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Contrarian
09 Feb 11 10:23
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Date Joined: 19 May 03
| Topic/replies: 1,028 | Blogger: Contrarian's blog
Site down again?
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Report gus July 16, 2011 3:50 PM BST
eh? ... what you supposed to do when the API gives up half way through the race (15.40 Mewmarket and, i suspect 15.40 Curragh, tho i wasn't watching that market)
Report Lori July 16, 2011 3:51 PM BST
More importantly , Rory's hit it out of bounds, should be 200s and is showing at 21s Laugh
Report gus July 16, 2011 3:51 PM BST
Market Rasen 15.45 has just died too in the API Sad
Report DonNo1 July 16, 2011 3:51 PM BST
API suggesting i've got bets through somehow....
Report Just Checking July 16, 2011 3:52 PM BST
Was just wondering there.. something up with API by looks of things..
Report Lori July 16, 2011 3:52 PM BST
So much for the customer commitment then Don , no shock there.
Report Mike Awesome July 16, 2011 3:53 PM BST
Contrarian IS right... 100% uptime is completely unreasonable in computing. But I do think they need to invalidate all outstanding trades/bets in these cases, winning and losing positions alike.

And I say this as I am currently sat on a winning position... from which I would like to be off.
Report Contrarian July 16, 2011 3:53 PM BST
FFS. Good to see where all the PC money is going.
Report DStyle July 16, 2011 3:54 PM BST
i would imagine that after liquidity, the biggest concerns people have about other sites is stability.....
Report Lori July 16, 2011 3:54 PM BST
It's not unreasonable when they're claiming to be world leaders in the field.
Report gus July 16, 2011 3:55 PM BST
15.55 Ripon suspended. The API has left the buiding ....
Report Mike Awesome July 16, 2011 3:56 PM BST
World leaders in what field? Have they ever claimed they were world leaders in computing?
Report Lori July 16, 2011 3:56 PM BST
They claim to be an IT leader yes.
Report pmbets July 16, 2011 3:56 PM BST
accountants don't know how to run an exchange.Ask the PC lads.
Report DonNo1 July 16, 2011 3:57 PM BST
Leaders in charges
Report Nick Knatterton July 16, 2011 3:57 PM BST
Well you would still come off as winner with other sites even if they would crash once a week. Not the case here paying 60% of your profits every week and getting no rebate with next week losses
Report Just Checking July 16, 2011 3:57 PM BST
Doesn't bode well for when the premier league kicks off again, the saturday afternoon "system falling flat on its face" every week used to be beyond a joke..
Report Mike Awesome July 16, 2011 3:59 PM BST
Even IT world leaders can't (or rather, shouldn't) guarantee 100% uptime.

The true answer is to make concessions for when these things happen, to mitigate inconvienience and possible bank busting.
Report Lori July 16, 2011 3:59 PM BST
Has David Yu taken his Hamster with him?
Report Lori July 16, 2011 4:00 PM BST
You mean like pledging to suspend as soon as it goes down, rather than 13 minutes later for instance?
Report Mike Awesome July 16, 2011 4:01 PM BST
Absolutely Lori. Suspend and void all bets, win or loss. It may be unfair to some but it seems to be the best method all round to me.

... or well, refund all losing bets and keep winning bets but we all know that wouldn't happen.
Report Contrarian July 16, 2011 4:02 PM BST
F*cking great. Site goes down on the potentially most profitable day of the week, and then on Monday, start taking 40% - 60% of our winnings in tax.
Report Bridgeboy July 16, 2011 4:02 PM BST
Correct Mike that would be the fair and resonablr thing to do, will bf, will they f uck. . .
Report Mr.Angry July 16, 2011 4:03 PM BST
Turned into a joke outfit.  What loser wants to work for Betfair these days?
Report unemployable July 16, 2011 4:03 PM BST
my book has now updated to show I've layed clarke for £400 at 6.6 when I got an initial error message. f'kin bullsh1t.
Report singero July 16, 2011 4:03 PM BST
how often does this happen on Saturdays?
Report Just Checking July 16, 2011 4:03 PM BST
Sh*t it's not just api can't even cancel bets in the web interface.
Report curlywurly July 16, 2011 4:04 PM BST
can't these bunch of ****g ****s do anything right
Report Just Checking July 16, 2011 4:04 PM BST
I hope to GOD they don't switch it back on again with bets uncancelled on inplay games and they get hoovered.

.. yet again.
Report Lori July 16, 2011 4:04 PM BST
Funnily enough, mine didn't update with the Rory lay that I was processing. The usual hoovering that most of us have no access to obviously still in place.
Report DStyle July 16, 2011 4:05 PM BST
the need to reinvest it back into the site Contrarian

59% will be spent on: Virtual Slug Racing, integrating the forum with Friends Reunited and buying betamax video recorders.

the remainder will be spent on the infrastructure.
Report Lori July 16, 2011 4:05 PM BST
Took them 13 minutes to suspend JC, I think that dream is long gone.
Report Lori July 16, 2011 4:06 PM BST
Don't forget that high rollers who don't pay PC will be treated to a free day at Fishomania at a VIP executive peg.
Report Contrarian July 16, 2011 4:06 PM BST
LOL DStyle Laugh
Report Mike Awesome July 16, 2011 4:07 PM BST
You guys moan, AND RIGHTFULLY SO, about PC... but I sure would like to be in a position of paying it myself :(
Report Just Checking July 16, 2011 4:07 PM BST
Friends Re-united DStyle? Google+ is the new buzzword doncha know. Their "Web 2.0 Integration Medium Consultant" will be pushing for £3 million and half their IT staff to integrate with that ****ing flavour of the month.
Report DonNo1 July 16, 2011 4:08 PM BST
Extremely fitting that my last major market pre new PC ends up crashing
Report Lori July 16, 2011 4:09 PM BST
At least I won the Rory race. not that there should be a race.
Report Just Checking July 16, 2011 4:09 PM BST
API back up anyway..
Report unemployable July 16, 2011 4:10 PM BST
It's showing that pennies of my lay were matched at 15:44 & the rest at 14:46. That's 2 minutes after I had the error message. So some **** was able to get through when no-one else could.
Report gus July 16, 2011 4:10 PM BST
16.10 at the Curragh is updating ... god knows what it'll do InPlay tho
Report unemployable July 16, 2011 4:10 PM BST
15:46 obviously
Report Mike Awesome July 16, 2011 4:11 PM BST
Now the question is... do you dare click on that back button again?
Report Lori July 16, 2011 4:11 PM BST
They didn't cancel all bets like they promised either. I cleared out Rory's price there.

If you can't beat 'em join 'em I guess, it's clear the pledge isn't worth the pixels it was written with.
Report gus July 16, 2011 4:12 PM BST
errrm ....  pass Sad
Report Mike Awesome July 16, 2011 4:13 PM BST
I'd HOPE that over the course of time, downtime evens itself out for and against you.

In this case it hasn't worked out for me. Bumclouds.
Report unemployable July 16, 2011 4:13 PM BST
I've now backed it back at no cost, they better not cancel these bets retrospectively
Report Lori July 16, 2011 4:14 PM BST
It can't even itself out Mike. You only get matched if it goes against you
Report gus July 16, 2011 4:15 PM BST
1610 Curragh was ok... i took £1.70 off the other guy who was betting on it Happy
Report Mike Awesome July 16, 2011 4:17 PM BST
Mmm, I guess so. In shorter markets it may be beneficial. For instance, say it goes down on tennis and the player you were backing went a set and a break up in the meantime, where you would have normally gotten off after the initial break for the set.

In that sense, it's fortunate. But I know what you mean.
Report Just Checking July 16, 2011 4:19 PM BST
Mike Awesome obviously not in the legal profession. Never heard of Sod's Law?

It's written into your betfair customer agreement.
Report Cardinal Scott July 16, 2011 4:19 PM BST
My succesful lays in the 4.10 Curragh have just been payed out, place and win market
Report Mike Awesome July 16, 2011 4:20 PM BST
JC, I deal in hopeless optimism :)
Report Just Checking July 16, 2011 4:24 PM BST
Ahh, a bet half matched kind of guy. I don't believe in optimism, it only exists to make the inevitable disaster more painful Devil.
Report Mike Awesome July 16, 2011 4:27 PM BST
Perhaps - but it does make it easier to justify the inevitable bank reload :P
Report askari1 July 16, 2011 5:20 PM BST
What gets me w/ this one is that they took bets for which they put up an error message, 'please press refresh on your bet manager'. Then when it became apparent that they had taken a bet (wh/ I had repeated three times thinking the problem was at my end), they didn't take the bet back, despite putting up just the same error message.

Then they suspended the market altogether.

I was completely in the dark as to how much I had on and was unable to trade out.

The mistake is of a different magnitude to suspending a market and not allowing traders to trade. Their actual messaging about bets was misleading.

I hope that they will be able to void affected markets if punters request it.
Report Lori July 16, 2011 5:22 PM BST
You can't really void the whole open because you accidentally took bets for 13 minutes of it.

What they need to do is suspend the second the system crashes.
Report askari1 July 16, 2011 5:27 PM BST
Lori, they are never going to be able to suspend at a punctual point in time.

W/ people accessing the site through various interfaces and through diff. internet nodes, it will always be the case that some people will have access to the markets while others' access is blocked.

The solution is for bf to take on the risk of their technology failures. This will inevitably mean refunding losing customers if their bets were taken at a time when the site was in an intermediate state between being down and being partially down.

I wonder whether they will do so in the case.
Report askari1 July 16, 2011 5:30 PM BST
I'm talking about a horse race off at 4.05 for which they took bets they showed as being rejected from 3.42 up to the time they suspended.

If the message suggests that the site is experiencing technical difficulties and shows the bet as rejected, it is misleading to take it. Then it is inequitable not to take bets that were rebuffed with the same error message.

Suspending a market unambiguously is regrettable, but this 'half-on, half-off' state is a lot worse.
Report Rocket to the FACE July 16, 2011 6:48 PM BST
Their customer commitment pledge sh*t thing is nothing more than words.

Like the rubbish they spout at the Q&A, in emails and in forum announcements it's cleverly chosen words designed to shut us up with no substance behind them whatsoever.

Customer service to them means answering the phone in 3 rings and calling you by your name. Customer service to me means listening to what your customer wants and then doing it, not listening to what the customer wants and then nodding your head and saying 'Oooh yes, we agree, we'll sort that out right away' and then continuing as you were.

I have a long list of empty promises made by Betfair. Many things that were 'just around the corner' but have never materialised.

I've already withdrawn most of my balance. Won't be much longer before I make that 100% and f*ck off completely because I'm sick of talking to a brick wall.
Report singero July 16, 2011 6:53 PM BST
my one significant loss of the week due to this outage. 99.5% uptime is not good enough if the 0.5% downtime happens at the busiest time of the week.
Report DStyle July 16, 2011 6:58 PM BST
i wonder what will happen with their sportsbook when the exchange is down?
Report singero July 16, 2011 7:04 PM BST
It is one thing to have downtime in the middle of the night due to planned maintenance. It is another thing to have unscheduled web server failures due to not being able to meet peak demand. And it is another thing entirely for this to happen on a real-time trading platform. How many years has this been happening at Betfair now?
Report askari1 July 16, 2011 7:05 PM BST
I've previously won more on outages than I've lost this time so I'm philosophical about the prospect of any voidings, but my patience w/ the company is wearing thin.

The only pledge from the customer commitment that can mean anything in this regard is to resolve a certain percentage of disputes first-time round. I'm pretty sure that will be impossible if their customers argue for what is fair w/ the outages.
Report askari1 July 16, 2011 7:06 PM BST
singero, I cd live very easily with suspensions and unavailable markets, what I can't be doing w/ is ambiguous messages about whether yr bet has been taken or not.

There has to be complete clarity so that bettors can manage their liabilities.
Report singero July 16, 2011 7:09 PM BST
It is very frustrating. Let's not forget that 99% uptime means that 3 days a year or 15 minutes out of every 24-hour period is downtime. If this happens at peak times when people depend on real-time availability...
Report FINE AS FROG HAIR July 16, 2011 7:37 PM BST
ALL the good traders on here claim to follow two fundamental rules.
Only trade both in and out at good value at the time of the trades.
Only trade in amounts that are intelligently proportional to your capital base.

So, as such, if and when they are caught with a leg up by an unexpected outage, what is, or should be, the real problem exposure wise ?

If the opening trade was good value when it was opened, then if you then run with it to expiry of the event ( even if involuntarily) then over time they ( the opening trades) should still come out ahead long term.

If that basic law of long term probability is not reassuring enough to many traders, that is in the short term they're somehow going to be killed if they can't close out their open position, then they are overtrading in a bet size/capital sense.( Warren Buffet put it more succinctly when he said " Don't buy any share that you would not be happy owning if the share markets went out of existence for the next 10 years ".)

I get the feeling on here that many people are trading willy nilly, going one way and then another on a whim and a prayer. Not just only trading good value if and when they see it. IR has created all sorts of false trading opportuniteies for many amateurs on here.

But I can see how outages are very, very annoying in the sense of closing out obviously losing positions to reduce commissions or to retrieve capital to move onto other events, but is not the end of the world if you can't do that very occasionally.

The key point is, or should be, whether all participants are being treated absolutely equally by BF when these outages occur. This is, it seems to me, what Askari is correctly alluding to.

It would seem that BF is very inconsistent and inequitable in its handling of these outages and that is totally wrong.
Report askari1 July 16, 2011 7:56 PM BST
FATH, the point I was making was slightly diff.

It was that if a bettor (trader, arber or swing position taker) is unaware of their liabilities, then it is impossible to bet rationally after an outage.

I had a situation where some of the bets for which I got the 'a transaction error occurred message' were taken and others, getting exactly the same message, were refused.

I had no idea of where I stood or whether to trade back or not.

Further, someone arbing can consciously be taking bad value just to square up the trade and to move onto something else. If a trader or arber only took positions that seemed to him good value (presuming he knew what that was), he wd only take a fraction of the initial positions he in practice feels able to risk.
Report askari1 July 16, 2011 7:57 PM BST
For me the key point is that, as per their self-description, bf are a company that use technology to manage risk.

When their technology fails, the risk shd be passed onto bf themselves.
Report FINE AS FROG HAIR July 16, 2011 8:10 PM BST
All sounds good and intelligent to me what you are saying askari.
Not quite what most others are saying unfortunately.
Report askari1 July 16, 2011 8:19 PM BST
FATH, it wd mean settling markets in an imbalanced way--in other words, voiding losers' bets (if there were some circs. around them wh/ meant they were unable to manage their liabilities) while honouring the winning bets of their counterparties.

The alternative is having a punctual suspension time across all platforms and timely messages accurately informing bettors of their liabilities.

I accept that outages are a fact of life and that they can managed by sensible staking re the size of yr bank.

But I do feel that the messages concerning whether bets have been taken shd be accurate. 'A transaction error occurred' and no bets shown on the screen (for manual bettors) implies that the bet has been turned down. It seems correct to me for bets of this kind to be voided (or all bets of this kind to be honoured).
Report Rocket to the FACE July 16, 2011 8:52 PM BST
FAFH in your mission to reply to every single thread in GB you may have missed Betfairs sticky a few months back whereby they pledged to deal with outages in a new way. They said that during an outage nobody would be able to bet with an obviously unfair advantage.

Yet again this has been shown to be utter bullsh*t as is a lot of the talk they talk.


You are right, if a trader finds only one half of his bet matched that shouldn't be an issue providing he is doing both of the following 1) staking appropriately 2) betting to value


But those are fairly basic givens and are not the reason we are yet again peeved at the way Betfair have A) gotten themselves into the situation and B) dealt with the situation



Their Customer Service is a f*cking joke and their empty promises and bullsh*t PR lines are actually starting to offend me.
Report askari1 July 16, 2011 8:58 PM BST
Well, to bf's credit they have done exactly what I suggested--treated all ambiguous bets getting the same error message in the same way.

They've got me off the hook of this loss (in the mid-three figs., or enough to irritate me) by applying a commonsense rule. Well done!

Had their site been suspended and no bets allowed, I wd accept that bettors shd accept their final bf screens as their final results. This is the situation that wd eventuate if bf were able to impose a universal 'suspend'.
Report unemployable July 16, 2011 9:01 PM BST
askari

can you enlarge on that, how have they - "treated all ambiguous bets getting the same error message in the same way"
Report FINE AS FROG HAIR July 16, 2011 9:07 PM BST
I'm with you on this Rocket.
Report FINE AS FROG HAIR July 16, 2011 9:43 PM BST
Btw I would expect, or at least hope, that there is a lot of reaming out going on in BF towers tonight.
Lots of planned nightclub visits being postponed by all and sundry, I would think.
Or do you all think they're doing lines of coke in the office, celebrating yet another IT **** up at prime time ?
Report Rocket to the FACE July 16, 2011 9:54 PM BST
If they get their a*ses reamed every time they have a prime time outage then I imagine they are all walking about with prolapsed colons.

An outage once in a while is acceptable. It's going to happen.


Outages that consistently occur on heavy traffic periods with no firewall for those unfortunate enough not to be on the Betfair VIP list are frankly not acceptable.
Report saint-pilgrim July 16, 2011 10:00 PM BST
Mr. Frog has been claiming along many PC discussions that the financial markets can't be compared to the betting exchange.

Only today will I admit he's right. If any financial exchange suffered so many outages (if they ever suffer one, some people really suffer the consequences) it would very quickly go out of business.

May it be that they concentrate in their core business and have a consistent charging model? (Surprisingly, winning and losing customers are treated equally)
Report Rocket to the FACE July 16, 2011 10:04 PM BST
I do appreciate your point SP and I don't want to side with Betfair on this but lets be honest, Betfair going down and the LSE going down are two very different kettles of fish.

And Betfair certainly act like it too.
Report FINE AS FROG HAIR July 16, 2011 10:09 PM BST
I'm not a techie but it certainly seems that BF must have gone down some seriously wrong avenues IT wise.
Probably it is time to stop and retrace a bit.
Apparently currently an apprentice at all, and a master at none.
Report saint-pilgrim July 16, 2011 10:10 PM BST
As someone pointed out above Bf claims to be a technology leader in this area and they also mention the volumes and number of bets they handle ...

It's not about comparing sizes, it's about sticking to reality: if time and money is spent on the non-core business, time and money will not be spent on the core business

In such scenario, outages are likely to happen on a regular basis ... (it sounds like if I were predicting the future, but it seems like if I were just telling history)
Report doridoru July 18, 2011 11:28 PM BST
What a disgrace, DOWN DOWN DOWN...........DOWN!!!
Report FINE AS FROG HAIR July 19, 2011 1:06 AM BST
You sound like a panicking submariner.
Report Just Checking July 19, 2011 12:37 PM BST
Submariners blow their tanks, Betfairians blow their banks.

It's a subtle but important difference.
Report gus July 19, 2011 7:32 PM BST
actually, it looks to me as if one of their servers has been playing up today ... it looks like the problem they had ages ago when one server wasn't working properly and if you were unfortunate enough  to connect to its IP number you got really erratic response times.

anyone else having a similar problem?
Report Artisan July 20, 2011 9:17 AM BST
Blown its tanks again.

DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!
Report parrys July 20, 2011 9:34 AM BST
they were supposed to have sorted all the issues out Devil
Report DStyle July 20, 2011 9:52 AM BST
apart from the technical problems themselves (some of which can be beyond betfair's control sometimes), the biggest problem with site downtime is nicely highlighted on their own twitter page.

Betfair Betfair Official
We are having intermittent problems with the site- a further update will follow. Our engineers are investigating
59 minutes ago
Betfair Official
Betfair Betfair Official
@
@OnlineTrader1 We're not seeing any issues with the site here but will check with our ops team and report back
1 hour ago
Betfair Official
Betfair Betfair Official
@
@boots111 we aren't seeing any issues here. What is the site doing for you?
1 hour ago



your users should not be telling your own staff that there is a problem with their site.

do you understand that betfair.

you are supposed to know at least at exactly the same time as your users, and if possible before.

your customers are not your monitoring software.

this, of course, is why the suspension of markets is often so late.
Report petr cech July 20, 2011 10:07 AM BST
"server down" is bull****

A company this big should be using high availability clustering with plenty of failovers.

Utterly pathetic.
Report zeeny July 20, 2011 10:10 AM BST
Take the site down and fix it. How can they not have an uniform procedure to dealing with site issues after 10 years?
Report jme July 20, 2011 10:13 AM BST
What do you get if you mix red with blue
Report feeling_edgey July 20, 2011 10:13 AM BST
I wanted to trade out at HT in the rugby union itm cup but couldnt the site was down. Will this bet that kicked off at 08.30 uk time be voided?
Report parrys July 20, 2011 10:14 AM BST
nope
Report feeling_edgey July 20, 2011 10:16 AM BST
Cheers Parrys. That sucks
Report bet boy July 20, 2011 10:57 AM BST
Ye old Betfayre seems to go down more frequently than a Kings X crack **** although unlike their share price it does come back up gain.
More seriously I'm beginning to question it's even worth staying with BF. I lost money at the weekend because of BF's technical incompetence and a robotic apology is no substitute for recompense. I'm inching ever closer to using the BetDack acc. I opened when Betfear  crashed the Saturday before Cheltenham.
Still, it could be worse - I could be a BF shareholder.
Report bf_fananatic July 20, 2011 11:35 AM BST
dont they realise there losing millions in premium charge when they forget to put a pound in the lecky meter, oh dear
Report wooky July 20, 2011 11:53 AM BST
was down earlier so i used my old tabsportsbet account to place some tennis bets...no dramas
Report bf_fananatic July 21, 2011 11:22 AM BST
cant seem to get the sports menu up on my browser for betfair, anyone else having same problem or know whats going on please?
Report Eddie the eagle July 21, 2011 11:25 AM BST
Maybe you need to deposit more money ? 2 p may not be enough to have in ones account to get full access to the site ?
Report bf_fananatic July 21, 2011 11:43 AM BST
oh no eddie, dont say that, is there now a ruling that says anyone freezing pennys in there account
will be amputated from the markets, good grief thats rather harsh lol
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