Source: HoldemPokerChat
The Merge Poker Network will temporarily stop accepting NEW US players in a few days in order to catch up on a backlog of customer service requests. Even more importantly though is the fact that this is also the case for all poker money transactions as well. As it stands right now, the customer service has a 2 week backlog and cashouts are much worse.
They simply were not prepared for the influx of players they’ve received since Black Friday and are feeling growing pains. Only NEW players are concerned by this, for all existing players it will be business as usual. As of June 1st 2011, they already disabled the daily rakeback for new sign ups as well and this is another careful step to make sure they will be able to handle the traffic.
The only part of this story that HoldemPokerChat was not able to confirm yet is if this is the case for all Merge Skins or just those that use the Merge cashier and customer support. HoldemPokerChat has been told that the temporary ban on new US players is just supposed to last about a month, however from past experience in dealing with the Merge Network Fonzi from HPC is guessing that "it will last through the end of the summer".
New processing options as well as more customer support personnel are in order to handle the extra traffic, but especially the recent action of the DoJ has shown that they are also going after sportsbooks and their payment processors as well and everybody is more careful in this business, you simply don't know what will happen next week. After the crackdown of AP/UB, PokerStars and FullTilt, the Merge Network was one of the contenders for the US players that were seeking a new home.
A few Merge Poker skin operators complained about the current processing problems and with the loss of QuickTender / UseMyWallet the main option became credit cards. Shocking number: the current success rate for successful credit card transactions is roughly 20%! According to HPC it is rumored that for Carbon Poker the success rate is closer to 70% which "leads to believe that the Merge Network was putting their site Carbon Poker ahead of all others".
You may understand that this internal info is another tough pill to swallow for US online poker players, but let's keep the fingers crossed that it is the right step in a more regulated online poker experience. It would be even worse for the Merge Gaming network if they don't take the necessary steps to make sure all issues will be taken care of in a timely manner.
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