Brett “gank” Jungblut ended his sponsorship arrangement with Lock Poker last week. Jungblut cited concerns about Lock’s inability to provide basic customer service and reliable cashouts to U.S. players as his primary reasons for cutting ties with the site.
“The last thing I would ever want is my fellow poker players harmed by a brand I represented,” Jungblut wrote in a post on the popular poker forum TwoPlusTwo.com.
Jungblut is the third Lock Pro to publicly acknowledge that he was parting ways with the site. Earlier this month, Chris Moorman and Paul Volpe announced via their Twitter accounts that they would no longer represent Lock.
Several others Lock Pros, most visibly Matt Stout, Melanie Weisner and Bryan Pellegrino, have defended the site and have promised to try to hold the site’s executive to higher standards. They, along with Lock PR man Shane Bridges, have assured players that the delay in cashouts would be resolved by early June.
Early June is just over the horizon, however, and anecdotal reports suggest that many U.S. players are still awaiting cashouts that have been pending for months. Stout noted via his Twitter account late last week that Lock has processed $600,000 in Skrill cashouts since the beginning of the month.
While the processing of any cashouts on behalf of Lock players is better than no processing at all, it’s nearly impossible to gauge what percentage of outstanding cashouts the $600,000 represents. Lock limits cashout requests to a maximum of $10,000 – and players can only have one outstanding request at a time. These limits, along with long cashout times and fears about Lock’s liquidity, have led to a robust secondary market for Lock funds, which are currently trading at $0.39 on the Lock dollar.
Lock Poker players are worried about money
Thus far, the highest-profile Lock Pros – Michael Mizrachi and Annette Oberstad – have refrained from any public comment on Lock’s struggles. Both continue to endorse the site and wear the site’s logo at poker events.
Jungblut’s departure is the latest setback for Lock. The embattled poker site has been embroiled in what can at best be described as a crisis of consumer confidence for the last month. It started when Lock instituted a new policy that prohibited any funds received via P2P (player-to-player) transfer from ever being cashed out the site. At the same time, Lock cancelled multiple large-value cashouts that had been pending for months, citing the new policy as justification.
The new policy and Lock’s subsequent actions created a predictable uproar amongst the poker community, where U.S. players routinely were already waiting up to 5 months to receive cashouts from Lock. Wait times for ROW players had stretched to two months. Lock executives have blamed those lengthy delays on payment processors, even though the rest of the industry – including sites that serve U.S. customers – do not have nearly as lengthy cashout times.
Lock’s customer service reps compounded Lock’s problems by continuing to tell U.S. players that cashouts would be received in 6-8 weeks and that the new policy was required in order to prevent money laundering. Both claims were met with derision by players. The policy was eventually amended to allow P2P transfers to be cashed out after meeting a playthrough requirement.
Jungblut’s full statement appears below:
After much thought and due diligence over the past few weeks, I have come to conclusion that it is time for me to no longer represent Lock.
This was not an easy decision, having been with Lock for over 3 and 1/2 years, but one that I feel must be made at this point.
Since Lock is currently unable to provide adequate customer service or reliable payouts to the USA, and since current conditions may remain that way indefinitely, I just no longer feel it is responsible for me to represent the site. I have listened to many of my peers and do not make this decision lightly.
It is my hope that Lock will continue to make strides to improve customer satisfaction & reduce payout delays. The last thing I would ever want is my fellow poker players harmed by a brand I represented.
I want to make clear that my departure is not based on any ‘inside’ knowledge, and I do not believe that there are any internal ill intentions. However there are many unknowns at this time, and because so much is up in the air, I feel it is now the correct decision for me to leave the company.
Lastly, I know many Lock players have recently felt betrayed in one way or another, and for any part I may have played in you feeling that way, I truly am sorry.
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