Full Tilt Poker Gets Pitified: Software Complaints Mount

Full Tilt Poker, the world's second largest online poker room, has been issued a warning by the popular online gambling watchdog portal CasinoMeister.com.

"Pulling Teeth is Easier," the CasinoMeister suggests.  And he's not alone, Full Tilt Poker has refused to communicate with Gambling911.com, making it especially difficult for us to comfortably recommend our readers play there. 

From the CasinoMeister.com website:

"We've had a difficult history with Full Tilt Poker (fulltiltpoker.net) over the last 18 months or so (press time 6 July 2009). They've never responded quickly nor it seemed willingly to player issues we submitted to them. First we'd get the auto-responder replies for a while. Then the "we don't have your email on file" thing for a while. Often I'd (Max Drayman, PABmeister) have to threaten to escalate the issue at which point the Operations Manager would finally get involved and we'd see the issue given some attention. Recently that situation has deteriorated considerably."

Since that time the CM site says things have gotten even worse.

"I'm afraid our policies prohibits us from discussing other accounts than your own. Your client needs to contact us from the registered email address of his account," Full Tilt Poker apparently relayed to Casino Meister.

"In other words they are no longer willing to talk to us about player-submitted Pitch-A-Bitch (dispute) issues. We see this as a serious problem because it means that players have no recourse if they are unable to get the assistance they need from Full Tilt's Customer Service."

The player in question explained to the CM site what had transpired.

"Have been using this site for 1 month. Deposited 50 bucks. I was upto $420.00. On June 1st I decided to withdraw $200.00. My withdrawal was canceled one day later. I tried again on June 2nd. Canceled again. On June 3rd I received an email saying that I had a duplicate account and my account had been closed. It also said that by sending them an email they would transfer my funds to my other account. The second account in question is an account for my father, which I deposited 40 bucks so that he could start playing. They had different email addresses and everything.

"I have sent numerous emails with no response. I am concerned because it appears that according to many other bloggers this occurs often at FULL TILT POKER.... I need to get 420.00 dollars back to me. There is no response by full tilt poker and apparently no phone number. Thanks"

The Two Plus Two posting forum is not exactly embracing the folks from Full Tilt Poker these days either it seems.  There players claim that the Full Tilt Poker software apparently caused those on the site to be disconnected while potentially winning.
"What about the people that were disconnected from huge pots, couldn't play or lost money because of everything?" one poster asked in regard to the software issues.

Another had this to say:

"I am a long time player and affiliate on Full Tilt Poker, and the new updates have only made the issues improve about 10%, as well as costing me some $$$ b/c most of my roll is on FTP at the moment.

"The only reason why I haven't completely withdrawn as of yet is b/c a) I still have some sick faith that you guys will eventually fix the issue."

A representative from Full Tilt Poker did come onto the posting forum to offer some type of explanation:

"I apologize for the problems a number of you are still having and we'll be putting out another update in the next few days that will hopefully resolve the bulk of any remaining issues."

One poster reported what happened after he tried to download the new updates:

"I downloaded today's update and it did not help me one bit. Same problem with with the client frequently locking up and becoming unresponsive. Here is what happens while observing a table:

1. Action seems to come to a stop

2. I click on the table and get the hourglass

3. I click on the table again and in the top right hand corner of the table window it says: (Not Responding)"

Old Yoda concluded the following in his post:

"Two observations: As this poster notes, currently over 85,000 plus players on Full Tilt as of 9pm Eastern. This is not a monetary issue for Full Tilt. With no real negative economic impact on FT they have very little pressure to make this right. Second, other than FTPDoug's daily pronouncement of a new update there is no real substantive response from Full Tilt on what should be a fairly important issue. This is a function of Tilt's typical arrogant approach to CS issues and a function of the lack of business pressure on them.

"End of the day, as long as people keep logging on and playing they will do, or not do, exactly as they please. Given their track record this should surprise no one."

Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher