VC letter: Are they allowed to do this??

Don't see why not.

What 'gambling laws' are you referring to ?

Whether that's good customer serivce or decent is another matter entirely of course.

Strangely though, TiptheOdds, you might have been in a better position had you in fact spent the money already. Your situation probably falls under the Unjust Enrichment rule (Wiki 'English Unjust Enrichment'), which means you're bound to pay VC back the money that you've been 'unjustly' given. They should have asked you to pay back the Rule 4 deduction, rather than taking it straight out of your account without asking for permission. That's a bit naughty of them, although it's not really worth fighting for the sake of less than £17.

However, had you spent the money, you could have claimed that you would be worse off as a result of their mistake - you wouldn't necessarily have spent that money had you not already won it, and it would be unfair to expect you to be out of pocket as a result of their mistake. That would be the Change of Position defense. Perhaps if you had placed money on a few bets, you might still be able to argue that - particularly if quite a long period of time had passed between the mistake and VC noticing. Quite honestly though, you do owe them that money, and it's probably not worth your while making a big deal out of this. Annoying, but you should have realised they had underpaid you.

Also agree with everything else you've written LB.

It amazes me how stupid companies can be. £17 vs a load of bad publicity.

I asked VC how they could justify waiting 4 days to take back their money. This is what they said:

Thank you for contacting us.

In regard to your previous query please read below 'Rule 10' that allows us to reclaim any incorrectly paid winnings:

10. It is the account holder's responsibility to inform us at once should any error occur on their account or in any bet or other transaction, whether the error was caused by a member of our staff, or our equipment. ii) Any funds/winnings credited to an account in error are not available for use, and we reserve the right to void any transactions involving such funds, either at the time or retrospectively.

This information is available to view at: http://www.victorchandler.com/vcbet/en-gb/site_help/website_faq

Should you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards

Kevin S
Contact Centre
Victor Chandler



This communication and the information it contains :-
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If you are not the intended recipient, please inform the sender immediately by email and delete it and all copies from your system.


Two parts of the above are interesting:

1. VC state in their rules that it is the "customer´s responsibility to inform us at once should any error occur on their account". In other words we should be able to settle our bets and tell them if they are wrong . In this case I had an ew L15 with three winners and a place, took early prices aaginst which there were several subsequent Nrs/withdrawals - in these cases I just calculate the bet roughly and if it looks about right then I let it go. My return was about 538 quid - but if it had been 520 quid I wouldn´t have noticed either.

2. The second interesting point is in their disclaimer at the end of their email, saying "Unauthorised use, circulation, copying or disclosure of any part of this communication may be unlawful". Is that intended to prevent people like myself from posting it on forums I wonder??

Finally, its not the money I´m so bothered about, but the principle. What this means is that bookmakers can effectively remove money from a person´s account arbitrarily, perhaps weeks or months (or years?) later, if they happen to make a mistake. This wouldn´t be allowed in a shop so why is it OK online?

Well they are entitled to say that you should inform them in the event of any error, but only as long as you actually know that there's been an error made.  If you take an item costing £9 to the counter in a shop and agree with the shopkeeper to buy it at that price, if they give you £2 change for a tenner then you are expected to tell them that they've undercharged you - in reality, you probably wouldn't, but that's another matter..   

Of course, they can't expect you to be double-checking their bets for them.  However, I am surprised that you don't know exactly how much was due back to you. When I used to place bets with the bookies, I'd always carefully check exactly how much I was going to make, since they did often make mistakes that needed to be corrected. If the payout didn't match up exactly, I'd try and work out why. Had you kept proper records, you wouldn't be in this position.

In any case, you haven't actually lost anything as a result. You just haven't got the 'windfall' that you might have been given as a result of VC's mistake.  A bit mean of them to take out the money four days later, but fairly normal for bookies. Since you were trying to withdraw the rest of your money, they probably just thought they'd try and get whatever they could from you before you possibly disappeared for good..

If they had payed you 17 pound less then you would expect them to redify the error.....so you have no complaints.....I had the same problem with Betfair.....they settled a losing bet as a winner which I didn't realize and I lost the money.....as soon as I deposited funds into my account they took the money back.

If you've been regularly playing for that period of time then it is a little surprising they'd risk losing your business over a fairly minor matter. Perhaps they don't want you any more!  (Have you taken more out of them over that period then they've taken out of you?)