to that particular player's computer and it is simply
not possible for another player to obtain the information and read another
player's cards.
>
> We also have necessary software recognition procedures built into our
software to recognize and detect any kind of tampering with the software.
Every player will have to win by their skill and a little bit of luck.
>
> However if you have any query in regards to the site you are mentioning
then you can write back to Affiliates@EmpirePoker.com
>
> If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to
contact our Customer Care Department at any time. We are here 24/7 to assist
you via email.
>
> Thank you for choosing us as your online gaming site!
>
> Garima
> Poker Customer Care
>
> --Original Message--
> From: justinxxxxxxx@btinternet.com
> Date: 2005-01-04 15:44
> To: info@empirepoker.com
> Subject: xxxxxx[#2194198]
>
> These idiots are spamming the tables and incredibly they seem to be
affiliates of yours. I hope you ban them immediately. People on my table
were wondering if it's true. They are scaring people away from online poker
AND earning money from you in affiliate fees.
>
> www.cheatonpoker.com
>