Premium Charge

Haven't checked it for a long time as it seemed to be right each week. What's wrong with yours this week?

The report said I had made a lot more than I actually had

I would check the numbers again and have in mind that losses from markets that are partially settled wont count towards PC until the market is fully settled.
It's also easy to forget winnings from the Aussie wallet.

remember betfairs commission calculation means the Gross PL less Total Charges won't match your bethistory figure for the same period

I emailed them and they said the figures don't add up either, they are looking into it.

What a f**king shambles.

Joel, if your pc charge is incorrect how the hell can we be confident that they take the correct amount each week from the rest of us?

Just checked my last two weeks and both are incorrect as per my P&L.

Just checked mine for this week and it is wrong. What is wrong is that the total commission generated figure for the week is understated. I've had no partially settled markets and no Aussie wallet markets.

These are my figures:

Commission paid this week £210.78 (double and cross checked)
divided by commission rate of 3.3% means my winning markets for the week were £6,387
My gross win for the week is £1,218 (confirmed)
Which means I had losing markets totalling £5,166
implied commission equals 3% of £5,166 = £154.98
Commission generated = (Commission + Implied Commission) ÷ 2
=(£210.78+£154.98)/2 = £182.88
and I've only been credited with £150.39 according to my statement

Waiting for a call back at the moment

Probably taken a bit extra this week to pay for the NEW! casino tab

CLYDEBANK , there is an error in the calculation from Betfair if you have got the numbers right.


Joel , what happened in the end in your case ?

Looks like I'm going to have to sort this out by email. The initial response I got was along the lines of it's not possible to work it out and the computer is never wrong.

any bets settled between 00:00 and 01:00 BST on Monday morning?

it's working on GMT, not BST

No the gross profit for the week is correct - confirmed as per the premium charge report

"divided by commission rate of 3.3% means my winning markets for the week were £6,387"

Depending on how big or small your wins were you can't rely on the comms paid as being 3.3%. You'd be better off calculating implied comms by downloading the betting history for the period and just adding up the losing markets to 3% rounded in something like excel

commission paid is simply my commission rate for the week

irrespective of that i've added each separate commission payment up and it concurs and cross checks.

hopefully I'll get a swift correct response and the email won't be buried as too hard.

If you manage to get a swift concise response you'll be the first one :)

Considering how much they take in PC charges they certainly like to make it hard to cross check the figures, although I'd guess that's more by design than simply overlooked.

No response yet. A bit worrying because I'd imagine plenty of people who do pay it are unaware how to calculate it, have to trust that it is done correctly, and would be unaware if it is wrong. The total charges being understated will mean you'll pay more in the future even if you don't actually pay it in the week that it is understated. I often check it or roughly check it and havent noticed it to be wrong before but I certainly dont always check it and I' be unlikely to pick up an overcharge of £30 if I hadnt checked it.

Should also add that by removing "the commission paid" figure from the calculations (after the premium charge review) they have made it harder for users to check it is right and less likely that someone could see at a glance it is wrong.

is it done by ip address or name of account holder,could i open one in wifes name with her card.

Should also add that by removing "the commission paid" figure from the calculations (after the premium charge review) they have made it harder for users to check it is right and less likely that someone could see at a glance it is wrong.

When they removed the commission paid value after the review, Betfair said that took no part in the calculation and only confused matters. I agreed with them at the time. Now that I have read Clydebank's post, it would actually make matters simpler if it was reintroduced.

Knowing the "week's commission paid" and the commission percentage it is easy to work out the week's profit of all winning markets. Multiply this by half the commission percentage and this will give you the week's commission generated by winning markets.

Then knowing the week's gross profit and the week's profit of all winning markets it easy to calculate the week's loss from losing markets. Multiply this value by -1.5% and you have the commission generated by losing markets.

Add these together you get the total commission generated. This with the gross profit is everything you need for a very simple calculation.

Why are Betfair trying to make it difficult?

it gone on for too long where is the link ? for it to find it in my account
instead of going to feedback and cut and paste the link

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

got a link thinks but i mean they should put it in" my account "

got a link thinks but i mean they should put it in" my account "

Betfair will say that only a very small percentage of customers will need it.

they removed the comm paid as for most people paying it there was a big difference in what you had paid and what you got credited with in the comm generated

https://premiumcharge.betfair.com/PremiumPortal/portal

Does this help people?....I fell off my chair today after being charged £154 in charges....Never heard of them before.... absolute scandal they are applied....Anyone know the rationale for them apart from theft????

If you've not been pre warned you should get your first charge refunded.

The rationale for the charge is that if you win too quickly you cost Betfair money and therefore they'd rather not have you as a customer. The charge is applied to top up your contribution to the point where you are considered break even.

thanx....no pre warning was given and just thought they had messed up my account balance

"The rationale for the charge is that if you win too quickly you cost Betfair money"

Yes, that is what they say...which is of course a total pile of crap.

As many people have stated, just about any customer can be hit if they have a good run. Big winners, small winners, losers, gamblers, arbers, position takers, market makers, all that needs to happen is for you to have an unusually good run...and wallop. And as has also been pointed out, once you get hit, it's almost impossible to get rid of it, other than by hitting a large number of losers! And then would you get a refund to compensate? Pigs might fly....

Imagine walking into a betting shop and being told that because you've had a decent run recently, that even money winner you just backed is being paid out at 4/5. Absolutely no difference whatsover. It's disgusting. It's obscene. And many other words I could think of.

Betfair, where winners are welcome? Betfair, where you get 20% better odds? LMAO.

Thanx for your informed comments.....I was of the impression that they had the perfect business model of taking 5% from markets so didn't really matter who won and who lost to them.....As you have said I might just be on a lucky streak which could end tomorrow and never return for 10 years!!

The reality is that in Betfair's own words very few people qualify to pay premium charge. I would say therefore those that do (assuming they are not trap bettors, insiders or hooverers) are not reponsible for the churn rate of customers that leave Betfair, since they match a tiny proportion of leaving customers bets, and therefore are not uneconomic customers.

The actual situation is that it makes sense to charge those customers more who derive the greatest benefit from using the site more since they won't leave or are at least unlikely to leave. The follow on question is who derives the greatest net benefit from the site and how likely are they to leave? The big winners or the quick winners?

This thread is actually about the incorrect calculation of the charge mind.

Eddie the eagle 07 Apr 02:24


CLYDEBANK , there is an error in the calculation from Betfair if you have got the numbers right.


Joel , what happened in the end in your case ?


Eddie, BF admitted they had made an error, it was on 1 particular Aus Race which for some reason had counted twice or something. Don't know what would have happened if I didn't pick it up myself...going to have to check more thoroughly from now on.

2 completely different types of mistake then since mine shows the correct profit. It's the charges that are wrong.

tol5tov 07 Apr 14:55


is it done by ip address or name of account holder,could i open one in wifes name with her card.

anybody ?

CLYDEBANK29 07 Apr 14:45
Should also add that by removing "the commission paid" figure from the calculations (after the premium charge review) they have made it harder for users to check it is right and less likely that someone could see at a glance it is wrong.

This decision was horrendous.
You can't even see how much your Net profit is by looking at your PC statement.
Of everything Betfair has ever done, this really baffles me the most. I know it's not important in the scheme of things, but this decision was so completely devoid of logic that I had some difficulty letting it go.

The only time I had a go at them over the phone was when they did this 'because it was confusing customers'. They went on to tell me I could look at the week's P/L on the site then deduct the PC. I said this is going to waste 5 minutes of my time every single week, why don't you just leave it there... I don't like to waste my time on wholly unnecessary menial tasks.

What's really confusing for me is how Betfair seem to believe that NET profit is such a trivial metric for its customers that they don't need to provide the information to calculate it on the PC portal.

I've never checked my PC payments. I think the treatment Clydebank has received so far is pretty dire. It's a serious issue if Betfair is messing this up.

On a positive note I should add that Betfair Customer Services have almost always been very polite and helpful with regard to requests and problems. In this case I was frustrated, as I believe Betfair should strive to provide complete and accurate information and the CS agent disagreed with this.

Bf are a bookmaker. Anyone who consistently or long-term wins money from them is a bad customer for them.

The question becomes whether they need winning liquidity providers or market makers.

Perhaps they don't? They just need a tissue to be able to put up the money themselves.

askari1 08 Apr 03:41
Bf are a bookmaker. Anyone who consistently or long-term wins money from them is a bad customer for them.

The question becomes whether they need winning liquidity providers or market makers.

Perhaps they don't? They just need a tissue to be able to put up the money themselves.


they arent though are they? hence they dont make a book

but..they may well be one day

tol5tov 07 Apr 14:55

is it done by ip address or name of account holder,could i open one in wifes name with her card.
anybody ?

My wife has her own account and we use the same computer. Her losing bets are not considered when my generated commission is calculated

Hope this helps

askari1 08 Apr 03:41

Bf are a bookmaker. Anyone who consistently or long-term wins money from them is a bad customer for them.

The question becomes whether they need winning liquidity providers or market makers.

.....................................................

askari I espoused that view years ago but I've changed my mind recently for the reasons I stated in an earlier post. Leaving punters arent leaving because other punters are winning too quickly, the mere fact that pc payers represent such a small fraction of users bears this out. Regardless of this, remove one set of winners and another set of winners will appear. The solution to the issue to maximise revenues, if market conditions exist to enable you to do that, is to take more money off the winners.

The logic that people are leaving now like never before because people are now winning too quickly doesn't stand up imo. unless you are talking specifically about small winners leaving because big fish have taken away their edge and its getting harder to compete with them. The markets are also getting more competitive all the time which means the less clued up are protected by this efficiency to losing less quickly not more quickly.

Clydebank....Loads have left or seriously curtailed their gambling. Their is lots of gaps now in what used to be popular markets EVEN in horse racing and soccer.

Even in-running is shown gaps if the threads on poor Tennis liquildty are true. In fact their lots of threads poping up on different forums now complaining about liquilty.

There also a lot of market overounds now only been held up by £2 bets and when was the last time you saw somebody shouting Betfair for 20% better odds?

But probaly the most significant and worrying for me reading the threads is their is now a lot of NEW guys getting hit. Guys only on 12 - 18 months with Betfair. Who never thought premiun charges was something that would hit them.

They certainly won't hang around as long as yourself and myself in the hope Betfair will eventually recognize the value of long term customers....Cheers

hi, does anyone have the long so i can see how much comm i have paid in the last 12 months and to see when/if i qualify to pay premiuim charge soon?

i think its www. betfair/ premiumportal.....

or something like that

thanks

Clydebank, I wasn't implying that losers are leaving or might leave b/c of the activity of consistent winners.

It may be that bf has advantages over other bms that prevent losers leaving so quickly. These may be: 1) the wins are bigger and more memorable; 2) the losses seem more unlikely and exceptional, and 3) the losers lose more slowly.

Alternatively, heightened awareness of gambling in society cd mean losers replenish more quickly.

At the same time, I cannot see that bf can programmatically prefer a winning customer to a losing customer. OK, I can see that thery can have a strategy to get more out of winners, but as it is regular winners w/ winning strategies are paying by far the least of any subset of players as a fraction of profits, despite being the most vocal and demanding and often the best-informed.

ty lay low

Last week i made £666 on one bet and lost £220.90 on my only other bet.

My profit before any charges £445.10

My charges were £102.35 ( £33.30 commission and £ 69.05 premium charge )

I work this out at about 23% Have i been overcharged or is this correct ? Anyone have any idea please ?

it's correct howard

48 hours later ... still no response to being overcharged

last night I chased them up ... said I would get a reply within 24 hours

have they been calculating it incorrectly since the scheme started? the longer it goes by without a reply the more it looks like they have.

I'm going to go through all mine at some point. Of course, getting the information required for me to do that isn't a trivial task.

Lori I do have an inkling of an idea why it has been specifically calculated wrong this week

Nice to see consistency anyways ...Joel gets a reply by Wednesday morning. Be lucky if I get a reply by Friday morning

Keep us posted as to what happens please.

Clydebank thanks and hope you get some joy.

Just got this response ..fair play to them

Your calculations do seem to be correct. It would appear that you have been overcharged Premium Charges by the sum of 32.49 GBP. Rest assured that the Pricing team will be conducting an investigation in order to**the issue and prevent it from re-occurring.

In the meantime I have requested that you receive a full rebate of the Premium Charges debited from your account with respect to your activity in the week commencing 29th March 2010. You should receive a credit of 59.74 GBP shortly.

________________________________________________________________________

Well done CB.

Time for the rest of us to get looking.

fair play to them ?


it's fking disgraceful

how many other times has this been happening without anyone noticing

not as if the premium charge is easily calculated


unreal

fair play in so far as they admitted there had been a mistake and refunded the whole charge rather than just the overpayment.

congrats on the refund

makes you wonder what's gone 'missing' on weeks previous

Wd Clydebank. Why did you think it was specifically wrong that week?

I had a few bets on a couple of "to score" markets. On one of them for instance I lost £43 overall yet still paid commission of £28 because each player constitutes a separate market for commission purposes.

I might be barking up the wrong tree and its unrelated, but thought as I don't normally bet on those markets it might be something to do with it.

Think its worth everyone checking through past weeks

If they have charged you too much PC this needs a thorough look-in to and not by Betfair.

It's beyond belief that they haven't added everything required in the My Account section. How can I check the figures. Last week it said my gross P and L is 22 units, yet my net P and L is only 16 units. Commission generated apparently 2.5 units. So that doesn't make any sense.

Put it on the My Account ffs.

They've sent me a sheet with this breakdown before:

Account Id Product Id Event Id Sport Event Gross P&L (£) Comm Paid (£) Comm Gen. (£)

Why can't this sheet be downloaded from My Account each week so we can all verify the figures.

With something as ambiguous as this charge they should at least make it as transparent as possible.

Seems they dont want premium charges in the my account section as it will highlight that it exists to 98 odd percent of people who dont pay it.

the premium portal page comes and goes for me each week which is rather annoying.

Only reason i can think why its not linked from my account and available every week.

Clearly they want to try and hide it from as many people as they possibly can until they pay it.

What other explanation is there?

STEPTOES YARD 09 Apr 13:35

Think its worth everyone checking through past weeks

No, its easier setting up an automated email to BF every week saying "I think youve calculated my PC wrong - please could you re-run the calculation and credit any overpayment".

:)

wrong this week too :(

I made my charges £355.43.

They've only made it £348.59

We need some excel guru to set up a spreadsheet to do a calculation check for us, shouldn't be too hard as all you'd need to would be load in the weekly pnl and bet history files.

I'm still in a battle with the week commencing the 29th March. I am not looking at this week until we have ironed that week out. FFS.

Didn't they say this was all going to be transparent and under My Account as of January this year? Total shambles. Can't believe it takes several follow up emails and checks to iron things out. Really pishing me off.

Even more sure now that it's someat to do with the "to score" market (or similar markets where each runner is a separate market) and the problem probably dates back to either when the scheme started or when the scheme was amended.

mine this week is completely wrong. shows my weekly p/l as 700+, when it's actually about 600 - and in fact less because some of that's profits from part-settled markets.

what a pile of utter sh!t betfair is turning into.

if there's anyone out there who knows how to compile apps in VB .NET i'll happily post up the source code for a small app i built which will list all settled markets for a selected period and provides summaries of all relevant premium charge components (implied commission, commission generated,etc)

DStyle, it'd be good if you could post the code up or place the source on something like mediafire

i'll get the source code up on mediafire by the end of the week and then post the link up here

thanks

done

http://www.mediafire.com/?tgjzqydn1lm

takes a long time to compile because of the service references

probably wont be around until thursday if you have any questions

I have an excel spreadsheet that I think does the job. Email me at bayesian@h0tmail.co.uk and I'll send it out.

It was right this week to the penny and I had no bets on any "to score" market.

I'm sure there is a problem with these markets and PC calculation (dating back to either inception or the change in the PC rules) and any similar markets where each runner is a separate market for commission markets. My charges were approx £5 short last week but can't find the enthusiasm to chase up such a small dicrepancy unless someone else who bets in these markets is willing to go to the trouble of checking their PC calculations.

My premium charge statement is wrong again this week 10 weeks after I bought it to Betfairs attention.....

losing markets totalled £ 7025.95
implied comm on that @ 3% is £210.78
comm paid was £240.50
(£210.78+£240.50)/2 means total charges = £225.64

The figure on my PC report is £214.34 so understated by £11.30

The common theme on the weeks it has been wrong is that I've had winning and losing selections on the same "to score" market.  This problem although it wont affect many people must have been going on either since the premium charge was first introduced or since it was amended.

So will betfair be checking every single customer who has paid pc to see if they have had bets on players to score markets, and notifying them of these errors?

Pigs might fly....

I wonder if this applies to all the markets that are framed in this way (i.e. treated as a market within what appears to be a market). If so, not only will these To Score bets be affected, but also Acca markets as well.

I had some scorer bets last week for the world cup, so I'll go through last weeks payment and see how I get on and post up tomorrow when I get a bit of time.

never paid a penny of this disgraceful charge and i never will.. the day i have to is the day i give it up.. why do you lot stand for it? seriously you can easily do it without much messing about

go on then morrisey give us a clue [:o]

inner city sumo I'd imagine it happens on every market where commission is charged on each entry separately.

morrissey its a charge on turnover more than a charge on profits...best to try and think of it as your stakes being restricted to 80%.  I admit it's hard when you have a good win one week, pay premium charges on it and then it's followed by a big loss the next week.

I've just done the sums on last week's PC and note that far from my total charges being 20%, they are in fact 23.01%.  The sums are correct; it's a result of the way the total charges are calculated as an average of the actual and implied commission.

Just had a look at mine, I've used 3 per cent for the rate of implied commission, is that right Clydebank, as I don't know if this is a universal rate for all?

Total losses: 56,012.46
Implied commission at 3 percent: 1,680.37
Commission paid: 1,434.33

(1434.33 add 1680.37) / 2 is 1,557.35

They have my commission generated at 737.03!

I paid a charge of nearly GBP1050 this week for the record.

Bit worrying to read all this as I never check my PC statement!  Perhaps I should start.

Out of interest did you have any wins/losses on long-term markets?  My PC was miles wrong once and I worked out it was because of a partially-settled market.  They only count it for PC once the whole market is settled.

The following applies to PC payers. Because Betfair go by Commission Generated rather than paid, (and only tell you the charges you have "generated" on the premium portal),  the charges generated by a PC payer (20%) are lower than the charges paid for most.

The following bounds apply:

Commission Rate (%)    Max charges paid     Min Charges Paid
5    26.9%    22.5%
4    24.6%    22.0%
3    21.5%    21.5%
2    21.0%    17.2%


This will apply to any period ending in a week in which PC was paid. (A large losing week at the end of the period, or even a winning one in which a relatively large amount of commission was paid, may mean you end up paying more than the upper bound).

Unless you are on a sub 3% commission rate, what you pay will always be higher than what you 'generate'.

The allowance is ignored in these calculations.

If you are on exactly 3%, you will pay at least 21.5% of your profit no matter what you do, because your commission rate equals the implied commission rate. For all other rates, it depends on the ratio of the weeks amount won to amount lost.

This is being looked at.  Havent had a reply yet other than to say the person who dealt with it before is going to take a look at it.  Its going to be wrong this week too as was involved in one similar scenario this week so will chase up again tomorrow when I get the latest week's figures.

Just thought it would've been impossible to know whether the PC was wrong pre the fixed rate of implied commission

A question for those of you who've had incorrect statements.

Counting from the period that Betfair made implied commission a fixed 3% and scrapped the annual allowance and counted back through the lifetime of the account:

Couldn't you check the total PC and commission paid periodically rather than every week to make sure it tallies, or is this too complicated?

wrong again this week. approx. £16.29 understated. 

will have to fire off another email.

same scenario..winning and losing selections on a couple of to score markets

Just had a call from Betfair.  They've admitted there is a problem with the premium charge calculation and markets where commission is charged on each selection rather than the market as a whole (such as accumulators and to score markets). This problem dates back to October 2009 and is apparently due to how theses markets are loaded.  They are in the process of going back over time, correcting these errors and rerunning the software.  It may take a while but some people should get a refund.

My premium charge calculation has been wrong the last couple of weeks so if the problem is to do with the way the markets are loaded and they have established that why is it still wrong?

wd clydebank.

this whole sorry tale sums up why in the long term BF is a fvcked company, imv. lack of competition has created a culture of cynical arrogance at BF towers, and history teaches us that when that happens the clock is ticking.