IMPORTANT - The blonde-Mansion Promotion

[Newmanseye]

Lol, ok this is the first I have known about the Mansion promotion, I just signed up, Its just a shame I never noticed it before, Probably not too noticable from the APAT and Sky Threads 

From my point of view the deal is a corker even with the changes, I really cant see anyone arguing that.

[Graham C]

It is a great deal, but I signed up hoping to scrape into the top 15 and have played the cash games there pretty exclusively since the promo, turning down the rakeback offer on Blonde for one thing and neglecting my silver status at Stars.  At the levels I play at, I doubt I'll make the lucky ones now, I may be wrong but I doubt it.

I'm taking it week by week though, if I make it, I'll try again next week, if not, I'll be back to my usual poker rooms.

[Royal Flush]

Good post Moskvich.  I didn't think I'd get much chance of making the top 15 each week but having given it a go for the first week and somehow made it, I've carried on for the 2nd week.   I would think I'd stuggle to make it now but will see and if I make it this week, I'll  have another go.

I can see why Mansion want to go back a bit on this deal as they're probably spending quite a bit on it.  I don't know how much I raked last week but I'd be gobsmacked if it were anywhere near the $500 value I got from them, but it's pretty bad just changing the deal one week into it. 

It costs them nothing m8, the 100k gtd is there everyday with 500 runners, if they put 200 players in they are still adding 50k, that's why its so stupid of them as it costs them nothing to keep to the original deal!

[Graham C]

that's true, never thought about that Flushy!

[Moskvich]

I can see why Mansion want to go back a bit on this deal as they're probably spending quite a bit on it.

As Tikay pointed out, they aren't spending anything on this deal - it's a $100k guaranteed with a big overlay, with or without this deal. It didn't cost Mansion $500 to put you in those tournaments. It cost them zero, and they gained your rake for the week.

The only people who lose out in this deal are arguably those who buy in to the 100k with their own money, since the field is bigger and their chance of winning it fractionally reduced. But since there's still a big overlay, it doesn't actually matter to them whether I buy in for $100 or get my buy-in for free - their tournament is exactly the same in both cases.

This deal was very much win-win (even win-win-win) - Mansion got new players and raked more rake at no cost, Blonde got a little of that rake for themselves, and the players turned their rake into tournament entries.

What appears to have happened is that Mansion have since decided that win-win isn't good enough for them - they want to be winning more than anyone else.

So now they've got their new players they want to make them rake more to get what they promised in the first place, and they want to give less back to those players.

Whether it is or isn't still a good deal really isn't the point here, and to be honest I'm quite surprised that other posters are happy to say "ah well, it's still a good deal". Yes, respect still due to Blonde for coming up with this deal at all. But absolutely no respect due to Mansion. If they cut your sign-up bonus in half tomorrow, would you say "Ah well, it's not as good as it was, but it's still free money, so it's still a good deal".....?

[Royal Flush]

I was already a mansion account holder, i have raked dust for them over my 9 months, so far i have got out of them:

$1000 free bet which hit, thankyou.

A trip to the world cup with full hospitality on Mansion's private Jet, thankyou.

Free entry to the $100k for a week, thankyou.


I can hardly be upset with them changing this deal when it is clearly out of character for this company, someone has fucked up at Mansion but i am willing to let it go without the need for boycotts and pitchforks.

[AndrewT]

West Ham have just gone 3-2 up against Spurs.

Good.

[Moskvich]

But......just before the promotion was due to come into effect, Mansion wrote to us, informing us that the deal would be changed, to 10 seats per week, 4 days per week - Wednesday to Saturday. Yoiks.

Just noticed from Tikay's original post that he says Mansion changed the terms "before the promotion was due to come into effect".

I guess the important question begged by this is whether that means they changed the terms before new players signed up, or that they changed them after the deal was posted on the forum and players signed up, but before Monday when the first of the five tournaments started.

If the latter - people signed up and then they backtracked - then they've behaved appallingly.

If the former - then they've still behaved appallingly as they shouldn't have allowed a deal that they had no intention of keeping for more than a week to be advertised.

From where I'm looking, the only situation where Mansion's behaviour is acceptable is where they changed the terms of the deal before it was advertised on Blonde and therefore before anyone signed up for it. That situation would depend on Blonde knowing that the deal was highly unlikely to last but deciding to advertise it anyway. Tell me it ain't so...

[Moskvich]

I was already a mansion account holder, i have raked dust for them over my 9 months, so far i have got out of them:

$1000 free bet which hit, thankyou.

A trip to the world cup with full hospitality on Mansion's private Jet, thankyou.

Free entry to the $100k for a week, thankyou.


I can hardly be upset with them changing this deal when it is clearly out of character for this company, someone has fucked up at Mansion but i am willing to let it go without the need for boycotts and pitchforks.

That's obviously fine if that's the way you feel. On a personal level I'm not exactly fuming either - the chances are that I don't stand to lose a great deal through this. But I still think you miss the point. For one thing, I believe your entry was totally free, in that you were an existing sign-up - that's not the case for those who signed up through Blonde, for whom this deal was one of the conditions on which they played and raked on Mansion. And for another, if they have effectively breached a contract, whether with Blonde or with their new players, then they've breached a contract. It doesn't matter that they've been nice people before. To be honest (and this is in no way intended as a dig at you, but maybe slightly at your post) it matters even less to a new player whose deal has just changed that they flew you in a private jet to the World Cup. Hope you can see what I mean - it's just not relevant.

[NoflopsHomer]

West Ham have just gone 3-2 up against Spurs.

Good.

Well bokked.

[Royal Flush]

I was already a mansion account holder, i have raked dust for them over my 9 months, so far i have got out of them:

$1000 free bet which hit, thankyou.

A trip to the world cup with full hospitality on Mansion's private Jet, thankyou.

Free entry to the $100k for a week, thankyou.


I can hardly be upset with them changing this deal when it is clearly out of character for this company, someone has fucked up at Mansion but i am willing to let it go without the need for boycotts and pitchforks.

That's obviously fine if that's the way you feel. On a personal level I'm not exactly fuming either - the chances are that I don't stand to lose a great deal through this. But I still think you miss the point. For one thing, I believe your entry was totally free, in that you were an existing sign-up - that's not the case for those who signed up through Blonde, for whom this deal was one of the conditions on which they played and raked on Mansion. And for another, if they have effectively breached a contract, whether with Blonde or with their new players, then they've breached a contract. It doesn't matter that they've been nice people before. To be honest (and this is in no way intended as a dig at you, but maybe slightly at your post) it matters even less to a new player whose deal has just changed that they flew you in a private jet to the World Cup. Hope you can see what I mean - it's just not relevant.

I see the point you are making, all i am trying to do is show that this company has a history of being very generous and so in this 1 case where they appear tight i am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt rather than think they are an evill poker site. I think someone at mansion stuffed up.

[Graham C]

If they fly me off to the next European Championships in a private jet, I'll forgive them

[I, Zimbra]

There is a little history here with regards to Mansion changing T s and Cs after the fact - and I haven't told this story before, so please bear with me.

Some of you might already know that I won a seat to the Mansion Poker Dome last May; it was during Mansion.com's first month of operation, and I actually appeared in the second ever episode. (I was chip leader for a while, but finished 4th... my QQ vs oppos KQ... don't ask!) Also on that week's show was {WSOP Omaha Hi Lo Bracelet Winner and Full Tilt 'red name'} Perry Friedman, who eventually lost heads up to the same player who busted me.

Qualifying for the Dome cost me just $0.01; that's how much the tournaments on Mansion were running for at that time - Freerolls, with a 1c "fee". I beat 90-something players to the win. Mansion flew me out to Vegas, put me up at Caesar's and flew me back after the show; and for the record, everyone I met there were nice, friendly, helpful, and I had a great time.

---

Now, we were told point-blank by the people running the Dome show that we could requalify online if we were unsuccessful that evening; they were adamant on this point, there was no hesitation about it, they were sure of their facts and were were told of this several times throughout the trip: If you don't win, you can try again.

Perry Friedman was the one who brought the subject up, having been unable to get a straight answer on the subject up to that point, because there was no mention of it in the terms and conditions he'd gotten hold of (I had been unable to get hold of any T s and Cs for this promotion, because they had not been posted on the Mansion website yet, this was very early days, and the Mansion website was in any case very unstable and had a habit of crashing the browser that was trying to read it - not the best scenario in the world).

So, after I returned, I set about trying to requalify for the Dome. I really wanted to be the first person to win a second seat and try again... except that Perry beat me to it! He won his second seat just a few weeks after our heat.

By now, Mansion had published T s and Cs for the Dome on their website, which included a section in which it mentions that a player cannot win two online qualifiers... which directly contradicted what we'd been told - face to face - in Vegas.

According to Perry, the clause about not being able to win two seats in the Dome was not in the copy of the T s and Cs that he'd obtained prior to our heat, back at the start of June 2006. He feels that they added it at some later date, and (understandably, considering the amount of money at stake) wanted them to adhere to what he saw as the original agreement. Mansion stuck to their guns and gave his seat to the next-highest runner up in his online game.

(Perry's full version of events can be found at his MySpace blog: Friday June 23rd 2006 entry.

---

I remember being very angry when I heard about all this, basically because it taints what was for me, a great experience. Now, I don't wish to sound ungrateful to Mansion by retelling this story. The last time I told it, a friend of mine branded me as greedy for wanting to win again, so I have kept schtum under the banner of "benefits of the doubt". As with Flushy, they spent a lot of money on me and my own contribution to Mansion's total revenue has been less than negligible; although with the money that they have been giving away since they joined the online poker market, it does not seem like this concerns them overly.

My point is just that it forced me to look at them in a new light. I don't know why they have made the decisions that they have made, but as a result of this mix-up I treat them less as a 'generous' site than I would otherwise be disposed to.

Here is the similarity I wanted to highlight: Just as my trip was soured by my wasting hours of my life trying to requalify for a prize that I would never have been awarded, I think this deal has been slightly soured by after-the-fact changes that have been brought in. As Newmanseye said,  that does not mean it's not still a good deal.

I just wish that they'd told us back in Vegas that we couldn't requalify; no-one's feelings would have got hurt, I wouldn't have wasted my time, and I would have been singing Mansion's praises through the entire second half of 2006. Similarly, the deal that's on the table now would look fantastic - if we Blondeites didn't know what we were supposed to be getting.

[TightEnd]

Those are my main issues with this, and the ones I'd like to see generate dicussion - but as an aside I'd like to ask if Blonde themselves had any contract in place outlining the terms of the deal, or whether they always knew it was unclear - beyond the significant "each week" mentioned above - how long the promotion might last?

we had our original deal confirmed in writing before we announced (and I posted the full details of it) but there was no set timeframe for it laid out...

As with most v generous marketing strategies, budgets change, targets are met and priorities develop I suppose.

[KingPoker]

Was just wondering when the draw will be done for this weeks 3 enties?