#Merge Gaming Network new US sign up blackout now in effect

As previously mentioned a few days ago, the Merge Poker Network has a 2 week backlog for customer support and cashouts are even worse. They were simply not prepared for the tremendous traffic after Black Friday (April 15th 2011) and within those few weeks, they are considered around 70% growth.

In the meanwhile, the customer support team was barely able to handle all requests and after losing Quicktender recently, the main deposit option was credit cards and the general success rate due to the enormous number of transactions was only at around 20%. There have been rumours that CarbonPoker as flagship of the network had a success rate of 70%, but this has not been confirmed yet.

It appears that the announced blackout period for new sign ups from the United States has now come into effect as of June 5th 2011, it is yet another careful step of the network after disabling rakeback deals for new sign ups after June 1st 2011 and the implementation of the new VIP program. Existing players are not affected by this an can still play business as usual. About one month ago, as of May 1st 2011, PlayersOnly / PlayAces was the first Merge skin to disable new sign ups from the US and this current move will be network wide.

There is no confirmation as of how long this blackout period will last, the most common consent is 4-6 weeks and this is a temporarily solution to catch up on the support and money transaction backlog in order to ensure that all issues will be taken care of in a more timely manner. Several skins have already announced to hire more staff for customer support in the very near future and it is also important to clarify that the Merge Gaming has no intention to leave the US market either.