PokerStars Support: A Perspective on Its Decline
We’ve worked with 1,000+ players from all over the world over the last 15 years, and part of our services is helping our players interact with the poker sites whenever there’s an issue ranging from accounts getting hacked, to passwords needing resetting, to accounts getting locked.
Over the years, we’ve seen Pokerstars support degrade tremendously.
The Old PokerStars
Pre-Black Friday PokerStars felt like they were genuinely on your side. You could email them about just about anything, and you’d get a thoughtful, detailed response, often within hours if not minutes.
One time a player was visiting them a new city and as a joke asked Pokerstars for a restaurant recommendations and PS support delivered!
This level of service wasn’t just about solving problems; it was about building relationships. It’s what made Pokerstars the best in the business.
The Email Era is Dead
Contrast that with today – emailing PokerStars feels like yelling into the void. For years, we advised players to email support with detailed descriptions of their issues. Adding “URGENT” to the subject line used to guarantee a quick response. Not anymore.
Emails now bounce back with generic auto-replies like “This email address is no longer monitored.” If you’re lucky, you’ll be directed to a help page (hopefully the link works!). The once-streamlined email system has been replaced by a labyrinth of redirects, broken links, and online forms that are the direct result of a decade of cost-cutting in their support department – going all the way to Amaya’s acquisition.
Chat Support: A Downgrade in Disguise
PokerStars’ replacement for email support is chat, which they promise would be faster and more efficient. We routinely have players waiting hours—just to connect with an agent. When they finally do, the conversations often feel robotic, with responses that seem copy-pasted from a script. For critical issues, like frozen funds or account verification, chat support rarely provides clear answers or resolutions.
You see similar posts online, as an example here’s some from Reddit:
“Its frustrating because the button to chat with them which is the only option is not working at all. now having 1150 euro hanging there because their system want me to withdrow it to paypal for some reason and I no longer have paypal. and never deposited using paypal”
“Did you ever get a response from them? Im having the same issue but in canada, i deposited money on the account and they froze it immediately. No response, and cant login to chat with them either” (Reddit)
Our general advice if you’re having an issue is to be persistent. Don’t accept the first generic response as the final answer. They also seem to monitor social media a bit more than their internal systems, but be careful not to share any personal information on social media as you could expose yourself to hacking attack.
We’re sharing this mostly to reminisce about how good it once was and because it’s sad to see a once great site destroy itself, as Pokerstars has done in the last few years.