PC advice - just had a 'Premium Charge Notification'

1. "About us" "Charges"
2. https://account.betfair.com/regpay-myaccount/premiumcharge/summary.html

Thanks, that came with the email so am just reading it although tired so may leave for tomorrow.

First question is where can I see my lifetime profit/loss?

https://account.betfair.com/regpay-myaccount/premiumcharge/summary.html

bookmark it as you'll need it now and it's not exactly advertised

Think people just brag about this ????

FFS just read the terms

Thanks for the Premium Portal. Had no idea such a thing existed.

I'm under the impression plenty of people on 'General Betting' are paying it so it's hardly bragging.

I'm reading the terms and it's not particularly clear to me. I need to look through this tomorrow but I'm not sure how I can change what I'm doing, seems like Betfair are taking advantage of their near monopoly but I'm sure people more clued up than I have looked into it.

PC may be annoying but qualifying for it is good news. If not paying PC is more important to you than making money then you can go through all that arbing palava, but if you're here for the cash then you should aim to pay as much PC as possible. The more PC you pay the LESS you're paying in commission overall, so just change your mind-set, a big PC bill is good news, learn to love it.

well ive tried to reduce the pc this week by placing bets totally at random, and doing the opposite on here.

ive hit a quite staggering run of "success" on here, making things even worse.

therefoere the only advice i can give is for you is to get used to it. the pc is like quicksand.

The pc is like suffering with a bad back - it's always there and it's a fkin pest. You certainly wont learn to love it, tolerate at best.
The pain will intensify every wednesday when the portal will show you what could/should be sitting in your bank account.

aye robot 01 Apr 19:43
PC may be annoying but qualifying for it is good news.

Just don't get this statement......there are no benefits to being a PC payer

It's good news because it shows that you're winning consistently and paying less commission than anyone else. Paying PC feels bad but given that PC exists NOT paying PC is definitely worse.

marky sparky 01 Apr 20:21
aye robot 01 Apr 19:43
PC may be annoying but qualifying for it is good news.

Just don't get this statement......there are no benefits to being a PC payer

Qualifying for it is good news in the sense that you're making money. At least that's what I think he means.

I don't quite get the bit about paying more PC means you pay less commission overall. My initial thoughts are that I should just ignore it although I do a fair bit of arbing and I think I've just had a 'good' run on the betfair side of it. Have been moving away from the arbing as bookies cut me and think that's what's tipped me into PC territory.

why not ring the betfair helpdesk, and ask them to explain why you are paying it? i,m not being sarcastic or anything but surely should be your first port of call.

aye robot 01 Apr 20:32
It's good news because it shows that you're winning consistently and paying less commission than anyone else. Paying PC feels bad but given that PC exists NOT paying PC is definitely worse.

I pay 4.7% commission and the pay the pc at the end of the week - that's not good news

AYE ROBOT....How the hell do you think I'm paying less commission than everybody else?

I'm on FULL 5% commission plus 18% Premiun Charges on any of my winning bets purely because I now only bet once or twice a week on here.

Not only that a few weeks ago on a Sunday Night I had 2 bets on American Football one won and the other lost 3 hrs later.

I won 1k off one and lost 1k on the other. Because the team that lost played 3hrs earlier it was calculated on a different week leaving me with Commission of £50 plus a premiun charge of £175.......

Yet for my evening I only finish level but lost £225 after commission and the premiun charge was deducted.

So I loved to know AYE ROBOT how you think we paid less commission than everybody else. :0

lapsy pa 01 Apr 20:45
why not ring the betfair helpdesk, and ask them to explain why you are paying it? i,m not being sarcastic or anything but surely should be your first port of call.

When I find the time to look into it then I'm sure I'll contact them with some questions. Was just hoping for some impartial advice too and wondering if there was a source with forumites' FAQs on this. Maybe a decent thread or even a blog/website.

re templeton peck, in forum chat there is a few q and a sessions that might answer some of your questions. my own view in some cases it seems very unjust.

"less" in percentage terms, gross profit/comm, doesnt mean less in terms of money.

its always seemed a strange way to "make sure people pay their share" and i just dont buy it.

someone who is on 80% gross/comm can place/edit/cancel far more bets than me, use the forum more often, refresh the markets more, withdraw/deposit more often, use the helpdesk more often..... in short, cost betfair more than me to "manage" their account and pay less money in charges than i do.

im really annoyed about it just now because im going to get hammered by the pc next week after trying to reduce it!

my only advice is that if you have an alternative, use it. i cant see how to reduce it, or get out it once you are in.

if you dont have an alternative then dont let it eat away at you. i suppose if you were to get a slap in the face by an old friend every wednesday at noon you would get used to that aswell.

Blessington, that's a pain in the short term, but it all evens out , as you'll get a 'credit' for your loss in the form of reduced charges in the future.

I paid PC in a week during which I lost more than £13k.

I think legitimate PC avoidance strategies work best if you're already paying less than 3% commission and using bots, so that you can churn your cash on breakeven bets when there are no 'real' moneymaking opportunities.

Everyone who is not paying the PC and is up overall in their lifetime account have paid more than 20-23% of their winnings to Betfair. Otherwise they would be paying the PC.

The 5% commission and 17% PC are not comparable figures. Lets say that before commission for every £100 you win, you lose £90. So before commission this is £10. But you pay 5% commission on the £100 which means you're only winning £95 for every £90 you lose. So after commission this is £5. So you will then be paying half of all your winnings to Betfair.

But lets suppose for every £100 you win you only lose £50. After commission this is £95 won for every £50 lost. So you're up £45 after com compared to £50 before com. In other words you're retaining 90% of your total winnings and only giving betfair 10%. In this scenario this is less than the 23% demanded by Betfair and you have to supply the other 13% via the PC.

INVESTOR.....Your automatically presuming thats I'm going to go back into premiun charge land with my next bets.....

I could end up like the other 85% of the clients on here and never make premiun charge land again. :(

But now just paid a extra £175 because my other bet on the losing Sunday game finished 3 hours behind the game I had the winner on.

It surely shouldn't be too difficult for Betfair to base its premiun charges on any 24 x 7 = 168 hours period instead of Monday to Sunday.

Taking into account Sunday is usually the busiest night for sport through out the World......Cheers

blessington, why would they change it so that you keep more of your winnings? they like it like this, they get paid much more.

I thought everyone on the forums were pro punters and everyone paid PC :o)

That's true. Eveyone bar yourself Grey Shot...lol

Jimmy, no one loses on here LOL

Everyone is a winner...

ROD....Why would they change it?.....Well every business wants to be seen to be fair to all its customers.

So just because one customer place 2 bets on live NFL matches covered by Ski and they happened to be on a Sunday night U/K time. ....Why should the soccer fan or racing fan putting similar number of bets in the afternoon be betting under more favourable terms?

After all the site is about betting, not promoting people to bet on Soccer, Racing, or whatever?

So I loved to know AYE ROBOT how you think we paid less commission than everybody else

As others have pointed out, everyone else pays more in comm as a percentage of their total profits (or more likely losses) than PC payers. If they didn't then they would qualify for PC too.

I also pay PC and plenty of it. Of course I don't enjoy paying it but weeks where I get a big PC bill are still the best weeks.

Before complaining about a small reduction in profits you have to recognise that the overwhelming majority of people here are losing money. Most of them are paying close to 100% of what they deposit in commission, we are tremendously fortunate not to be in that position.

ROBOT...At the end of the day the purpose of my thread was how many people will give up or be forced to betting with Betfair just because of premiun charges.

In my own case a 3 hour difference in bets left me facing a premiun charges of around £175 on a losing betting Sunday evening

Remember this is a company who in its annual report, reported a profit of over £303 million last year for a cost of sales outlay according to iits annual report of around £48 million.

Plus is not as if Betfair is the only gambling company that has clients who are winners on their books. Its the nature of the business.

If there wasn't guys like us who occassionally win on Betfair how long would the losers continue to bet if they thought nobody win here except Betfair?

So to use a excuse for when somebody see's some parts of the premiun charges hitting some customer more unfairly than others that there is more losers than winners on Betfair so you should be happy is a load of bullsh1t imo......Cheers

A very slightly interesting development.

I noticed my first PC charge hadn't been refunded and so I emailed them asking for my money back. It turns out the "notification" email was sent 10 days after my first charge and it wasn't until after my second charge that I was 'notified'.

In other words, my first charge was refunded but it wasn't until I was charged a second time that they 'notified' me I may begin to be charged a PC.

Fools.

my charges % when shown on the lifetime portal link posted above is at 31%(varies between 25-30% generally) am i right in thinking no matter what amount of money i win,if my charges % is maintained at that level i'd never pay pc please?

TIA.

needs to drop below 20% to pay PC . ps

thanks mf, that'll never happen here!

Though i am a straight backer of dogs,rarely lay/arb,would most punters of my style be around the same percentage you think?

obviously just interested to know how successful (or not!) i am compared to others of same style.

I know several exclusive dog punters ... who just punt 'like you' and are regular PC payers.

I hardly punt although it's Grand National day so that's an exception. And so's the Masters.