how do you see your P/L further back than 4 months?

You need a very powerful telescope.

Contact betfair and ask them for more

How have you ever been able to see more than three months? I guess '4 months' was a typo?

I asked betfair for my lifetime profit/loss breakdown a few times. First they sent me last weeks profit/loss. Then they decided to send me someone elses results for the last month or so.....I never got the results i asked for.

Premium Portal gives you lifetime P/L if that's any help.

How do you get the ''Premium Portal'' ?

www.account.betfair.com/regpay-myaccount/premiumcharge/summary.html  you have to be logged in to access.

Or just go to HELP and type in premium charge and the second option down allows you to check your prfemium portal status. There you will find LT P&L.

The problem with the Premium Charge Portal is that although it tells you your overall gross p/l over your lifetime at Betfair,  it is hard to see what the net profit/loss is.  It doesn't tell you exactly how much commission you have paid, just "commission generated" which is a vague, abstract thing. I doubt whether I have really paid that much in real commission.  And then there is "other charges", which amounts to £2877.98, but I am not aware of ever paying any of this, and I would have noticed if that money had gone out of my account.  And exactly how the Premium Charge is calculated is a mystery to me. It is far more complicated to work out than the rules suggest.
The Premium Charge portal needs clarifying and tidying up, but as no one at Betfair really understands the PC, I doubt that this will happen.

Marksman, you have probably paid much more in commission than the commission generated amount on the portal.

Can anyone view the protal in IE? As usual, Opera won't display the page and IE takes me to the page but the Lifetime profile and the Last Week profile seem to be squashed into one.


Think it might be time to download Firefox

Eddie the eagle, if that is the case, then I shouldn't have been charged Premium Charge at all.  When it was first applied to me, I was convinced that it was a mistake.  My first impression could have been correct after all.

Is the commission generated figure just commission that has resulted from your losing bets or does it include commission paid on winnings?

Rocket , I have no problems viewing it in IE.

Marksman, Betfair don't use the commission you pay for the 20 % purpose, they use the "commission generated" thing.  You have to pay PC as long as the Total Charges % is at 20 % or less.

Avocado, commission generated is the addition of the commission you actually pay divided by two and the implied commission(3 %) on your losing markets also divided by two.

You will only be considered for the Premium Charge if, over the lifetime of your account, you satisfy all of the following criteria:

    * Your account is in profit;
    * Your total charges generated are less than 20% of gross profits; and
    * You bet in more than 250 markets.

Two further conditions reduce the likelihood that you will be required to pay the Premium Charge:

    * Any single win that constitutes more than 50% of your gross profits over the lifetime of your account will be excluded from the calculation; and
    * Each customer has a lifetime allowance of £1,000 of Premium Charges which can be incurred before any Premium Charge is paid.

Each week the customers who meet all the conditions set out above will be charged the lesser of:

    * The difference between 20% of the previous week’s gross profits and the total charges generated during the week; and
    * The difference between 20% of gross profits and the total charges generated during the lifetime of the account.

Please note that for the purposes of calculating the charge we will assume that the charge has been in place since Betfair launched in June 2000. This means that we will consider all customers to have generated charges equal to at least 20% of lifetime gross profits as of the 12th October 2009. However, this also means that for some customers, some or all of the £1,000 allowance against the charge will have been used prior to 12th October 2009 in order to offset hypothetical charges paid. The assumption that hypothetical charges, less allowance, were paid prior to the introduction of the Premium Charge will typically reduce the Premium Charge a customer would incur.


I still struggle to understand it totally

Eddie the eagle, so I have been put into the PC bracket because of "commission generated", whereas, I have probably paid more than this in real commission, the type which disappears directly from my bank account...I see, so the total charges is probably the amount that I have paid in my lifetime at Betfair minus all the Premium Charge that I have paid so far.  Lets see how much commission I have paid overall at Betfair (total will include my previous account which was closed when the PC was applied, becuse I was annoyed)....
£8282.75!   And Betfair claim that people like me are costing them money!

did you used to post on the tim_uk thread .Marksman.?

bob siever, I put in www.account.betfair.com/regpay-myaccount/
but it wasn't recognised.

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

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


delete the space

Thanks Rocket, got it now.

Avocado, commission generated is the addition of the commission you actually pay divided by two and the implied commission(3 %) on your losing markets also divided by two.

Why is it divided by two?

**By ‘total charges’ we mean all commission generated by Betfair as a result of your betting plus any Premium Charges you’ve incurred. ‘Commission generated’ includes the commission paid on winnings, but also the commission that Betfair makes from the other customers who win in markets in which you’ve lost, which we call ‘implied commission’. When you win, Betfair collects commission at your rate of commission, but when you lose, the commission collected by Betfair from the winners is at their rate. So we’ll determine the commission generated by your betting activity to be:

Commission generated = (Commission + Implied Commission) ÷ 2

where

Implied Commission = market losses x 3%

We divide by 2 because otherwise we’d be counting each pound of commission twice.

Hang on, where does this 3% come from? I pay commission at a much higher rate than this, and so do most people on here.  And nowadays, my rate is 5%, because I don't bet much anymore on this site, due to the Premium Charge.

Although the median customer commission rate is probably 5%, for every pound won on Betfair, Betfair receive roughly 3p.

I still don't understand the divide by 2 part. It should be commission paid from winnings plus commission from losing bets. Why would you divide by two? You just add the two amounts together.

If they didn't divide by two then, as they state, they would be counting each pound of commission twice.

Take two premium charge paying customers P1 and P2. Presume customer P2 is on a commission rate of 3% (conveniently the same as the implied commission rate).

P1 loses a £100 bet to P2.
Betfair receives 3% commission on this £100 bet = £3
P1 -£100; P2 +£97; BF +£3

If they didn't divide by two when calculating the commission generated then it would be calculated as follows:

Commission Generated (CG) = Commission Paid + Implied Commission

P1 CG = 0 + 0.03*100 = £3
P2 CG = 0.03*100 + 0 = £3

Total commission generated = 3 + 3 = £6!

The actual commission bf received from the bet was only £3, hence the need to divide by 2.

The total commission i have generated is the commission i have paid on my winning bets and each time i lose a bet i generate 3 percent of my loss. So the total commission i have generated is those two figures added together. No need to divide by 2.

You are not solely responsible for the commission generated from your bets. The customers who match your bets are also responsible for the commission generated.

Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect all of the commission bf received (the commission generated) from your bets to be assigned entirely to you. It is equally unreasonable to expect the full amount of commission bf received to be assigned to both parties (effectively double counting the commission).

What is the reason for the premium charge?

I believe that the justification for the charge is that bf considered that certain customers were paying too low a percentage of the profits they made on bf in charges to bf.

Such customers, in the opinion of bf, in addition to paying too little for the service provided may be withdrawing money and eliminating losing customers from the exchange too quickly. Ideally for bf, the vast majority of customers would break even on their bets pre-commission and thus slowly lose funds to bf in commission.

It costs bf money to attract new customers and the revenue raised from the premium charge can be used to recruit new customers. It also boosted profits in advance of the float.

I don't personally have a strong opinion on the charge. Some people support it (even a few of the people who pay it), many don't.

So if I've paid roughly 11 percent commission of my lifetime profit but have bet in slightly less than 250 markets, what will happen when I hit the 250 mark? Will they start taking 20 percent of my profits until lifetime commission = 20 percent of lifetime profit?

As you correctly noted you will not be subject to any premium charges prior to betting in 250 markets. Additionally, you have a £1000 allowance to set against the premium charge. Therefore you cannot pay the charge until your life-time profits are in excess of a minimum of £5000 (1000/0.2) and that is based on a 100% strike rate for your bets.

If and when you become eligible to pay premium charges you will pay the lower of the following each week (which could be zero):


The difference between 20% of the previous week’s gross profits and the total charges generated during the week; and

The difference between 20% of gross profits and the total charges generated during the lifetime of the account.

Please note that I don't pay the charge and you should refer to the information available in the Betfair Charges section via About Us.

do u work for betfair?

No, unfortunately not.

The portal is all well and good but doesn't tell you anything if you're not in profit. The reason BF don't let you see more than 3 months is because 98% of us would want to shoot ourselves if we could see at a glance how much we were down since opening an account.

Why don't they want you to shoot yourselves? So that you can keep pumping money into their company?