Last Sunday I went into my poker account on AbsolutePoker and went into my account only to find that $300 was missing. Finally after 5 days of numerous email and calls by phone that I made I finally found out what happened. Someone from Germany hacked into my account and played $300, my guess would be that they had a partner playing at the same table, lost my money to them and cashed it out under that account. AbsolutePoker told me of this and STILL refused to give my money back. I have been playing on their site for over 3 years and they STILL wouldn't reinburse my account. I understand that poker sites have policies where if your information is taken they are not liable for it, but come on. Its only $300 and I have been a so called "vauled" customer to years now. I was not happy how this was handled by their team (It took five days just to tell me someone played my money) and I can no longer play on this site. Their support team is second rate at best and they really dont seem to care that much about their players. I guess maybe if I played higher stakes things may have been different. At any rate I done with this site and in the next week or so I will be moving over to FullTilt as they seem to be alot more reliable. So my advice to anyone thinking about playing on this site, DONT PLAY ON ABSOLUTEPOKER!!! Im not sure if I got scammed or what but they handled this too poorly for my liking.
Here are the transcripts of the emails and a play by play of what happend, you judge for your self if they mishandled this and give me feedback if you like.
1. My first email after I relized it was gone, after I contacted them by live chat
I just logged into my account today and was getting ready to play some sngs and noticed that $300 was missing from my account. Exactly $300, Two days ago when I last played (I played 3 $10 sngs) I had exactly 363.38 in my account, today when I logged in I had 63.38. I immediatly contacted the online support center and told them of this, the lady (jennifer) told me it had been played. I looked up my most recent games and all of my recent games were either $10 or $20 sngs or .25/.50 ring games. The last game me playing being on the $10 sngs. So I looked at my transfer history and there was no activity. Then looked at my recent cashouts, I had one a few days ago that I did my self for $200. But I knew of that one and when I did it I still had over $300 in my account. I also looked at recent wins the last win I had recorded was on October the 31st on a $10 sng. There was one thing on my account of recent wins that I never did though and that was on October the 29th, $1/2 and $2/4 NL wins of $36.20 and $200.50. I never did these things and have never even played these stakes before. This may have nothing to do with what happened but just letting you know that I never played these tables and never received any of the winning, look it up. Anyway the last game played on my account was on October 31st and that was the last time I logged in. No one knows my password, nor has anyone else played on my account. I have been playing on AbsolutePoker for a few years now and have never had any problems with my account before. I like it here and would like to continue playing here so PLEASE FIX THIS FOR ME!!! Again I am missing $300 and there is no possible way I played it so I would please like it back. I will not be touching my account until I hear a response so please fix this soon so I can continue to play as I would like to today still. Thank You
2. 24 hours later
It has been over 24hours now and I still havent got a response for your site. I know that $300 isnt alot of money to your company, but to me it is. I would greatly appreciated if you handled my account and fix it soon. Here is my last message again in case it got lost, Thank you
3. Their first response over two days later
Thank you for choosing Absolute Poker.We are happy to inform you that your account has been reactivated and you should now be able to log in. When playing in the poker room, please abide by the Terms and Conditions at all times. Thank you for your patience with this matter.Important: Sometimes players have a problem when logging in From the Lobby after having their account reinstated. Please follow the instructions below to ensure that you will have access to your Absolute Poker account without any problem:1. Open the Absolute Poker software.2. Go to a table.3. Choose an empty seat to sit down.4. Proceed with the login process from thereIf there is anything else we can assist you with please let us know
4. My response to their pathetic response
Did you even read my letter? This does nothing for me, my account was never suspended in the first place. Ive sent a message to the reconciliation_matters@absolutepoker.com after I talked to a representative again today, they told me to contact them. Hopefully this message was an accident and the reconciliation department is going to handle the matter. I'll expecet to hear something tomorrow or I'll be contacting AP again.
5. After I contacted reconciliation_matters and basically sent them the same email I gave to support this is what I received
Dear Mr. Hosfield,Thank you for contacting us.Please note that an investigation was already opened for your account.As soon as the investigator team has a resolution regarding this issue you will receive a confirmation Email.If you have any further queries in regards to this matter feel free to contact us at any time
6. My name is not "Mr. Hosfield" so I dont know what the fuck they are doing at this point but im getting real pissed. I then sent them an email saying this isnt my name and I want to know exactly what happend. It has been 4 days at this point
7. Finally on the fifth day I got this email saying what happened
Thank you for choosing Absolute Poker; it is a pleasure to be of your assistance.After reviewing your account in regards of your last e-mail, we noticed that the funds in your account were used in our (BJ/Holdem/Omaha/ etc). You can request a hand history to review this by clicking on "My Account" tab, click on "Hand History", then on "Open my hand history files" and there you can choose the (BJ/Holdem/Omaha/ etc). hand history.We also noticed that the funds were used from the IP address (172.158.13.187)(172.158.13.214)(172.158.181.104)(172.158.130.46) from (Germany). This means your account ID and/or password was compromised most likely due to an access to a fishing/fraud site or a virus installed in your hard drive that allows a third party to see your log in information. Please remember that at no moment any Absolute Poker staff member or promotion will ask for your account password. Players are responsible for keeping their password and log in information safe and secure, especially if someone else has access to that computer. This is a very important issue that every customer needs to complete for their own safety and protection of their account and for that reason we posted this requirement on our main site.
-this was followed by a copy of their security aggreement to the user basically telling me how they are not liable for my account
8. My response email (last ditch effort to get my money back)
Dear Support
Im more than a little pissed about this. First of all it took your support team 5 days to give me this information, that is pretty pathetic. Then your telling me that someone from Germany hacked into my account and played my money (exactly $300 for some reason....) for no reason other than to be a dick? Then your going to tell me that your not going to give me my money back even though you know I did not play it? Ive read the user agreement so dont send it to me again after you get this email. I have been playing here for a long time and have given this site plenty of money and business from getting my friends to play here, I can send you a list of all the players that currently play on your site because of me if you would like. This is the first time there has been any problem with my account. I plan on cleaning my computer out and making a new more secure account and password. I know that $300 is not a big deal to your company, but for me it is alot to lose as I am fairly broke right now. So I am respectfully asking you to give me back my $300 that was taken. If you can not do this I will no longer be playing on your site. Also I will have to post everything that happened to me (our email transcripts, account history, basically the whole story) on all the poker forums and blogs that I currently subscribe to just to show how poorly I believe this was handled by your team. I find it hard to believe that you cant pay the small sum of $300 back to my account. While you might not care I have plenty of friends playing online poker and I promise you will lose some business becasue of this from people currently on the site and or people thinking about joining. This is not a threat or anything because your company probably doesnt care, this is more of a "valued" customer asking to have a small amount of money that you know he didnt play given back to him as an act of good faith. Please let me know soon what your final decision is so I can either continue playing on your site or cash out the rest of my money and cancel my account. Thank you and please respond in a more timely fashion as I would like to continue playing cards online again.
9. Their response email
In order to discuss this issue further we request that you please call our toll free # 1 877 887 6537We apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your understanding.If there is anything else we can assist you with please let us know
10. So then I called this number which was completly pointless, they just stated the user aggreement again and told me they werent giving me my money back. Here is my final email
Dear AP,
Well I called the number and that was worthless, they told me exactly what it said in your last email and wasted MORE of my time. It would have been better if you had just said your not getting the money back. Obviously whoever played my money in Germany had a partner and just lost the money to them on a table, hopefully your at least looking into that persons account and doing something about that..... Anyway I understand your position and get that you cant pay back everyones money who this happens to. I just thought maybe you might make an exception for a so called "vauled" cumstomer, but I guess I was wrong. Ive had my computer cleaned out and have installed new AntiVirus software so now I will continue to play poker again, it just wont be with your site. I'll be cashing out the rest of my money and playing off my points then I'll be done with AP forever. Sorry it had to be this way and I realize its probably not your site's fault, but I just cant trust it anymore. Your support team is also not up to par with other poker sites as it should not take 5 days to tell me that someone played my money, that is completly unacceptable. Hopefully for your site's sake when you merge with UltimateBet things get better otherwise and cant see it working out for your company in the long run
So as you can see this is an awful lot of effort but it for just $300 dollars. I figure 6 days of non-playing and 5 plus hours of wasted time on this matter is enough for me to never play here again. So just be aware of my story before you play at AbsolutePoker, it could easily happen to you. Hopefully Ill be back on here within a week or so with a new bankroll and a new site
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