Should this alleged £21M layer really be a scapegoat in this fiasco?

There is no middleman - fact, i seen it on the telly.

They dont need to protect the customer - the data protection act will do that. It will be interesting to see what they do come up with but I cannot see how they are going to say anything much more than they have already said - i.e. it was a technical error - sorry.

Spread on the number of times words are used -

Technical error  5.5 - 7.5
Rigourous testing 32-34
Sorry, 1-2
Compensation 0.001 - 0.002
Gesture of Goodwill 0.00000001 - 0.000000002

Luckily for the customer, Mark Davies clarified the situation in one of his older posts

The Betfair customer is not responsible for paying out to the winning customer and is not able to hold the stake of those they are betting against. If a customer is unhappy, the responsibility for dealing with that is Betfair’s and Betfair’s alone: there is no recourse to the customer matching his or her bet. No customer can access another customer’s data and it is impossible for any customer to know who their bets are being matched against.

Betfair, in contrast, undertakes all of these activities and responsibilities, which is the reason that we hold a bookmaking licence. Betfair is simply a fixed-odds bookmaker that manages its risk perfectly by using cutting-edge technology to immediately offset the risk it takes – otherwise known as ‘matching’ bets.

http://markxdavies.blogspot.com/2010/03/section-3.html

Odds that TMIAG and his cohorts will run with this for ever and a day ?
Unbackable methinks ?

So there is a middle man?

That's it - I will be on to the Advertising Standards Authority first thing in the morning!

Btw any body deliriously happy the race was voided ?
No " good luck " stories out there to counterbalance things ?.
Or are you all " losers" for once on here, and not "winners  " ?
I know , I know.
It's the principle we're debating.
Oh and throw in a bit of the predictable BF bashing just to make it all the spicier eh ?

FAFH - it is you and your cohorts (that will accept p1ss poor service at inflated prices) that ensure the perpetuation of p1ss poor service and inflated prices. If those are your standards/expectations - they will always be met. Congrats.

Middle man ?
That can mean either taking a speculative role or a facilitative role in the middle.
You think BF is taking the former, and I think it is taking the latter.
Big differences between such small minds perhaps ?

They ran a television ad campaign FAFH - the tag line being - "There's no middleman".

Intended irony or utter stupidity? - you decide.

TMIAG
This whole issue is not about service.
It's about an obvious technical hitch and the fixinf thereof..
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Why blow it up into a whole reputational thing ?.
Always the same you lot.
Never happy. Never satisfied.
Damned ( BF) if they do, damned if they don't.

So many potential benefits to sell - and they go with "there's no middleman"

No wonder they have to keep increasing the charges really - is it.

I think their ad quite obviously referred to the fact that the risk on your bet is accepted by another punter , not BF.
Or you think otherwise ?

Whether you like it or not Frog, the simple fact is you are betting against the bookmaker Betfair not other customers. The customer hasn't made one almighty **** up by offering £21M to lay , Betfair have.

It's actually an attitude towards your customers thing FAFH.

I have already stated that I don't expect them to be liable - but I really do have a border collie that could do a better job of their PR and their communications.

The ads were laughable FAFH - and I don't mean humorous I mean embarrassingly, ashamedly laughable. No doubt expensive also. I wonder how many new accounts they attracted? Very shrewd.

Yeah well PR ( quite obviously) is not my forte.
So I will not argue that point forever.
I will concede to you.
But I will continue to draw the line when people say, or imply, without incontovertible proof, that BF is lying  to cover up deceit and fraud.
To me that is beyond the pale.
Totally unacceptable and deplorable.

Let's all get some sleep eh.
Just thank God that BF is still in business, and not facing a 600 million pound liability/bankruptcy ?
Who would benefit from that after all ( apart from the purple lot and the nasty traditional bookies) ?

I have not said they are lying or covering up..... due to their p1ss poor communications what happened is completely unclear to me (and everybody else). Whilst it remains so, people will continue to speculate. It all comes down to communications and they fail on that every single time. They don't seem to learn but everytime something goes t1ts up, they promise they will learn from it

Goodnight.

Maybe you could point out on this thread where people have accused Betfair of  cover up deceit and fraud, Frog? So far we've been told **** all so it'd be a bit hard to accuse them of anything. And the liabilities around £23M not £600M, seems you're more prone to exaggerating things than anyone else.

GJ
Maybe not on this thread.
But there is a separate thread with 600 million figure in the title, and that figure is referred to a lot on the MD post.
On many threads, however, there is a recurring theme that somehow BF has a principal riole in all this.
That is not correct, according to BF's public statements.
So if people still believe BF is at principal risk, then ipso facto they must be accusing BF of deceit and fraud ?
Is that not so ?
I'm not prone to exaggeration at all.
Conversely I like facts not rumours and innuendo.
In this context, I would agree that we are all a bit short on them currently.
Hopefully that will change in due course, as the full story comes out.
Till then, I reserve judgement either way.
But my nature is to give BF the benefit of the doubt, just for starterts at least.

We'll have to disagree as I fail to see how Betfair don't have a principal role in this mess , Frog.

The Betfair customer is not responsible for paying out to the winning customer and is not able to hold the stake of those they are betting against. If a customer is unhappy, the responsibility for dealing with that is Betfair’s and Betfair’s alone: there is no recourse to the customer matching his or her bet. No customer can access another customer’s data and it is impossible for any customer to know who their bets are being matched against.

Betfair, in contrast, undertakes all of these activities and responsibilities, which is the reason that we hold a bookmaking licence. Betfair is simply a fixed-odds bookmaker that manages its risk perfectly by using cutting-edge technology to immediately offset the risk it takes – otherwise known as ‘matching’ bets.

http://markxdavies.blogspot.com/2010/03/section-3.html

The simple fact is you're betting directly against Betfair, they put up and manage their own liabilities, we're not betting against some possibly unlicensed layer who may or may not have submitted the offer that Betfair put up. The layer doesn't have access to put  the offer on the site and we have no contract with them whatsoever, it's Betfairs responsibility to verify any offers/collect any liabilities that may arise from bets submitted to them. As for people accusing them of deceit and fraud - bit hard to accuse them of deceit as so little info has been released -  yet to see anyone accusing them of fraud as that'd be laughable cos it's hard to see how they'd benefit from the **** up.

Hopefully they'll release a frank account of exactly what went wrong tomorrow and things should be a lot clearer. night night

I think the 21m layer is betfair themselves via their own cross matching bot which went wrong.  Can see BF going under when this is proved to be the case and they are told to pay up.

TMIAG, in case you didn't know, a complaint about that stupid advert was upheld by the advertising authority. It was ridiculous enough with betfair being the middleman but when you add in all the middlemen traders the advert was imbecilic. Wonder how much they paid the advertising agency for that?

a useful analogy would be liffe/ltom. they act in a similar way on the financial markets to the model outlined by mark davies. if someone fcked up in a similar fashion there's no way trades would be allowed to be settled. nor would there be any of this fuss from the traders, aceept it, move on.

Are you allowed to sell firms that have already folded on liffe?

if by some fckup an instrument was on the system after expiry no trader would waste his time trading it, as s/he'd know the trades wouldn't stand.

Not a very good analogy then is it?

in regards to the data protection act protecting this customeers details...

when betfair link accounts for pc charge reasons, you are then able to see details of how the other accounts are doing in the portal!  is this not an important rule break from betfair ?

no i guess not, as there's feckin eejits using betfair

Was that a confession gvl?

And how many of those accounts are Betfair's.
Always had that suspicion, pretty much confirmed of late.