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Now I know most of you dont pay a premium charge, but this happened to me this week and I'm royally dirty about it.
Had only two main bets this week, both on NFL, and lo and behold hit them both. Since I was on 20% contribution I knew I would have to pay PC, thus rendering my profit and net price lower than I would have received at basically ANY decent bookmaker, so I went into damage control...
Decided I would do some offsets to contribute commission without making any profit so I did an arbitrage with match odds for the Sunday games versus one of the acca markets for a small loss, but a high contribution. Guess what! They settled my winning match odds bet but didnt count the acca market loss until AFTER the PC had been calculated. So now I ended up paying nearly 30% of my overall profit just in PC.
The Premium Charge system is so totally broken I wont even begin to start on why. Suffice to say, I wont EVER bet on Betfair again. My betting will be done elsewhere where I can still get a semblence of value and a level of predictability with my pricing. They have no idea how many people have already boycotted them or significantly curtailed their activities. Betfair claims to be the best value betting resource in the market place, but only if you are a long term loser. Long term winners need to find the door and dont let it hit you in the arse on the way out.
I said it when the charge came in and I'll keep on saying it. Instead of stinging the actual bettors, successful or otherwise, Betfair needs to target ONLY the hedging bot operators and traders and introduce some elaborate rule which identifies them, not hit the pros and good amatuers between the eyes with unpredictable and uncalculatable (on the fly) stings in the tail. I've had enough. You can charge me PC on sweet bugger all from now on. I wont be having my bets here anymore.
CS
Had only two main bets this week, both on NFL, and lo and behold hit them both. Since I was on 20% contribution I knew I would have to pay PC, thus rendering my profit and net price lower than I would have received at basically ANY decent bookmaker, so I went into damage control...
Decided I would do some offsets to contribute commission without making any profit so I did an arbitrage with match odds for the Sunday games versus one of the acca markets for a small loss, but a high contribution. Guess what! They settled my winning match odds bet but didnt count the acca market loss until AFTER the PC had been calculated. So now I ended up paying nearly 30% of my overall profit just in PC.
The Premium Charge system is so totally broken I wont even begin to start on why. Suffice to say, I wont EVER bet on Betfair again. My betting will be done elsewhere where I can still get a semblence of value and a level of predictability with my pricing. They have no idea how many people have already boycotted them or significantly curtailed their activities. Betfair claims to be the best value betting resource in the market place, but only if you are a long term loser. Long term winners need to find the door and dont let it hit you in the arse on the way out.
I said it when the charge came in and I'll keep on saying it. Instead of stinging the actual bettors, successful or otherwise, Betfair needs to target ONLY the hedging bot operators and traders and introduce some elaborate rule which identifies them, not hit the pros and good amatuers between the eyes with unpredictable and uncalculatable (on the fly) stings in the tail. I've had enough. You can charge me PC on sweet bugger all from now on. I wont be having my bets here anymore.
CS
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Replies: 229
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Nice dummy spit.
Hope you're not shooting yourself in the foot though. |
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Great speech mate.
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Betfair never ever said it was aimed at any group. It was aimed at anyone who paid less than 20% of their profits in commission. The only unfair aspect of it is that you don't get rebates. They would've been far better getting rid of all the parasites and cheats by introducing an interface that protected mugs from cheats and a commission system that deterred parasitic activities.
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They did at first Feck, but they backtracked very fast.
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Lori, I think someone said the majority effected would be bots and traders but I can't imagine they ever didn't have insiders and fast-pic merchants in their sights.
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Yeah, it wasn't there long, it may even have been Black who said it.
Certainly a mistake whoever it was because people seem to have believed that's who was targetted ever since. |
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Could you imagine the LSE getting away with a 20% charge to all successful stock market traders.
It beggars belief that bf can get away with this. It's only an exchange, just a framework for us to take ALL the risk. 5% should be more than enough for all but the greediest websites. In fact, I can't see why the interest on all the deposits isn't enough. Throw in the skimming from their cross matching bot and they should be sending us all hampers and free bets every other week. They take £700 off me the other week in pc and have the nerve to call me "mate" when I call the helpdesk. They are in fantasy land and have completely forgotten who the customer is, behaving like they're doing us a favour. Rant over... as you were  |
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Shut the door behind you - ta
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the OP has a legitimate beef, imo.
getting charged more simply because of when markets are settled is unfair. any NFL accas this past weekend related solely to games played saturday and sunday; the last sunday game may have finished early monday morning our time, but it started sunday here, and started and ended sunday where it was played. btw, I've had bets on NFL games played in the same time slot finish early monday morning but be included in the previous week's PC calculation, so it seems completely arbitrary to me. I would email and complain, and also consider going to the ASA about the claims they make through the betchecker page for the competitiveness of their prices. |
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Bet the ASA will be amused if nothing else.
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not really. all the advertising assumes 5% commission, and no PC.
the headline on the betchecker home page reads: "How much you would have won if you placed £10 on all winning English Football Match Odds, Correct Score and HT/FT bets since the start of the season" which is not true. the use of the word "would" rather than "might" is misleading to the point of falsehood because in many cases the actual return would have been far less. |
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Does froggie spend the whole time defending the PC.
If betfair aren't paying you they really should be. |
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All the advertising assumes you are a backer not a layer. Imagine, 20% worse odds less comm less PC if you are a successful layer!
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they're also, incidentally, talking about the "extreme generosity" of Betfair, "who paid out..." yadda yadda, in a spurs game.
really? Betfair paid out? silly me, I thought the money was ours and the layers paid out. although, tbf, that is andy gray they're quoting, and he can hardly be expected to understand how betfair actually works. |
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From an earlier post:
"btw, I've had bets on NFL games played in the same time slot finish early monday morning but be included in the previous week's PC calculation, so it seems completely arbitrary to me." Ive queried this with them before, the PC week runs from midnight Sunday to the same time next week based on GMT, so if you are indeed betting on the Sunday night NFL games you can have settlements split between 2 weeks, same can happen with US Golf, MLB, NBA etc.... |
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Why does everyone (well not quite everyone
) continue to belittle Betfair when surely it is the best thing ever to happen to a punter? |
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Sorry...just got out of my afternoon meeting with them at Betfair Towers
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I do it for love pure and simple
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Prior to the PC there was a gross anomoly in the commission arrangements in that layers were paying far less commission on their winnings than were backers with the reverse strategy. So, a layer getting a 90% stike rate at average odds of say 1.222 for an EV of £10,000 might pay one third of the commission paid by a backer with a 10% strike rate and av odds of 11.0 but also with an EV of £10,000.
The PC has levelled the playing field so that now both layer and backer should end up paying the same total amount, on average, in charges for the same level of profitable EV.The level below which no PC is incurred but a profit is made is so low as to be irrelevent to the LT player who needs to win. This effect would have been even more noticable for high-frequewncy traders but it is not possible to calculate how much more of a level playing field it now is for them. If a backer or layer has a successful strategy then it is clear that if a alternative betting medium is available then that alternative must be used and the better or more profitable the strategy the more that is true. For traders who have no real alternative, they are faced with Hobson's Choice. They have to take 80% of soemthing rather than 100% of nothing. Purple is an obvious alternative for straight backers and layers and assuming that winners have their BM's accounts mostly closed, then it may represent the only alternative. It must follow that all rational players other than traders will eventually migrate elsewhere providing that alternative does not follow BF's route. |
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billons is now trillions is elsewhere they need to break up trade money and straight backers cos cant bet any more
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betting on hard break even markets like football is a joke while paying pc
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Management,
I would like to see a lot more ITV1 daytime,Sun newspaper advertising AND pay the premium charge to fund it . Is that so difficult to work out ? Whether effective advertising has increased is open to debate . |
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as Sandown correctly points out, 80 % of a large pot is better than 100% of a smaller pot.
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The middleman campaign was one of the most ridiculous pieces of advertising ever. I still don't actually understand what message it was trying to convey.
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After 10 years, any analysis of customers would reveal that they have reached the end of the late-comers to the original markets and expansion through product diversification and geographic expansion are the only LT startegies available to them. To the extent that their USP (better prices) is not applicable in many markets and their geographic expansion is totally dependent upon local regul;ations and acceptance, they are in a bit of a strategic bind.
Increasing margins against existing customers is the obvious lever to pull if s/t term profitibility is an issue although most successful l/t brands will place their focus on retaining existing customers through loyalty-building. The latter is something which BF have not attempted, and it will be to their cost eventually. As far as media advertising is concerned, the returns on broadscale media would be marginal at best (for the reason I've explained) and it is doubtful if it would cover its costs.I doubt that there is very much that they can do as far as NEW cutomers are concerned. As i have said, their strategic emphasis in existing markets should now be aimed at loyalty building. |
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They have my loyalty
...well until I have to pay the PC |
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Coachbuster Joined: 08 Apr 06
Replies: 10256 13 Jan 11 15:57 as Sandown correctly points out, 80 % of a large pot is better than 100% of a smaller pot. i know that but not on football betting  |
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Would that matter to someone who makes a profit out of using Betfair? I doubt it.
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Management , agreed. Also there are probably better outlets than the Sun if i'm being honest
 .It's a hard nut to crack trying to lure new customers , do they all have to come from a betting background ? what about maths wizards who would fancy their chances ? should more be done to make potential customers understand the concept (i know of atleast a dozen hard core gamblers who have never even bet on this site, in part to not understanding the rules /the odds/ the charges etc) How can they be targeted ? Also , more gamblers are 'born' every day ,all at different ages . There are possibly more gamblers now than at any time in history. |
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After saying that , the geographical expansion thing is a huge block right now .
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OK, how about maths wizards without any discipline then ?
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they're all skint though
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I still don't understand the basic problem in paying any charge related to profit earned.
Call it a tax, call it a levy, it doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day, you should still end up with a profit. After all BF doesn't want, need, expect or hope that everyone using their site loses in the long run. Surely nobody thinks their strategic planners are that shortsighted. OK there are some punters who, due to the fluctuating, erratic pattern of the gambling returns, end up getting unfairly hard sometimes with no offset for later downturns, but that appears to be an unavoidable aberrattion and somewhat unfortunate. If as Sandown says the overall level of charges on BF eventually creates a situation where huge numbers of punters are either leaving or not joining even BF and are gravitating to other competitive sites, then presumably BF will react accordingly. Obviously, despite all your guesses as to the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, this is not yet happening in any serious numbers. I think that a big mistake many are doing on here is in looking at the PC threshold of 20% as a level in isolation. It has to be looked in conjunction with what the overall BF prices are in general ( net of all charges)in relation to alternatives, and the very, very important fact that IF you do win consistently you will never be banned from the site( overtly at least). |
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Why do Betfair need losers?
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Mgt
From the sound of your agitative nature, I would imagine that in your own young student days you would have been right in the middle of that throng. Not of course in a destructive sense though I might add. |
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Some winners have been chased off exchange, makes it easier for others on here. Only so much pie to go around.
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Mgt
My motivation, for lack of a better word, for commenting on this matter on here is that I don't like to see arguments put forward that seem to be totally one sided and lacking sense and reasonableness in many cases. Also, the market in reality sets the prices on everything, unless you live in a totaliarian state. BF is setting prices at levels to earn them a good return on investment hopefully. I have no problem with that and if I ever start to like what I see in the alternatives, I will use other sites. You can always freely walk away from this site at any time. One's ultimate and only truly sincere criticism, of their activities in the final analysis. I don't object to fair criticism and neither presumably does BF. But criticism that effectively says that BF is gouging customers ( they're not), that BF has no reasons whatsoever to try to get satisfactory, fair revenues from those few high capacity users of the site historically paying very little charges ( they have very good, valid reasons), all strikes me as totally unacceptable and unnecessary. Oh and also, I generally just hate whingers per se. They represent to me the sad, loser side of society. I prefer to solve problems myself, not rely on others to do it for me. |
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No it's the market Mgt.
You may have temporary overpricing, but eventually market forces prevail. In the meantime, shop around for sure, but just get on with what you have. Btw BF is not a monopoly in that it has a Govt mandated right to be the only game in town. Their prices, seen as a complete package, must hold up quite well against any and all other competition, otherwise their days would be numbered, that's for sure. If you see me as someone who can be walked all over, well let's say that I hope this is not truly represenative of your judgement capabilities. Of course you are working with limited input, just as you are on all matter financial and otherwise with the inner workings of BF. But that doesn't really seem to matter, not only with you but apparently many other smart minds on here. |
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Btw Mgt, did I ever wish you a happy New Year.
May it be more peaceful, with fewer appsrent inner turmoils. Life's too short. |