General Betting
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26 Nov 09
14:13
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Date Joined:
06 Jul 05
Just went down for 25 minutes after i placed a 5k bet on the tennis.
Called and asked is it matched / what is happening / are you voiding all bets?
They said they have no way of knowing what was happening and would have to wait and see when they get it back up as to whether i was matched (i was but luckily there were no service breaks during the downtime and prices remained largely the same).
Absolutely NOT ACCEPTABLE.
As i said to the girl, you cannot just say that you don't know and i have to wait. We're talking thousands of pounds and peoples livelihoods (unless you believe the Betfair CEO that "Nobody in the UK makes a living from gambling").
Looks like the Premium charge and countless millions other commission has gone to Manchester United and Betfair's corporate boxes at Old Trafford rather than into developing any sort of backup software for little old us.
The actions of this shower become more unpalatable by the day.
Called and asked is it matched / what is happening / are you voiding all bets?
They said they have no way of knowing what was happening and would have to wait and see when they get it back up as to whether i was matched (i was but luckily there were no service breaks during the downtime and prices remained largely the same).
Absolutely NOT ACCEPTABLE.
As i said to the girl, you cannot just say that you don't know and i have to wait. We're talking thousands of pounds and peoples livelihoods (unless you believe the Betfair CEO that "Nobody in the UK makes a living from gambling").
Looks like the Premium charge and countless millions other commission has gone to Manchester United and Betfair's corporate boxes at Old Trafford rather than into developing any sort of backup software for little old us.
The actions of this shower become more unpalatable by the day.
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Replies: 37
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Who'd have thought that gambling could be risky.
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Well, it's the 1st breakdown for a while as far as I know.Used to happen regularly and was a nightmare.
The only fair way of dealing with this is to void all markets which were affected by the downtime, where the event had been completed. Maybe this could be put forward at the next q and a session. |
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Aye Robot, risk is fine, unfairness is not.
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What was unfair about it? We ALL had the same problem. Some of us will have lost from it, some benefitted. You have to be able to take these things on the chin.
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Listen i am on Murray and doing nicely. But to not be able to tell you if your 5k bet is matched is not acceptable.
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What was the old saying, don't know if they still use it.
Your money is safe with Betfair. Patently not. |
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No online service is perfect. Betfair's record recently has been pretty good. It's better than the LSE's!
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True Chilly, the stock market went down this morning, but it's a completely different service.
Prices aren't moving when the stock market is down, certainly not to the extent they do on a sporting event |
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But to not be able to tell you if your 5k bet is matched is not acceptable.
Are you going to stop using BF then? |
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No i'm not
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Chris, for what its worth I also think its a bit rum.
It is a rare event but it is hardly an 'unknown unknowm' and you have been here 4 years. I hope you didn't lose but you just have to factor in the possibility. Especially in an upgrade week and all the signs were there with site performance from early on today. |
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if you're trading in large amounts you surely have back up, books, spreads other exchanges in case of these situations arising. Or do you just sit and watch the headlights approaching?
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Chris, surely this should be part of your risk assessment e.g. back-up account with**/Bookies and staking plan?
You know this happens so why enter into positions that are going to put you in such a position? I know that the 5k is only a small % of your bank (I think you mentioned somewhere else that it was about 50k) but it's obviously amount that you are not comfortable in losing should the worst happen. |
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Buzzer, that's the absolute point - they couldn't tell me if i had been matched or not so there was nothing i could do
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Marky again it's the fact they couldn't say if i was matched, not that i couldn't trade on Betfair - i could have hedged on another site had i known if i was matched.
And my bank is a lot less than 50k :( |
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There's nothing you can do if the exchange goes down and you don't know whether a bet has matched or not.
If the machine has crashed, there's nothing the helpdesk staff can do either, except wait for the engineer to sort it. I've been the engineer in that sort of situation, a bakery actually, at 3 am. They had no idea what loaves to bake, and the whole place was just standing watching us footering with the computer. Every 5 mins a manager would come up and ask us if we were done yet, just to make sure we couldn't concentrate. My colleague was never the same again afterward, lost his nerve. Not me, I laugh at danger! I was in danger of having a bet on a race due to this downtime! My bot was baffled. There's nothing I can do, though. Except accept it, or give up. |
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so you entered the market at the exact time the site went down?
That's terrible luck but one of the hazards of in play betting. I don't mean to sound patronising because i lost a hefty amount once trading a horse pre race, i placed a lay then backed back on the off and the screen was green but betfair didn't put the race in play at the correct time then the race stayed suspended the horse romped home and i had a large red on it, when it was investigated they said i'd placed my back bet 1 second after the official off time so all bets after that were void and all pre race bets of course stood |
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chris , it's very frustrating when these things happen , but it really is nothing that can be done about it. Worst case will probably be that you have placed a bet at a price close to the correct one.
Just be glad you are based in UK , because it happen much more often to non UK customers because all bets placed from outside UK is processed through Betfair's server in Malta. About a year ago it seemed to happen something like once a week on the Malta server , but it has become better and isn't that frequent anymore. |
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You should factor in the risk of system faillure when you are calculating your bets.
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sympathy for both sides of this debate. on the one hand this kind of thing does royally bvgger up your risk management strategies.
on the other hand, no system will ever be 100% failproof, so you need to have some plan in place for when things do go wrong. |
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Apparently you can't teach it...
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aye robot 26 Nov 15:17
Who'd have thought that gambling could be risky. aye robot 26 Nov 15:24 What was unfair about it? We ALL had the same problem. Some of us will have lost from it, some benefitted. You have to be able to take these things on the chin Sarcasm and cheap talk, how long have you been working for BF. |
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forum filth rising to the top
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need to have some plan in place for when things do go wrong.
The only thing I can think of is to hedge half the amount on some other site, but I'm far from sure about it. The purple place has auto cancellation for unmanaged positions, but it will only help if the problem is at your end, and not theirs. |
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admittedly, if you can't find out whether you've been matched it's hard to imagine what you can do.
apart from hedge to half the amount, I suppose, which cuts the maximum risk. |
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Eddie the eagle 26 Nov 16:33
chris , it's very frustrating when these things happen , but it really is nothing that can be done about it. Worst case will probably be that you have placed a bet at a price close to the correct one. Just be glad you are based in UK , because it happen much more often to non UK customers because all bets placed from outside UK is processed through Betfair's server in Malta. About a year ago it seemed to happen something like once a week on the Malta server , but it has become better and isn't that frequent anymore. So are you saying if the uk sever goes down the Malta one can still be up and running? |
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fair enough Chris - glad it worked out okay for you today
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YDNA , I don't know if the Malta server can operate fully for non UK customers if the UK one is down , but the UK server can certainly operate normally for UK customers when the Malta server has trouble and nobody outside UK can place or cancel bets.
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chris_rogers30
What was the outcome of your bet? Did it get matched? Did you end up winning or losing as an result of the downtime? |
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The London Stock Exchange was also down for a couple of hours today. They're investigating, too. Good conspiracy material here, me thinks. Oh, the official response to not being able to trade is - TOUGH!
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He said this in his opening post :
They said they have no way of knowing what was happening and would have to wait and see when they get it back up as to whether i was matched (i was but luckily there were no service breaks during the downtime and prices remained largely the same). |
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Hey.
All those saying that the system not working happens etc. I accept that but surely it is not acceptable to go 25 minutes and not know if your bet has been matched or not That's the point of it Eddie, i was matched and at a fair price, but it was saying i had no bets on the market and Betfair couldn't confiorm whether or not this was the case - it wasn't It'll probably please most on here to know that i eventually lost 3k on the match, but that was down to me trading the third set like a monkey pressing random keys rather than anything to do with Betfair. |
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I'm perfectly happy to accept some risk associated with lost connections and unavoidable server errors etc.
But the suspicion is that BF IT people are constantly fiddling with the site as a means of job creation and self-preservation in a way that produces very little improvement for most punters but invariably results in site downtime and inconvenience for many. I don't mind being prey to factors beyond everyone's control. It's those factors that should be well within BF's control that really hack me off. |
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LSE went down for nearly 4 hours yesterday. these events WILL happen from time to time, it is inevitable! all you can do is lay off your position elsewhere when it does happen.
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Not if Betfair can't tell you whether or not you have a position.
And the stock market is very different to a live and changing tennis match. |
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But the suspicion is that BF IT people are constantly fiddling with the site as a means of job creation and self-preservation in a way that produces very little improvement for most punters but invariably results in site downtime and inconvenience for many.
I suspect you are right there. It wouldn't matter if they were a bit better at the programming/testing, but they seem to be a bunch of no-hopers. I don't see what we can do about it, though. BF is in a comfort-zone phase where they can laugh at customer concerns. Last year's failed breakout has reduced this place to a PoW camp. |
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A good idea to have a software program running in the background, if using it or not
I place the majority of my bets on the main Betfair site, but also run Betfair Rapid in the background on half second refresh. Usually Betfair Rapid will still continue to operate when the main site goes down. If not then Rapid should produce a snapshot of current position at the time the site crashes |