On August 4th, a tournament I was playing, specifically the 60k Guaranteed OSS event on America’s Cardroom – was stopped with several hours to go in the rebuy/late reg period, and though I had already busted out earlier – I sent this email:
To whomever might be able to help regarding my situation:
FACTS:
My Name: XXXXXXXXXX
My Screen name: XXXXXXXXXX
Site Played on: ACR
On Sunday Aug 04, I played two tournaments:
# 11274299 – OSS #41 – $22 Buy in
# 11274654 – OSS #42 Satellite – $6.60 Buy in
On or about 3PM PST – both tournaments froze and the message “Tournament has been suspended by the host” flashed across the screen. This lasted for over an hour, as I sat there and waited for at least 1.5 hours.
I returned to the computer in the early AM hours and checked my account. it appears I was refunded for tournament #11274654 in the amount $6.60, but was not refunded for tournament #11274299.
Today at around 1PM, I live chatted with “Lex G.” about the fact that I had not been refunded yet for event #11274299. he stated to me that, because I busted out before the suspension, I was not entitled to a refund. I stated that would not be fair since it was still in rebuy status and I was going to rebuy, and he sent me to a link to your tournament rules:
https://www.americascardroom.eu/online-poker/tournaments/how-to-play/rules/
Please check the transcripts so you can see what he said and how he handled it. Awful.
After reading the rules, it appears I am, in fact, entitled to a refund, based on the following:
Tournament Cancellation Rules
1. In the case of a WPN technical issue, all running tournaments will be paused until the issue has been fixed in order to resume play.
2. If the technical issue lasts longer than 30 minutes, the tournament is canceled and refunded according to the following rules:
3. In late registration – If a regular, turbo/hyper or rebuy and add-on multi-table tournament is in late registration and is canceled, all players will receive the following compensation (including players who have busted): tournament buy-ins, rebuys, re-entries and fees back. It will be as if the tournament had never been played.
1) It’s clear to me, that, based on WPN’s OWN RULES, the tournament was suspended WITHIN THE REBUY/LATE REG PERIOD.
2) YOUR RULES state that ALL PLAYERS (including those who busted out) are entitled to a full refund, and it was treated as if the event never took place.
3) Your own twitter account, at approx 4;24PM PST, declared the cancellation and refund.
4) I was refunded $6.60 for a SATELLITE (#11274654) – for a tournament that started at the exact SAME time and had the exact SAME structure as #11274299 – meaning that, for SURE, the tournament #11274299 was NOT IN ‘RUNNING’ status and was open for rebuys and late registration when the cancellation occurred.
5) Rule #2 of your cancellation policy (shown above), clearly states that if the technical issue lasts longer than 30 minutes, the tournament is cancelled and refunds are issued. I am attesting to you now that i sat in front of my computer for well over an hour and possibly an hour and a half, waiting for the tournament to resume, and nothing happened. I left my computer and logged off after reading your cancellation policy and realizing the tournament was not going to play out.
6) A close friend of mine, Michael Y (Screen Name: XXXXXXXX) was in tournament #11274299 at the time of the suspension, and he told me today that the tournament was in late reg status at the time of the suspension.
7) I attempted to contact your support department an hour ago by phone, waited on hold for over 25 minutes, and then a recording came on saying call forwarding failed, and I was hung up on.
——
Based on all of this, I am quite unhappy with your support team (particularly Lex G), your decision to suspend the tournament WELL BEYOND the 30 minute point (making me sit there for almost 2 hours waiting), your service, and your software at the moment. I expect you to refund the $22 in question, without haste. I will not play at your site again unless and until the refund is made.
Now, it’s not the $22 that’s the issue. It’s the runaround I’ve received thus far, and the complete lack of response and training ACR staffers have. Also, if you do your homework, you’ll discover as I have that Costa Rica – the jurisdiction of ACR, has NO SPECIFIC GAMING AUTHORITY to which you can file a grievance – gaming companies in Costa Rica are completely self regulated. This is not a good thing.
Lets hope ACR does the right thing here and responds positively.
=============== UPDATE ===============
ACR did the right thing – 5 days later – and finally refunded my money. It was just in the account. 2 days after that, I received a response from their support dept that said I had already been refunded! lol (no kidding)
Well, at least they did what they should have done. Albeit nearly a week later.
