Another negative story

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/8782921/Be...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/
  8782921/Betfair-removed-52000-from-customers-account.html

This could be fun. I'll be very interested to see just how legal the courts deem Betfair's cash-and-grab to be.  They'd better have pretty strong evidence that this punter's connected to the others.

well at least they have the skill to win that amount in the 1st place. hard to feel sorry for him/them

So if the guy really has nothing to do with these other people, then it would be ok for Betfair to grab his money anyway Paul? A bit like saying burglary is ok as long as you only target rich people yeah?

I have ofc no idea about the truth behind the story, but I know not many people go to court against large corporations just for fun.

Wonder if Betfair send out field agents to investigate cases like this, who shadow people, take pictures through windows and stuff like that, or if they just conduct their investigations from their cozy offices?:)

no more like feeling sorry for a prem footballer if he's fined £20k

are you paul mcmullan? you seem to share the same bitter hatred of success.

the difference between the two is that the premiership footballer has transgressed a rule or code of conduct and is therefore fined accordingly; the appropriate comparison would be to fine him £20k solely because he makes too much money.

The thing is here if the punter used software that hid is id and ip adress etc, it may be so hard to prove that he is responsible for avoidance, . One would think that if he indeed delibretly did do what betfair alledge and the sum is quite large he would of covered his tracks well in advance.

has transgressed a rule or code of conduct

In a civilised country that would probably apply to most pc3 payers.

Are all customers new or old that start making good profits going to have there accounts frozen or stolen on the basis that they might have more than one account, are winners on betfair now going to be treated the same as bookmakers clients, has the betfair dream now gone into meltdown just because some customers are more profitable than betfair for handling each pound unit on the exchange, what is going on?

Having read that article, what I do NOT understand is : if they believe 5 accounts are all basically 'him', why not take 1/5th from all accounts as it would all still come from him, or at least try spread it across all accounts with money in them? It's the same clawback but a better way of doing it.

Way they've done it: If they've got it wrong, firstly they've hammered one poor sod for it all. Secondly if they did it to all 5 accounts, they might get 5 people to come forward saying 'what are you doing' to indicate they've got it wrong. This way they've made it very hard for this man to prove he's been done wrong?

(I don't know what other info betfair have of course but I think what I'm saying makes sense).

who is Paul McMullan?

If betfair miss manage there handling of winners and this sends out an embossed image that winners are not welcome in the press then betfair may find itself on very thin ice and by mirroring the bookmakers methods of clobbering there most successful customers , betfair will go into meltdown, for sure as they will be singled out as the market leader in the exchange game they wont have any safety in numbers and a mass exodus will prevail.

im just someone who cant win a bet...

Lmax has cost betfair 30 million in losses, not setting up bingo up many years ago probably the same, if this was sorted out earlier they woudnt be relying on hammering there top customers with pc2 and further damaging there image to the long term loss this will incur

Good leadership would of not let all this happen!

placed any bets this week bff?

By the way if persons are avoiding pc2 then this is wrong and should be stopped, but are we all now to worry about not only being charged in the future more and more but also being accused of cheating and having our accounts frozen and taken away?

there is currently several track players joining together in regards to costs of leagal fees etc etc

and will be soon taking betfair to court.

watch this space.....

can see this happening a lot. what right do betfair have to take people's money anyway? seems
like daylight robbery to me. although I don't agree with the methods employed by a large percentage
of people who tend to fall foul of the premium charge (ie re my "are bots destroying betfair thread)

I certainly don't agree that there should be a 60 percent tax on winnings. It's only because betfair are a monopoly that they can get away with it. if this happened in any other walk of life people would laugh at betfair and never have anything to do with them.

perhaps betfair should be referred to the monopolies commision, for breach of business ethics?

mythical, it's not 60% on winnings, it's 60% on profits, not quite the same thing.

Have you read the article paulme? asking me if I have betted is not the point, the last time I won good money in a bookmaker was in march!

Placed £100 on a dog trap 5 in a race, 4/1 drifted out to 8/1
corals wouldnt pay me because although they noted that a staff member confirmed I placed it on the dog race when asked, the fact was there rules allowed them to question the bet because there was a horse race at the same time, the member of staff that asked me which race it was for was kept away as she was never in when I was told she was in.

I never got paid my winnings and they were taken from me in effect

To cut a long story short, I had been winning a lot many times, sound familiar and told that all my bets were being monitored, I told them I wont be using them again as they are unfair.

Now if I start using betfair and backing dogs then i may have my account frozen if it gets big because i may be a pc avoider.

Or perhaps I would just be a winner , not what betfair wants anymore
I dont know as all the press things you read about betfair and purple
are making me think that winners are not welcome anywhere and yet all
betting firms encourage us to win, if we lose they dont bat an eyelid.

Read the article of this thread and paste the link paulme before you
have a pop at me please.

They won't necessarily get away with it. It'll only need one person to go to court and win and there'll be cases crawling out of the woodwork everywhere.

im not having a go bff. i enjoy your posts as i've said.

why would bf freeze your account if you started betting?

true kenilworth, but the point remains the same. as I said on the other thread, the average punter doesn't have much hope anymore up against the fast pic boys/ bot users/ people with inside info etc.

but having allowed these kind of activities, betfair can't just turn around after the event and say "you owe us such and such"

that wasn't part of the original contract.

Bf seems to think he's too good to bet at Betfair. I think he fears they'll assume he's be on before and is a PC evader...

Its the greying of legal issues that is worrying and lets hope for betfair as well as the upholding of all charges that there is no grey area as this will be problematic beyond any perceived loss in charges.

I'd be very surprised indeed if Betfair have a watertight case here. The burden of proof will be quite high. You can't just grab somebody's money and take it off them without a decent explanation.  They've been used to throwing their weight around, but it's only a matter of time before somebody stands up to them.

Adventuring into any system to try to win is as much an ethical battleground as it is a fiscal and requires caution and care.

We are always the little fish and if getting bigger we understand the bigger fish may try to snap us up, its the law of the jungle.

A good number of the PC2 brigade aren't such little fish. A few of them can afford big lawyers and may feel it's worth a shot.  If I was Betfair I wouldn't be wanting to have those people angry at me.

The condition for being accused is simply to win consistently. Don't you see? Even if innocent Betfair are now heavily incentivised to suspend any consistent winners who are not paying PC2. Any new customer learning to win consistently costs them £100k+.

You can't just be realising this now.

They know what they are doing, though, I believe. It seems deliberately designed to maximise cash in the short term and to hell with the longer term consequences. I'm thinking the strategy involves some sort of medium term exit before the long term implications play out.

Silly me thought that being a modern human using a betting exchange and probably winning would not mean I may get my tail and pectoral fins bitten off in the form of charges, winner rejection, and charge avoidance persecution so I will need to test the water out in future as there seems to be huge dorsal fins surfacing the waters of all betting companies now.

Good point weatherman but the only exit route perceivable short term to me for betfair to avoid there long term damage to there conceptional well being as a business is posting bankruptcy , logically speaking or can you perceive a different exit?

Too many shark heads running betfair now, the founders that could walk on water are now gone and we are all immersed into a betting abyss.

I was thinking of a sale to someone on the back of unexpectedly good revenue this year (because PC2 payers make more money than most people realise) - note the rise in the share price since the conf call where they said PC2 was working well.

Which fish thought that crawling on too land was cool and evolving legs was great as there were now sharks on land, oh if they could only see what they started now[;)]

People detest red tape. Betfair don't realise the damage the threat of having winnings withheld will do wrt attracting new customers. Where existing customers are concerned, they could have reduced the impact pc1/2/3 had by deducting/rebating after each market instead of going for the moral destroying Wednesday payment. There surely must be some kind of clown virus circulating in this company.

your theory is remarkably generous: you assume that betfair are fully aware of the consequences of their actions and that they are deliberate in spite of them.

Feck N. Eejit, There is some sort of clown chromosome rebounding around the walls of BF HQ and having 2000 staff and no original founders and all top staff gone must mean BF are entering there dark age now with cannibalizing there best resources in the form of exchange winners
a common theme.

Lets hope any new customers can still smell the roses when they join without realizing its the smell of flower petals thought once to resist us from catching th plague, brought on by the pc dark ages now upon us.

I did say "betfair don't realise" DStyle so I don't really get what you're saying.

Don't think "generous" is the right word. I'm saying this is worse than them simply being dumb.

I think they know what they are doing. The forum is full of conjecture, but Betfair themselves have the fullest view of the picture.

My hunch is that they predicted more trouble than they confessed to (their arguments for PC2 never really made sense)so they took an executive decision - rake in as much cash as possible in the short term, then look for a buyer.

It was working briefly, but now some of the longer term implications are being openly talked about. It also appears not all the executive agree with the decision.

sorry - crossed posts feck. that post was for weatherman.

perhaps all good betting winners will be made too ring a bell in the near future when betting anywhere like the poor lepers had too in days gone by.

A 19% drop in active accounts is not an indication that new accounts are being used to avoid paying chaeges, its an indication that the premium charge dark ages are real and probably BF is in denial to rake what it can while it can, but to what end.

Betfair biggest problem is expecting there flux of customers to be as thick as the likes that pervade all betting sites and thsi actual wise bunch . yes all 3 million of them have got minds of there own.

To maximise short term profit.

There will be clauses about share prices in their remuneration packages.

wouldn't there be more signs across the business though? haven't they increased their staffing by 20%?

Didn't know that. Wonder where the staff are to be deployed. On the Sports Exchange?

I'm intrigued by the 19% drop in active accounts stat.

Wonder how that got out? If they want to exclude the press from their AGM you'd also assume that they'd want to keep a stat like that quiet.

r.e 20% rise in BF staffing, whats the point in an organism evolving more arms and legs when the head is shrinking?

Is betfair now an ocotopus and if so what is it juggling.

pc3???  What's that??

Betfair biggest problem is expecting there flux of customers to be as thick as the likes that pervade all betting sites and thsi actual wise bunch . yes all 3 million of them have got minds of there own.

I think it's the other way about bff. They seem to think they're dealing exclusively with university graduates.

It's a new charge Cosmic. Apparently, from now on everyone losing a bet will have to give up 100% of their stake.

Cosmic, pc1 was 20% based on last 60 weeks, pc2 was 20% based on lifetime profit, pc3 is the 60,50,40,20% version of pc2.

Ah!  OK, you had me worried there!

I'm intrigued by the 19% drop in active accounts stat.

Wonder how that got out? If they want to exclude the press from their AGM you'd also assume that they'd want to keep a stat like that quiet.

............................................................

You can't keep it quiet if you are asked the question by an institutional investor in the AGM.  I wouldn't have thought it was volunteered up beforehand.

Does that go for any investor?

I might buy a share and go to the next one.

And what's the point in banning the press if negative news is freely reported to them by the meetings attendees?

People detest red tape. Betfair don't realise the damage the threat of having winnings withheld will do with attracting new customers. Where existing customers are concerned, they could have reduced the impact pc1/2/3 had by deducting/rebating after each market instead of going for the moral destroying Wednesday payment. There surely must be some kind of clown virus circulating in this company.

....................................................................

The whole thing is a shambles.  Denying the press access to the AGM is irrational.

wouldnt have thought you'd be guaranteed entry weatherman to ask the qu. in the first place

not sure where weatherman, but enjoyed this chesnut in their press release to account for the increase in spending on operations:

"Operations costs remained flat as a percentage of Core Betfair revenue."

as i say, they're also in the middle of a three year investment technology investment program which is causing a increase on their technology and product spend, which again i suspect they'd be reigning in if they were trying to make the ship as tight as possible.

*reining in