I hate to bust chops but some things just can’t be overlooked. Recently Gambling911 ran a story titled Online Poker Sites Charge Players For Not Playing in which they claimed that PartyPoker was now charging an inactive fee on accounts where players had not played after six months.
I actually had to go and check the date on the posting to make sure that I wasn’t looking at a very old article. I had to check because when I joined PartyPoker in Sept 2006 they already had this fee in effect. I’m not even sure how long before that they instituted the fee but that fee has been there quite a long time.
In fact, I typed “partygaming +inactive +fee” into Google and I received a result going back to 2006 (Hollywood Poker Lounge) plus several mentions in Sept 2009. Unfortunately, I ran out of energy to find the exact date they implemented the fee but that thread going back to 2006 mentions that the fee has been in place for awhile. In fact, the original post is dated Nov 1, 2006 and he says he was told they were taking the fee which means he was inactive for at least 6 months prior to that so the latest the fees could have gone into effect was May of 2006. However if memory serves me correctly the fees were in place a lot earlier than that.
So Patrick Flanigan of Gambling911.com, just because you read it on 2+2 doesn’t make it current news. Every time Party imposes the fee some chucklehead goes onto the message boards and claims Party is stealing from him. And the same peanut gallery of newbies acts surprised and vows to file a multi-kazillion dollar lawsuit to prevent Party from taking .03 from their account.
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I too recall getting hit with this inactivity fee — not long after Party left the U.S. in 10/06 & as an American I was no longer able to play there. Kind of enjoyed the absurdity of it at the time, if I recall.
We Yanks must all owe hundreds there now. G911 should investigate. :)
What other headlines could Gambling911 come up with?
PLAYERS THINK ONLINE POKER RIGGED!!!!!!
Kinda sucks when you go and play on Party to avoid the fee and end up losing more than the fee itself. That’s what happened to me :)
It’s like charging a junkie for being clear for three months. Is there even one in a thousand that do this for six months??????