VC letter: Are they allowed to do this??

Don't see why not.

Thx Lori, but I was hoping to hear a more detailed explanation of whether they could do it or not, according to gambling laws.

What 'gambling laws' are you referring to ?

You've had a losing bet and it's been settled as a losing bet.

At some point they've accidentally loaned you money which you chose to spend.

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

Far be it for me to question you, Lori. But, erm, I'm going to anyway!    Surely the bet wasn't a losing one? As I read it, he was given the winnings due on his bet. However, there was supposed to be a Rule 4 deduction from those winnings, presumably due to a late scratch. The Rule 4 deduction wasn't made initially. Much later on, VC realised their mistake and deducted the money.

The point is, it can't have been a losing bet, as otherwise VC would have had no need to make a Rule 4 deduction.  And he hasn't spent any of the money that they have mistakenly given to him.

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.

Sorry, you're right.

Overpaid bet is more accurate. The excess being the unofficial loan.

Also agree with everything else you've written LB.

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

People sat around in meetings for hours deciding this was the best policy.

Same people offering 50 quid to new sign ups. Maybe operations budget and marketing budget?

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



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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?

Because it was never your money in the first place.

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..

I think they are perfectly entitled to take their money back and I don't expect they would do the same 'years' later in the same way.

The stuff from the t&c is the sort of nonsense we all have to endure because of the something-for-nothing culture that we are unfortunately developing - can I ask the op exactly how this situation should have been handled?

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.

I have probably bet with them about 5/6 times a week for the past 5 years. I normally place my bets and at the end of the day W/D any returns. What I objected to was the sneaky way they did it. I had the L15 last week say Mon, placed another bet on the Friday, used the small return to back another horse on Friday evening and then withdrew the return. They then email me to say they´ve cancelled my withdrawal on the Friday to reclaim an overpayment from the Tuesday bet.

If they had sent me an email explaining the position and requesting that I repay them that would have been OK. It would not be in my interest to lose a useful bookmaker account for the sake of such a small amount.

Btw, LB, I do keep daily records of all my betting/accounts, but when it comes to multiples with 30 returns, with non-runners affecting my prices and ew terms I have better things to do than try to calculate excatly what the return should be. I will do a rough calculation on the win part and if it looks about right then fine.

At the end of the day I was overpaid by 3% on a 520 quid return. You would have thought it wasn´t worth them bothering about it tbh.

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?)