Rudy Edwards

Full Tilt Poker's payment processing problems of the past few months have been a real hassle to those of us who play on the site regularly. Their checks have always been slower to arrive than Pokerstars checks have been, but over the last few months they'd become infuriatingly slow, and many players had reported getting checks that bounced. I should point out that I don't know anyone personally that it's happened to, but was widely reported on poker forums. My checks just never showed up. Twice I'd requested a check, and after the alloted time they sent me an email explaining it had been canceled, and gave me a bonus to make up for it.

Now, the bonus was not insignificant, and after everything was taken into account, I was perfectly happy with the extra money I had received for my inconvenience, assuming that I would be able to receive the money in some way, but until that happened, they could count me as a very dissatisfied customer. It was just pure luck that the two month delay in cash flow had not caused serious financial problems for me. Soon after my second bonus, when I was ready to request a third check, a great thing happened. They announced the "cash pickup" payout system.

It was incredible. I was allowed to request a payout of up to $2500, and the next day I was emailed the name of the cash transfer service (a very well known company that they only revealed in private correspondence so I will keep it private just in case they did that for a good reason) with multiple convenient locations near to me. I just drove down the street, and picked up my money in crisp American Dollars.

I was elated. My payment problems had me on the verge of switching back to Pokerstars exclusively, and now FTP had provided me with something that would make them by far the most convenient site to use. I even evangelized the new service to my friends to get them to switch over from Stars and Absolute. (I've since been told that Stars offers the service, which I will check up on soon)

As I grew my bankroll back up from my withdrawal, time to make another crept up on me, and I was disturbed to discover that the "cash pickup" option was canceled. Was it just a one time thing for the people who they had caused so many problems? I emailed customer support to be told that it was suspended as an option, although it was still listed on the website. I grudgingly requested a check payout, my recently won goodwill towards FTP cashed in with it, to wait the three weeks that my checks seem to average, hoping that it actually arrives on time.

I can't be the only dissatisfied customer that had been won over by the new service, and I'm somewhat bothered that it was taken away so quickly. They appear to have replaced it with some type of prepaid phone card thing, which it appears requires you to be charged 3% + $0.90 to use, and can't be as convenient as Cash Pickup was.

I think I'll be going back to Stars for a month, and see how I like it. I hadn't played there in a few months, and I've changed primary formats so it's worth toying with anyhow. Maybe during my time away, FTP will realize how easy it is to lose customer loyalty, and how hard it is to earn it, and make a return to what was clearly the best thing they've done with payment yet, the Cash Pickup withdrawal option.