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https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jun/28/bet365-legal-action-delay-paying-punter-54000
This is the grim reality, not the one bookies apologist steeplechasing & co attempt to portray of bookmakers taking fair action to protect their profits by restricting or banning long term consistent winners.
Of course this isn’t an isolated incident nor are they the only culprits. My own personal experience of this particularly firm is similar to what I’ve heard elsewhere, getting banned after a few bets having not even backed a winner.
Both RUK & ATR allow Pat Cooney of Bet 365 Scum Ltd to peddle their lies on an almost daily basis unchallenged, meanwhile Rust & Co continue to cosy up to them as they are ABP.
Authorised Betting Partners my Ass
As someone pointed out yesterday, British racing is funded through companies which wont take bets on British racing.
This case, however, highlights another significant cause of frustration for gamblers, who must deposit money with a bookmaker in order to place bets but can then face extended delays when they try to return a balance to their bank account.
Do Credit Accounts still exist?
As far as I know I’ve still got at least five though haven’t used them for several years. Perhaps I’ll give them a ring and see if anyone answers
Think the last one I used was Tote Credit, who presumably became Betfred Credit
Don’t underestimate how low some no-good punters will stoop. It is a well-known tactic for arbers and other ne’er-do-wells to dust off their initial deposit in an attempt to con oddsmakers into thinking they are drinking Miller High Life. With their second deposit they will jump all over every shady bet going, expecting to escape the system.
Given the omitted details and rather lazy journalism in this Guardian article, it takes a leap of faith to dress up the bet365 customer in question as the victim in all this.
Given the omitted details and rather lazy journalism in this Guardian article, it takes a leap of faith to dress up the bet365 customer in question as the victim in all this.
There’s enough detail, you doubt she will receive her money from the licensed thieves?
Don’t the scum do a similar scam here, to the one they were fined over a million quid for in Australia earlier this month? Bet the Gambling Commission are looking into it as a matter of urgency, as we post.
If those are the full facts of the situation then thats pretty shoddy treatment and she’ll presumably have little trouble in court (not that it should come to that). Although our esteemed media have never been ones to let facts get the way of a good story so who knows?
Was looking at some of the odds for the tennis today. For example you could back Christina Mchale at 16-1 or 17-1 on the betfair exchange (although you will have to pay five percent on your winnings)
Back here with the normal bookies though, and you are betting her at 9-1! For me it’s disgusting they are allowed to bet at such margins. The scary thing is they’ll take a lot of money at these horrible prices.
Don’t underestimate how low some no-good punters will stoop. It is a well-known tactic for arbers and other ne’er-do-wells to dust off their initial deposit in an attempt to con oddsmakers into thinking they are drinking Miller High Life. With their second deposit they will jump all over every shady bet going, expecting to escape the system.
Given the omitted details and rather lazy journalism in this Guardian article, it takes a leap of faith to dress up the bet365 customer in question as the victim in all this.
In your eyes is there anything a bookmaker could do that would be wrong? You really do seem to have contempt for the punter, your customers. You called them scumbags on another thread. You seem to think they have no right to win and if they do they’re up to no good. Is this an official view shared by Coral, your employer, or is it a personal view?
For me it’s disgusting they are allowed to bet at such margins. The scary thing is they’ll take a lot of money at these horrible prices.
Can’t say I blame them, seems like good business sense to me. People are free to take their money to Betfair or wherever but seemingly enough are happy to bet at bookies odds to keep them going. Not paying money owed that has been honestly won (assuming that is the case) is however a disgrace.
Sure, I think bookmakers could improve in many aspects. For example, if this story is being fairly reported then bet365 should promptly return the funds to the customer in question. That is a big IF, of course.
I have nothing against straight punters who place straight bets – I am one myself. I do reserve strong personal contempt for arbers, bad e-w punters and bonus abusers. I think that bookmakers are unfairly demonised in places like this and, as I’ve said before, I think many (though certainly not all) of those whining about account closures are actually long-term losers trying to play the part of downtrodden winners. Many of the remainder are seedy individuals who place dirty bets and feel a misplaced sense of injustice when their accounts get locked.
It’s hard to admit you can’t beat the game and are failing at your favourite hobby – especially in a forum so highly-charged and ego-driven.
Some contributors can barely put together a post about industry issues without lobbing in insecure off-topic references to winners they’ve tipped, ante-post prices they’ve taken or debates they’ve won. Many of the leading posters on here are guilty on that count. If the average TRF poster is supposed to represent the average punter in terms of interpersonal skills and integrity then you can see why I think the benefit of the doubt belongs with the hyper-regulated transparent industry on the other side.
There are many straight punters and level-headed friendly contributors here, so please don’t put words in my mouth again by suggesting I’m labelling everyone with these descriptions. No doubt there are also one or two completely straight judges who have got a rough deal from the high street firms. I’m just talking about averages.
Again, I’m not a spokesman for any of my employers, all opinions my own etc.
They don’t want to take a bet, simple as. FOBT’s provide Risk Free profits. Horseracing represents risk, it reduces profits due to greater staffing costs, single employee per shop is all they want now. UK High Street bookies are now seaside arcades, all that’s missing is that they haven’t changed the “Bet Here” and “Payout Only” signs over the Cashiers booth to a sign that says “Change Here” because they can’t, as they are issued with “Bookmaker” licences and they can’t make it too obvious that they are in fact, High Street Casinos hiding behind a licence for a trade that they don’t carry on.
There isn’t a more corrupt and rancid business, being operated anywhere today, bookies make bankers look like Saints. Regulation simply doesn’t exist, again an organisation has to be seen to be put in place, another smokescreen, to give the appearance of regulation. Laws are continuously being strenghtened and introduced in every area where corruption is exposed, in order to eliminate or reduce it from happening again, Company Law, Criminal Law etc., perpetrators are Struck Off for life or imprisoned, anyone found guilty of corruption within the Racing Industry, is given a slap on the wrist and welcomed back with open arms having served whatever minuscule punishment given, that’s if a blind eye hasn’t been turned to the blatantly obvious corruption in the first place, by those supposedly charged with it’s discovery and elimination. Bookies don’t live in fear of their ways being changed, why should they when MP’s are complicit in actively fighting for no change, despite those same MP’s having been seen to be beneficiaries of bookie hospitality, to put it mildly.
Arber, Arber, Arber or Bonus Bagger is their cry. Can someone please tell me how I can arb a free bet of X, a tiny amount that will equal my initial deposit to a limit and before I can withdraw a penny, I have to play through both X and my initial deposit, Y amount of times. If they say it often enough people they want to deceive will believe it. That’s provided they don’t just steal your initial deposit in the first place by reducing your stakes to pennies in order for you never to be able to play it through on your chosen sport, but you’re welcome to pop over to our Casino side and become a mug.
Terms and Conditions, PMSL. They don’t exist, what does exist is, “what we say goes and we will say different things about the same situation when and as often as we like” and the only factual and true thing you will find is that our decision is final and not explainable to you.
They are very responsible when it comes to keeping an eye out for those “nasty money launderers” online, placing dubious cookies on our computers, that report back our every move to them, that they say they don’t share amongst themselves. it’s a good job that they do this, afterall anybody can walk into a bank, open an account and lodge any amount that isn’t notified to the authorities over a set amount or unusual transaction activity. What’s that you say? The banks are doing this already. So the nice bookie chappies are just checking the banks are doing their job and not using our information. Phew, I can sleep tonight. Pity they aren’t so diligent in their shops, where I can wash sorry play my money in large amounts on the FOBT’s having lost some of it for the service provided.
Those traders they have aren’t the brightest, I was looking at a horse at the start the other day, he threw the jockey off twice and wouldn’t go in the stalls twice, any fool could see he wasn’t going to take part but those thick traders thought his behaviour would increase his chances of running and winning, because they cut his price, they must have felt foolish a minute later when he was withdrawn and then had to cut all the others prices. Another 2 bookies have really slow or lazy staff, everyday their prices are always lower than everyone elses and are always lower than when the live show comes in, but the staff never press the button for their prices to go live for a good few minutes after, but sometimes they’re not slow or lazy, because if the live show prices are lower than their prices, they press the button straight away. Suppose we all have our good and bad, slow and lazy days, after all they’re only subhuman.
Hate the thoughts of going to work tomorrow, the office only holds 15 comfortably but with me in, there will be 16 of us. The canteen only fits 7 but we go for break in groups of 8. The doctors is closed and I need a Doctors Cert, wish I could just write my own Self Cert and not turn up, imagine that. I’m sure my fellow employees would look after me for making their life more comfortable, shall we see, but they would have to be careful that nobody found out, especially the boss, I think he knows, he must see the regularity with which it occurs.
Be Lucky All if you manage to get on and remember screenshots are your friend and the Courts are there for any dispute resolution, the old myth of not being able to go to Court, is just that, a myth.
There are no "Systems".
Sure, I think bookmakers could improve in many aspects. For example, if this story is being fairly reported then bet365 should promptly return the funds to the customer in question. That is a big IF, of course.
I have nothing against straight punters who place straight bets – I am one myself. I do reserve strong personal contempt for arbers, bad e-w punters and bonus abusers. I think that bookmakers are unfairly demonised in places like this and, as I’ve said before, I think many (though certainly not all) of those whining about account closures are actually long-term losers trying to play the part of downtrodden winners. Many of the remainder are seedy individuals who place dirty bets and feel a misplaced sense of injustice when their accounts get locked.
It’s hard to admit you can’t beat the game and are failing at your favourite hobby – especially in a forum so highly-charged and ego-driven.
Some contributors can barely put together a post about industry issues without lobbing in insecure off-topic references to winners they’ve tipped, ante-post prices they’ve taken or debates they’ve won. Many of the leading posters on here are guilty on that count. If the average TRF poster is supposed to represent the average punter in terms of interpersonal skills and integrity then you can see why I think the benefit of the doubt belongs with the hyper-regulated transparent industry on the other side.
There are many straight punters and level-headed friendly contributors here, so please don’t put words in my mouth again by suggesting I’m labelling everyone with these descriptions. No doubt there are also one or two completely straight judges who have got a rough deal from the high street firms. I’m just talking about averages.
Again, I’m not a spokesman for any of my employers, all opinions my own etc.
Good post LS.
Brave of you.
Value Is EverythingGood post LS.
Brave of you.
Brave? roflao. The lad’s just a Corals lackey.
He states there’s a big IF that the punter is entitled to their winnings but gives no facts or evidence to back up this view.
As the punter had her identity fully verified what can be the reason?
I wonder if the punter had lost the lot and had tried to deposit more to waste in their Bet 365 Scum casino she would have had any problems? Think we all know the answer to that.
From reports, this tactic is now employed by many bookmakers which is why me and many others will not be wasting our time with them, it’s not worth the hassle, all to British horse racings detriment.
I see that you make no mention of Horse Punters excellent post above?
You should be a politician Gingertipster, you spout enough crap.
£12billion: That’s the staggering sum Britons now lose every year gambling. Pity politicians are too busy squabbling to care, writes DOMINIC LAWSON
By DOMINIC LAWSON FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 00:48, 4 July 2016 | UPDATED: 19:31, 4 July 2016Astonishing acts of self-mutilation afflicting both the Government and Opposition have so dominated the news that serious damage being done to society as a whole has been all but ignored.
Thus the latest details of the sums sucked out of the pockets of Britons by the gambling industry slipped out last Friday without the slightest comment.
They were astounding: according to the Gambling Commission, Britons lost about £12.6 billion in the 12 months to September 2015, an increase of almost 12 per cent on the previous year.
That is almost £500 for every household in the land — equivalent to about seven weeks’ worth of job-seekers’ allowance.
I put it in that context, because it is among the most deprived areas that the gambling companies have concentrated those soulless purveyors of false hope and addictive ruin — the fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs).
This turbo-charged electronic roulette was released onto our High Streets as a result of the Gambling Act of 2005. In that same measure, the Blair administration also legalised the promotion of gambling via television advertising.
It is a mystery how the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, reconciled this with his conscience as a son of the Manse. Or perhaps not such a mystery: the Exchequer hoped to derive considerable extra revenues from taxation on greatly increased betting. It has not been disappointed. Last year, FOBTs raised £425 million for the Treasury.
Lethal
The costs to society, however, have become increasingly insupportable. Last week, Divorce Online, the site which logs all uncontested divorce petitions, revealed that gambling is now cited in no fewer than one in five such petitions as a reason for the break-up of the marriage — a dramatic increase over the figure only a few years ago, when only one in 15 such claims mentioned gambling as a cause.
Gambling has always been a cause of marital breakdown, but the FOBTs, which enable punters to risk as much as £100 per spin every 20 seconds, are a particularly lethal trap for addicts or those the industry would like to turn into addicts. And since divorce, especially when children are involved, tends to lead to an increase in benefits paid out by the Exchequer, this is part of the hidden cost of FOBTs.
The bookmakers insist they do nothing to encourage the public to become hooked on these machines. But the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme last month spoke to a former manager at Coral, who told how he had been instructed to offer perks to keep customers at the machines for as long as possible: ‘If we had a customer coming in their lunch hour, we had to make sure they didn’t waste time trying to get a cheese and ham roll instead of playing the machines. You could buy them a cheese and ham roll and have it ready for them.’
Another Coral manager revealed an email in which the company’s central operations department gave instructions on a new FOBT game called Big Banker: ‘Offer a demo … to whet their appetite … then encourage them to play with their own money. Once you have identified your target customers, it often helps if you use a “hook” to encourage them to play: “You like Big Banker, do you have our bonus card yet? It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s free.”
This ‘free’ bet is the standard method of hooking first-time customers. It appears over and over again in television advertisements for online gaming companies, even during live football matches, which will undoubtedly be watched by many under the age of 18.Children are also heavily exposed to similar gambling adverts on Twitter by firms such as Betfair and Paddy Power, even though the Advertising Standards Authority insists that gambling ads must have ‘particular regard for the need to protect children’. It is hardly surprising that Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones, the founder of the National Problem Gambling Clinic, said there has been a marked rise in youngsters seeking help with gambling addiction.
Of the £12.6 billion lost by British gamblers last year, £3.6 billion was online — overtaking the £3.2 billion lost in betting shops.
The form of gambling which has been declining is the one which actually has the redeeming social function of bringing people together: bingo halls. There are now fewer than 600 of them across the country.
Online gambling, by contrast, is a solitary vice with none of the community-enhancing aspects of the bingo hall. Yet if you watch the advertisements for online gambling shown almost non-stop in the breaks on TV sports programmes, you will see films of laughing young people gambling on their smartphones while partying happily at a bar or at each other’s homes.
Havoc
It is a gross misrepresentation. If such adverts portrayed reality, they would show a young man sitting alone and unsmiling, too obsessed with the numbers flashing in front of him to think of anyone else.
Still, at least he would not be smashing up someone else’s property. The High Streets, by contrast, have seen increasing violence and havoc, as the inevitable losers take their impotent rage out on the FOBTs.
Last week, a freedom of information request to the Metropolitan Police extracted the information that bookies’ 999 calls to the police are increasingly commonplace. Last year there was an 11 per cent rise in such incidents, with the Met being called out no fewer than 11,998 times.
This, too, is part of the cost which must be set against the Exchequer’s gains from taxing these firms’ burgeoning profits.
A growing number of Tory MPs have been calling on the Government to limit the social damage caused by the FOBTs, but to no avail. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport is meant to conduct a review on the maximum stakes allowable on these machines every three years: there has been no such inquiry since 2010.
Conservative Party members should not fail to raise this with the would-be leaders about to solicit their vote, not least because the current Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, is serenely indifferent to the pleas of those who call these machines ‘the crack cocaine of gambling’. As a guest of a gaming industry conference a few years ago, he told his delighted listeners: ‘People talk of [FOBTs] being the crack cocaine of gambling. I’m not even sure they’re the cannabis of gambling.’ Ha ha.
There might have been hope when, after last year’s general election, the MP for Chatham and Aylesford, Tracey Crouch, was given a ministerial role at the DCMS. In a Commons debate she had spoken of the ‘devastating impact that these high-risk, high-stake machines are having’ on her constituents. But there is no sign Ms Crouch has been allowed to challenge these interests now she has gained a ministerial red box.
Apoplexy
In fact, the entire political system has become a plaything of the gaming industry. Throughout the referendum campaign, my work email was inundated with press releases from betting firms, promoting their odds on who — out of Remain and Leave — would win. Oddly, even though the opinion polls suggested the race was a very close one, the betting market always had Remain heavily odds-on.
One very senior political adviser suggested to me that this was ‘a thin market, easy to rig’ and that the Remain campaign were encouraging wealthy supporters to bet heavily on their victory, so that their warnings of financial chaos on Brexit might be given a kind of market credibility.
In fact, the financial traders really did believe there was some predictive wisdom in the betting markets, which on the night of June 23 were suggesting a 90 per cent chance that Britain would vote Remain. This explains the extent of the collapse in sterling and shares immediately after the nation voted for Brexit — and the apoplexy this must have caused investors across the globe.
In other words, the odds put out by the likes of Ladbroke and William Hill actually fomented the global market panic that ensued when those odds were suddenly revealed to be wildly out of sync with reality.
Ladbrokes’ head of political betting, Matthew Shaddick, said with disarming candour: ‘Nobody at Ladbrokes’ HQ will be criticising the predictive power of our odds: they’ll be looking at the money we made.’
The same would go for William Hill, which took great pleasure in revealing that a London woman had chosen this firm to make her first-ever bet: a £100,000 punt on the UK voting to stay in the EU.
Another life damaged or destroyed. And they call it entertainment.
There are no "Systems".
In fact, the entire political system has become a plaything of the gaming industry. Throughout the referendum campaign, my work email was inundated with press releases from betting firms, promoting their odds on who — out of Remain and Leave — would win. Oddly, even though the opinion polls suggested the race was a very close one, the betting market always had Remain heavily odds-on.
One very senior political adviser suggested to me that this was ‘a thin market, easy to rig’ and that the Remain campaign were encouraging wealthy supporters to bet heavily on their victory, so that their warnings of financial chaos on Brexit might be given a kind of market credibility.
In fact, the financial traders really did believe there was some predictive wisdom in the betting markets, which on the night of June 23 were suggesting a 90 per cent chance that Britain would vote Remain. This explains the extent of the collapse in sterling and shares immediately after the nation voted for Brexit — and the apoplexy this must have caused investors across the globe.
In other words, the odds put out by the likes of Ladbroke and William Hill actually fomented the global market panic that ensued when those odds were suddenly revealed to be wildly out of sync with reality.
Ladbrokes’ head of political betting, Matthew Shaddick, said with disarming candour: ‘Nobody at Ladbrokes’ HQ will be criticising the predictive power of our odds: they’ll be looking at the money we made.’
The same would go for William Hill, which took great pleasure in revealing that a London woman had chosen this firm to make her first-ever bet: a £100,000 punt on the UK voting to stay in the EU.
Another life damaged or destroyed. And they call it entertainment.
This is wholly different from the ghastly FOBTs and for Lawson to include it as an adjunct to hammer home a point is wrong. It could be construed as shrewd ‘proper’ bookmaking as no one was forced to bet the long odds-on Remain underlay and anyone could have bet the Leave overlay had they chosen to
On the premise that the true odds were Evens each of two, which they more or less were, if one could lay plenty of 1/3 Heads on a coin toss one surely would
The lady who bet 100K on Remain, presumably at something around 1/3, has only herself to blame
The lady who bet 100K on Remain, presumably at something around 1/3, has only herself to blame
I wonder if she had to go through a lengthy identity verification process lasting several weeks, before being allowed to place the bet? Any advance on No?
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