By: Lou Krieger and Shari Geller
Full Tilt Poker provided an update regarding their progress—or lack thereof—in refunding money to American players, but their update did not include a specific date when they expect to begin releasing funds.
The update, in the form of an email to players as well as a post to their web site’s FAQs gave some answers to a few of the questions being asked by US poker players.
Full Tilt’s official statement on US withdrawals reads, “Since April 15th and the days immediately following, Full Tilt Poker faced numerous challenges and hurdles to ensuring the smooth operation of its international business and the orderly return of US player funds. FTP has worked tirelessly to address these issues and has made significant progress on both fronts. FTP's international business operations are returning to normal while we focus on ensuring the safe and orderly return of US player funds. We are absolutely committed to making sure that US players are refunded as soon as possible. We apologize for the delay and the fact that we underestimated the time it would take to work through these issues. We will update our US players when we have more specific information to provide.”
Here’s a link to the complete Full Tilt announcement. You can read it for yourself at: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/us-player-faq.
In our opinion, there’s quite a bit missing from Full Tilt’s statement. They never mention when they anticipate returning funds. They say they are facing “numerous challenges and hurdles” to returning player funds, but fail to explain what those hurdles are, nor do they provide any information about how those hurdles impact their ability to return players’ money. Most importantly, they never describe what they are doing to ameliorate the situation.
The gist of their announcement is that they are asking US players to trust them and to have faith in their dedication to refunding player deposits. But in our opinion, a “trust me” statement is not enough. Not now. Not at this point—more than a month since the advent of Black Friday and weeks after PokerStars refunded money to their US based players.
Although Full Tilt may have the best of intentions and they may be working hard to solve their problems, they ought to be a bit more transparent in their dealings with players. They can start by providing basic information along with an anticipated timetable for action. This would go a long way to engendering the kind of player loyalty and support they were hoping for, but failed to achieve, with their latest email.
