Inactive Account Fees :)

so if you die with money in your account, bf will start leeching the funds back to their own account after 13 months

how sweet, and what a lovely gesture

another desperate, greedy move by Betfair to swell their coffers! Cross matching (skimming), the Premium Charge and now this.

How are people who haven't logged in for 13 months going to see this change to the T+C so they can act on it?

By sheer luck my Dad was here and called betfair. After a tortuous conversation he eventaully managed to get his password changed as he had forgotten it.

Will he use his account in the next 12 months?  I doubt it.

His lady is in Africa and without access to the tinternet.  She will be completely unaware.

How are people who haven't logged in for 13 months going to see this change to the T+C so they can act on it?



Exactly Lori.  This is the very same point that my Dad made over the phone to betfair just a few minutes ago.

Is it legal he asked.

btw the reason they gave for the phone delays was people ringing about this issue!

Is it legal he asked.

Looks like they didn't fancy trying to justify the costs of £5 per month to the Aussie regulators as usual

*Customers registered in Australia or New Zealand shall not be subject to the Inactive Account Fee.

I guess they've so many dormant accounts they want to treat them like the bookies sleepers and grab it asap

Bwin have done this for years...it's nothing new.

6 years is the norm for writing off overpaid money.

If this is what betfair have to do then it is time to go short on their shares.  I commend IG index.

It's nothing more than theft, love to see them justifying that to the Gambling Commission or in court, I'd actually go 1000 on them winning a case there!

They are just trying to bring money that is not theirs tho their P&L earlier than they otherwise would do.

IT IS THEFT!!

I find the contents of this thread completely shocking.














Alex has parents ?!

Behave el presidente.  This is serious sh1t.

Why are you worried about it? You are not going to have money inactive for that long

well, it's a *bit* serious I suppose. I don't really care, to be honest - my account would have to be inactive for about five years for the amount involved to equal my worst week's PC.

but I guess the hint of desperation possibly bodes ill. my guess is they have a further ball-crushing "tweak" to the PC up their sleeves for 2011.

Why are you worried about it? You are not going to have money inactive for that long

I am not but others are.

Well, having logged in for the first time in ages on this account (bal: £0.01) - prompted by BF's greed-inspired email - I can see that my penny is given a stay of execution of 13 months by the simple act of logging in. Not that I am in any way placated by this further money-grabbing outrage from this firm of mercantilist cowboys. Far from it.

But I've got better things to do with my time, so I'll just say this: If you come anywhere close to attempting to recover 'fees' in this way you're going to find yourself on the wrong end of a PR disaster. Now please go away and think more clearly - and ethically - about how you want to manage dormant accounts. I suggest that you simply notify account holders of your intent to close such accounts and reimburse outstanding balances. Simple, no?

I suppose nowadays Betfair aren't making as much money on the interest earned from customer balances, and want to get their greedy hands on more of our money...

If you have an inactive account they email you and tell you.

I can only assume this is to reduce the amount of inactive cash they have sitting around.  However, seeing as they don't pay interest on it but actually claim the interest, what harm does it do?  Maybe it's to ensure that they won't be destinged to hold dead customers accounts for eterntity.

I worked for a company a number of years ago which designed a similarly shocking tactic.  It desiced to charge customers (bulk, 100,000+ customers) a late payment fee if a credit card on account could not be billed (expiered/whateve reason).  £20 a pop.  Mazde the company a small fortuyne, just in time for the private sell.  Needless to saym, customers were furious.  That company today is very cash rich, and customers keep coming back for more.  I guess the moral is: screw 'em - they love it.

I tried to close my account after getting this infuriating email but how?

You either have to phone, or email FROM your registered email address, but to what BF email address, IT DOESN'T say!, if you look at 'Contact Us' it's just a form, again no email address to be seen.

When I was very very young a friend went to work for a bank, a name you should know if you are more than 40. It seemed to be perfectly acceptable to transfer money from old dormant accounts to the accounts of an elite group of employees.  True.

I know of somebody that has a suspended account.  It did have a balance of x but magically the balance is now x - £150.  It is perplexing how the balance has moved.

I can only assume this is to reduce the amount of inactive cash they have sitting around.  However, seeing as they don't pay interest on it but actually claim the interest, what harm does it do?  Maybe it's to ensure that they won't be destinged to hold dead customers accounts for eterntity.


My theory is that they are struggling to meet profit targets and this is a method of bringing cash to the P&L.  Short termism, imo.

I laughed when i read the opening post, its a bit early for April fools though?

I don`t agree with it however loads of online firms now do this. In fact if you go and look in the terms and conditions of nearly all the smaller ones they have a similar clause.

I've had the email as well. The solution is simple - log in every month or two if you care. Close your account if you don't. How to close your account ? Just...err, wait a second...

Just got an email saying the minimum phone bet is going up to £50 in the new year

It's a clever (but greedy) move from Betfair. The only people they are going to piss off are the people that are no longer using the site.

Some of these people might close their accounts. Others might do nothing, and Betfair can siphon away their cash. There will also be some others who start using their accounts again after having forgotten about them. It's a win win win.

I received an e mail from Betfair about this too. What annoys me is their willingness to link accounts for the purpose of any premium charge calculation but not for classing a customer as 'active.' Ok, it's looks as if just logging into the old account renders it active but what a petty e mail to send in the 1st place.

What a load of whingers you lot are. If you haven't used your account for that length of time (and left money in it more to the point) then you deserve to be punished. A big lol from me...

Again difference in Australian and UK regulations is very interesting. its sharp practice. ie why do you need to notifify them to get money back when reactivating. They know you are active again the reimbursement should be automatic. Imagine would be laughed out down under

city boy fraudsters

Mr Magoo Joined: 28 Mar 05
Replies: 238 21 Dec 10 12:43 
It's a clever (but greedy) move from Betfair. The only people they are going to piss off are the people that are no longer using the site.

-----------

manifestly not true, if this thread is anything to go by.

in itself this move means little. but as an indicator of thinking/priorities at the heart of the death star it's a bit more significant.

'mercantilist cowboys'   great phrase that

it surely cant be long until another PC raise

Get the feeling they will be applying the pressure till the Pips Squeak.

I want virtual soccer!

I would recommend that they:

Increase PC from 20% to 100%
Apply a flat rate of 5% commission
Give customers as many Betfair holidays as they want, their commission is gonna stay at 5% anyway.
Raise minimum stake from £2 to £100
Start charging for withdrawals (withdrawal fee is 50% of withdrawal amount)

Oh, and change the Betfair allowance to 50p per week.

ewood Date Joined: 10 Mar 01
21 Dec 10 12:43 I received an e mail from Betfair about this too. What annoys me is their willingness to link accounts for the purpose of any premium charge calculation but not for classing a customer as 'active.' Ok, it's looks as if just logging into the old account renders it active but what a petty e mail to send in the 1st place.

This whole account linking business is so annoying. The will go to the ends of the earth to link accounts to collect your dosh. When you might want accounts linked for good reason ie; this dormant slosh fund, commission rates they are not playing by the same account linked rules.

Am I missing something ? All you have to do is login to the account and then you are fine for another year.

donemyconkers 22 Dec 10 07:29
Am I missing something ? All you have to do is login to the account and then you are fine for another year.



Yes you are.  People do go off to remote parts of the planet and are otherwise not able to access their betfair account and emails.  They will have left happy in the knowledge that they have an account balance to return to only to find when they return that it has gone.

Thanks for info guys,
Not used my account for ages and don't recall an e-mail.
Time to do something about my £10.77 that's been sitting there for I don't know how long

Have an old e-mail address on my account.
That will be why I haven't seen an e-mail

Lay snow on Christmas day in Dublin at 2.9.  Nears as dammit free money. [;)]

Yes you are.  People do go off to remote parts of the planet and are otherwise not able to access their betfair account and emails.  They will have left happy in the knowledge that they have an account balance to return to only to find when they return that it has gone.

I would imagine the % of people who go to somewhere for 12 months that does not have Internet is fairly remote.

Least it gives the knockers something else to whinge about...  off to remote parts of the world and worried about a fiver on here?

So would I.  However the prison population is increasing and VSO are still recruiting.  I don't have much sympathy for the former but to go off to a 3rd world country for altruistic reasons and then find yourself screwed is a bit much.

At the very least betfair should obtain a confirmation before stealing this money.

Why is it stealing? They have given you ample notice about this...and I repeat...what imbecile would leave money in a Betfair account for that length of time.

jimmy69, I leave a few quid in a couple of accounts and from time to time test new ideas on those a/c's. The accounts are not grouped together to enjoy the same commission rate yet are grouped together for the purpose of pc collection. Now it seems as though they won't be grouped together for inactive a/c charges, I need to ensure I log on to each account every 12 months or face an additional charge! I would imagine this multi account scenario is similar for quite a few users.

Always amzazes me to see so many people happy to be screwed over by big business or see others screwed. It's no wonder Betfair intoduce new charges every other month or so with so many people willing to bend over and stick up for these ridiculous charges.

what imbecile would leave money in a Betfair account for that length of time.

I have something like 50 online betting accounts. As it happens I log into them all once a month for bookkeeping, however there are several that I've had money in for more than a year without placing a bet, it's convenient.

Lori

I know you are not an imbecile but what exactly is convenient about leaving money inactive for more than a year? It just doesn't make sense to me.

They're happy to group accounts for charges but not when it comes to commission discounts etc ,Muqbil. If they allowed master/sub accounts to the masses these problems wouldn't be there for most but then they'd lose more than half of this supposed 3 million user accounts so wouldn't look good for the compnay reports. They could also provide a link for people to delete accounts if they're that worried about inactive accounts but then again this inflated userbase might just dwindle overnight.

Baby Jesus

It doesn't look as though anybody is bending over judging by the comments on this thread.

I got it too for my old account that I hadnt used for 12 months... Just withdrew the money that was sat in there and hopefully thats it... Did tried to ring them but was sat waiting for nearly half an hour so hung up...

If I see a price I like at xyzbet I can log in and take that price.

If I knew in advance it was going to be inactive for a year then I'd withdraw it of course as it's better used in an active bankroll.

I don't see the point, especially at places like Betfair where you get charged to deposit, in withdrawing and redepositing if you can at all avoid it. At other sites it can affect your bonus eligibility if you withdraw and at others still it can draw attention to a winning account.

Since when did you get charged to deposit funds into betfair, I don't?

It's been a long time, maybe they changed it I guess but they used to.

Other sites certainly do.

It all sounds a bit dirty and moneygrubbing. . .

THEFT

BF have never charged to deposit from debit cards.

This new charge is outrageous though.

Never used a debit card, guess that's the difference!

After watching Panorama this week, it all makes sense.  City boys are now the shareholders of Betfair.  They are rich already and are all obsessed with getting richer, at our expense.  Just wait to see how big their bonuses are for generating all these charges!  They probably only think that geniuses, like themselves, can come up with this.
I agree with Feck (on this subject).

I'd go and say the same thing on the purple forum, except I can't log in to their forum and, despite me not being banned, no one at Purple Daq knows how to enable me to join the forum, or even why I can't log in to it.

Marksman. Date Joined: 13 Jul 10
22 Dec 10 19:17 I'd go and say the same thing on the purple forum, except I can't log in to their forum and, despite me not being banned, no one at Purple Daq knows how to enable me to join the forum, or even why I can't log in to it.

lol, I had this problem when I went there in the initial post pc wake. I suspected they ban people and don't like to admit they have banned people as they haven't done anything wrong really but might say something they don't like!

Liquidity was pants and I gave up after a few days!

Exactly the same happened to me on the purple forum also! I phoned up, tried various things, they insisted I hadn't been banned (I'm guessing that was true or else they wouldn't have let me back!), but there was obviously a bug in the system, and in the end they just reset my details and I chose the same name with a O instead of a 0. Odd.

Back to the subject, I'm guessing that betfair are seeing a very thin time ahead next year if they are dreaming up more ways to rip people off. I said anyone with shares should sell them straight away, that goes double now!

As has been said, no shock that this measure does not apply to Australian customers, but then again they have a regulator worthy of the name, not like in the uk.

Why stop at inactive accounts?  I think they should be charging all of us for the inconvenience of having to look after our money.

Marksman. 22 Dec 10 19:17
I'd go and say the same thing on the purple forum, except I can't log in to their forum and, despite me not being banned, no one at Purple Daq knows how to enable me to join the forum, or even why I can't log in to it.



It could be your browser.  Firefox lets me in but Chrome does not.

purple is so sh!t in every way I sometimes suspect it's secretly owned by BF and run the way it is to prove that rival exchanges can't work.

If you change your email with the daq it fecks your forum access up so you can't post, thats the problem so they have to reset it

from the original one you registered with that is

What if your betfair using boyfriend was in a coma and it was serious?