PokerBot Pro - The Saga Continues

Seems I get a lot of traffic and emails from the posts I’ve done about PokerBot Pro. You may remember them as the poker bot written by some guy who is making outlandish claims about how well they work and how helpless you are without his product. He does everything from guarantee you income to making claims that the human brain is very limited in understanding complex games like poker (interestingly, most AI researchers think it’s the other way around; computers can’t beat experienced real players). The most important find though was his claim that the product was so successful that he was going to pull it from the market forever. When I did my original post about this, March 14, 2006 was the big date his product was going to disappear. Though I already had remarked that this was highly unlikey, others later pointed out that he has a Javascript application that constantly changes the date which proved my assumption.

Well, one of the other claims made on the site is that there’s a 100% Money Back Guarantee. One of my faithful readers purchased this piece of garbage and attempted to get a refund. His email exchange with the payment processor is included below.

-----Original Message-----

From: David Glazen [mailto:glazen@gmail.com] Sent: 11 August 2006 17:33 To: @whylose.com Cc: Emetrix Customer Support Subject: Re: Refund Requested: E080906661292 (KMM31825093V39832L0KM)

please issue a full refund

On 8/11/06, John Preddy - WhyLose.com wrote:

Hi,

Thank you for your response.

The manufacurer knows that request cannot be complied with.

A complete hand history is not available on any poker site.

Further this is an online service and I will not be posting a letter - that is simply a delaying tactic. It will be alleged that it was not received.

Come on - do the right thing and refund my card and cancel this vendor’s facility. It really does bring your service in to disrepute. If you run with dogs you will catch fleas.

/2006/03/13/pokerbot-pro-another-online-scam/ is another source of reference for an independent view on this product. I have taken on far bigger organisations than yours and won. Two governments have changed laws because of me. And I WILL get my money back with or without your co-operation.

I don’t propose to enter in to any further dialogue on this.

Mark Twain said “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

Regards,

John Preddy

-----Original Message-----

From: Emetrix Customer Support [mailto: support@emetrix.com] Sent: 10 August 2006 21:58 To: John Preddy - WhyLose.com Subject: Refund Requested: E080906661292 (KMM31825093V39832L0KM)

Dear Customer,

The manufacturer of the software has requested that a written letter be sent to their offices to finish the refund process. Once they receive the letter the refund will be issued. Below are the instructions on what to send and how to send it.

Once you have reached the 30 days please send a written request to:

Glazen Online Services 7B Pleasant Blvd suite #980 Toronto, On M4T 1KT Canada

You must include your name, date of purchase, emetrix order ID, complete hand history, and reason for requesting a refund. Once this is recieved your refund will be issued. Please see the complete refund policy at: http://www.pokerbot-pro.com/disclaimer.htm

Kind Regards,

Tomson K. Customer Service Emetrix Case ID:14716123

Original Message Follows:

---

Hi,

It appears that you are providing a payment solution for software which at best does not work and at worst is a total scam. http://forum.winholdem.net/wbb/viewtopic.php?t=5608&view=previous&sid=ae6e88b8310e573d1f90868f37f1f244 will assist.gl

For your convenience I attach a copy of the guarantee found at http://www.pokerbot-pro.com . I require you to refund my credit card within seven days or I will issue a chargeback on 16th August 2006. I have copied this email to glazen@gmail.com - the address found at the bottom of http://www.pokerbot-pro.com - but others have have been emailing the vendor and he hasn’t replied. There is a money back guarentee. Please honour it then cancel this vendor’s account. The guarantee attached also says “..log-in to your favorite poker client and let the program do its magic.” However, it only works - badly - with Ultimatebet.com. If I hear nothing from you witin three days I will start the chargeback procedure early. Regards, John Preddy -----Original

Message-----

From: Emetrix Sales [mailto:sales@emetrix.com] Sent: 09 August 2006 17:50 To: @whylose.com Subject: Emetrix Order Confirmation

Thank you for using Emetrix.

Your order has been successfully processed. This is your receipt. You may wish to print it for your records.

(1) - PokerBot Pro 2.0: £110.25 ea. Delivery Option Charges: £0.00 Tax / VAT: £19.29 Order Total: £129.54

Details on product delivery are included below:

Now, I do think John is barking up the wrong tree here. The payment processor really has no ability to make the refund without a chargeback being initiated from the issuing bank. It would be like receiving the wrong book from Amazon and then calling Paymentech (or whoever their merchant banking relationship is with) and asking for a refund.

I’ll also defend the payment processor in that the site does list terms and conditions that state that the request for a refund must be 30+ days after obtaining the product. Though, my guess is that the 30 day waiting period is in hopes people forget that they got burned. I would imagine most people who download it, realize pretty quickly it’s not anywhere near what they were expecting (and what was promised), and ask for their money back. A thirty day cooling off period might slow down some of those refund requests. I’m fairly sure the other requirements of sending a snail mail request and barking like a dog while facing Canada are also designed to put up barriers to refunds.

I also find it interesting that he makes claims to the effect that you can use the product on any website and it obviously doesn’t work on many of the major sites. The fact that the site doesn’t list any supported sites should be a tip off that you’re making a leap of faith in trusting this guy.

I did get a chuckle out of the disclaimers page which states:

Neither the information, nor any opinion expressed, constitutes a recommendation to play online poker.

Now, let’s compare that to what he actually says:

You must listen to me very carefully and read every single word of this explosive letter. You are about to get the chance to earn a GREAT living from online poker - 100% GAURANTEED!

I guess that’s not a recommendation to play online poker. Then again, neither is this:

Remember what I am offering here. A RISK FREE opportunity to have an army of PROVEN money-making PokerBots play for you! You don’t need a degree in computer science to understand that this is a Win-Win situation!

As a final note, the payment processor did agree to reverse the charge for John. I guess they looked at the cost of the chargeback and decided that John was the type of guy who they couldn’t string along until he ran out of wind.

Good going, John!