I got ROBBED by Betfair.

IF YOU WERE A SERIOUS COMPANY YOU SHOULD VOID ALL BETS MATCHED BEFORE THE OUTAGE.

That doesn't really solve it as there are many people who would say just place a straight bet with no intention of trading out. They win, but then through no fault of their own their bet gets voided, not fair on them either.

Ok then, lets compensate the winners even more. Feck the unlucky losers.

Joke, shame of a company.

Thing is, it happens far to often. I count at least 3 saturdays this year alone.  Any other company and heads would roll.....

There isn't really a fair way for all apart from the one that leaves BF severely out of pocket and lets face it that's not going to happen.

The only thing you can do as an individual is to do things like set up other accounts and trade out through them instead. Not ideal i know. One thing i did notice was that although the system was down for a long time you could still get onto the market and see your position even though you couldn't place a bet. At least you had the information to then try and place bets elsewhere.

It is a nightmare when the site crashes, especially when it does so for over an hour at such a busy sporting time of the week, BF should try and at least do something though to apologise even if it is to offer various commission free markets across a variety of sports. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.

Just had a quick look, they are offering something.

Life is unfair.
Now bend over and be happy.

Every one should complain to the gaming authorites i traded out through another company so didnt lose. But i didnt win either like i would of as BF messed up my Saturday!!!
Everyone should open other account and only use BF as a second stop. And post on all gambling forums about how poor BF customer service is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

U.A. it would be as easy as, Terms & Conditions: "In the event of (yet) another usual site crash ALL BETS will be voided".

Of course, ain't gonna happen, they don't care about the people who are trading prices, they do not care if you lose big becasue you can not close your trade. All this creates is bigger winners and bigger losers, which translate into bigger commissions.

Does anyone remember when Betunfair was an exchange?
A place for people to trade prices, before or after kick off? Now it is just an unreliable platform for gambling, you can not place big stakes because you may lose the lot, and if not, do not worry, site will crash again soon and you will lose all your winnings.

Mr Angry, you are not that funny when you often complain about money being hoovered.

You should treat every bet as being the last one, and only bet in amounts that
are acceptable to you should they lose. 

Maybe Betfair should offer as SP option for more markets, so at least you have
the capability of salvaging the bulk of your money if the site goes down.

By the way, I lost on yesterday's site failure, but 75% of my bets had the
option of hedging at SP.

They just dont care about the exchange anymore. Sportsbook is their baby right now.

Actually there is a solution if Betfair took it up.
Phone your bet in, auto record system with a reference number.

That would probably be too simple.

^^^ Is that serious?  So, if their systems go down, use a telephone system for placing bets, linked to another system for recording those bets?

So run not just one Exchange, but two?

Plenty of other places take correct score bets, if you've a months profit at stake you've only yourself to blame for not trying to recover your position elsewhere. I agree Betfair's seems to be run by a bunch of clowns but voiding pre off bets isn't the answer, I'm sure if the result had gone your way you'd be sitting there smirking rather than hoping all bets were void just for the benefit of a few traders who got caught.

Nice gesture from Betfair I think. Trader11, it seems you would actually been less angry if Betfair had done nothing to compensate?

Baby, there are not "many sites", you can count on purple and that is it.

And yes, I agree, had I won a load, say 2 or 3 months profit, I wouldn't be complaining, I would be even happier since betunfair rewards me with more commission cashback!! Poor sods those traders who were planning to trade out at some point, they not only lost a lot, but they also do not get any rebate or something.

A joke, shame.

And by the way, my emails to betunfair unexistant "customer service" have been ignored.

Plenty of bookies offer CS betting, not the hardest thing in the world to back other outcomes if you can't lay it directly.

You're easily pleased Investor, how many UK games are on today ? maybe 5 or 6 plus 7 races on Tuesday isn't exactly pushing the boat out is it now especially if you don't bet on those sports?

True Baby Jesus, it's quite strange only horse racing and football gets special treatment, but I only bet on football in any volume.

Today??? They're not rebating today as well are they?

No they're not that generous !!!

I'd read it wrong , Investor, I didn't see it yesterday just read it today and hadn't noticed the time/day. Betfair acting so quickly must have confused me, they usually have to run everything through just about every dept before they put out those type of rebates :) I suppose the fact the crash happened before KO/inplay action made it easier for them to come to a decision.

Baby Jesus, the seven races on Tues. are the biggest liquidity events of the year. Many people will be betting or arbing thousands. It's a massive gesture.

Trader, they have a rule for what happens when there's an outage and they have to stick to it. No one can tell what anyone intended to do once they had opened a position, but it's indisputable that they actually took a bet.

And had they voided, what about the people who bet on here, traded or laid off elsewhere, then had their win here taken away while their loss elsewhere stood? You shd just trust to their rule in these circs.

Don't worry lads, they've just sacked 40% of the most senior, talented developers in the company who look after the core exchange. Quality will only improve!

Trader 11, your solution of refunding all bets is not in the interests of the people who use the site just to bet (not those who would have won anyway).

In this situation BF have to chose whether they look after the people who just bet (i.e. do nothing) or people who trade (refund all bets made if there is a serious outage). Unfortunately they are always going to chose the former because a) it involves the least amount of work and b) if you start peeing off people who make bets they have plenty of other places where they can go, if you pee off traders they don't have much of an option and so will stay where they are.

Let me ask you as a trader adversely affected by this are you going to close your account down and disappear from this site and go and trade elsewhere?

the truth is that for almost a decade we have been hearing how the exchange is being improved to be more resilient.

the truth is that it's not really got any better for a long long time.

and that's almost certainly down to methodology rather than action.

DStyle, it's due to schizophrenic approach to product development internally. Senior management know full well that stability = profit, but they have to keep adding **** like the sportsbook and exchange roulette to keep the shareholders happy. The upside is that there's very little opportunity to fix the core exchange. The very core of the exchange has not changed in years. The black box that does the matching and exposure rarely changes. The stuff that breaks is all the crappy services to serve you adverts and the sportsbook. Occasionally a power cut or bona fide bug in hardware turns up, but that's rare. They just keep bolting code and bloat onto it and slow it down.

as others have said, the idea they should void bets matched before the outage is pure pocket-talking idiocy.

if you're going to trade amounts where getting stuck in the position will be catastrophic, you need more of a back up plan for when it goes t!ts than seething on here.

Perfectly put viva.

BF will always be liable to crash as with any other site on the internet. 

The worst case is when the markets are not accessible at all so you don't know what your position is. At least this time you could see where you were so had plenty of time to hedge if you deemed that necessary. 

As honest al says, every time you bet that money is at risk. It doesn't matter if you are looking for just a tick - eventually there will come a time when that money is gone and you may need to react elsewhere to cut your losses.

Were they still taking phone bets?

Also, you can do the math and place a book at another bookmakers to hedge and/or close a position.

When I decide to trade it's not uncommon for me to get caught in positions that I didn't want or plan.  You should be willing to accept that risk and not to panic buy or panic sell, regardless of whether its due to technical reasons.  Sometimes it will go for you and sometimes it won't.

Mar 11, 2013 -- 12:42PM, CLYDEBANK29 wrote:

When I decide to trade it's not uncommon for me to get caught in positions that I didn't want or plan.

clydebank are you talking about betting or about when ur wife caught u with that other woman?

As for the site crashing, you can accept it occasionally but not all the time. No other betting site I've used goes down as often as betfair. If their site isn't getting hacked then the reliability isn't good enough as it always seems to happen just before the football matches start on a saturday.

YOMOMMA, When you visit other betting sites, none have as many calls/live info, etc.  The sites are "night and day".

When you Trade Betfair on a Saturday afternoon you know the risk you are taking unfortunately. IMagine if ALL your biggest positions came in and made you a packet would you be singing the same tune? honestly? I doubt it.

Mar 9, 2013 -- 9:21PM, U.A. wrote:

IF YOU WERE A SERIOUS COMPANY YOU SHOULD VOID ALL BETS MATCHED BEFORE THE OUTAGE.That doesn't really solve it as there are many people who would say just place a straight bet with no intention of trading out. They win, but then through no fault of their own their bet gets voided, not fair on them either.

They can now do this with the 'fixed odds' bit of the site. Therefore the 'punters who put their bets on before the match' argument is void.

S or A, I'm not sure exactly what you are saying, but if you are saying what I think you are - it must be one of the most stupid things I've read on here.