'full possession of the facts'. I think they mean the result of the race here.

Betfair should pay out something to everyone. Even if it is 1.09 or 1.1 because that should have been his price when the majority of bets where placed. Plus If you are watching the race on analouge tv you are watching at least 5 seconds before ATR or Betfair. So i presume the majority of the punters are Irish.

these statements continue to make matters worse.they are not addressing any of the major points being made on the forum, & frankly the point they make about voiding it if VDV had won or lost is completely subjective & is completely the opposite of company policy over the years.
btw for all the conspiracy theorists there are reports of heavy selling of bf shares when the markets opened yesterday morning before all this took place

No there wasn't Betfair was flatlining all day i was watching it

So if you take their statement at face value, they left the site up all day yesterday despite knowing there was a serious issue they hadn't resolved?

Who does their PR, Coco The Clown?

Someone suggested that this was a Betfair account,and it was an employee who inputted figures incorrectly (a kind of insider trading) and that's why bet was accepted to such a high amount. Very plausable.

Didnt wager a penny on the race concerned but it is a disgrace betfair are refusing to pay, anyone who has fat fingered in the past should now be on the phone for a refund, one law for them ( big boys manipulating markets ) one for the rest of us.

Yesterday Calvin advised that this was an "obvious technical fault". So feckin' obvious that it was not for 2 1/2 hours after the event had finished that they bothered sticking up a service announcement telling us that there had been an obvious technical failure! Today, Calvin seems to be saying that it was far from obvious as BF had to investigate before voiding to ensure that they were in possession of all the facts! They are clearly making it all up as they go along imo.

p.s The thing that seemed 'obvious' to me at the time was that the horse I had backed at 29 was surely about to rocket to 1000. I assumed that in keeping with anyone else watching slow pics (or listening to commentary for that matter), I was at the mercy of any on-track players who'd already seen something we hadn't. Maybe by way of recompense, BF will do something to ensure that when something obvious does happen, none of its customers are disadvantaged by sh!te broadcasts.

SKYNEWS.COM

Betfair sorry again
Exchange contrite over lay gaffe


Voler La Vedette: Matched at crazy prices

Betfair have made another apology to punters over the bizarre betting patterns in Wednesday's woodiesdiy.com Christmas Hurdle at Leopardstown and the delay in settling the outcome.

The betting exchange eventually voided all in-running bets in the race, in which one client was left with a liability of nearly £23million on the easy winner Voler La Vedette.

It became evident during the race that over £21m was available at odds of 28-1 to back Voler La Vedette, even though Colm Murphy's mare went off at 13-8 on course, and some eagle-eyed backers thought they had picked up a late Christmas present.

However, Betfair voided the race due to a technical fault which they said had caused a customer to exceed their exposure limit.

A Betfair statement on Thursday said: "Firstly, we would like to reiterate that anyone betting in-running in yesterday's Leopardstown race clearly received a very poor customer service and betting experience. We apologise once again for this.

"We have identified the issue and replicated it in a test environment last night. A fix was applied overnight, and is now subject to rigorous testing.

"Contrary to some media speculation, we can confirm that all in-running bets on this market would have been voided, had Voler La Vedette won or lost. There was never any chance of the account in question profiting yesterday. The account in question was also immediately suspended after the Leopardstown race.

"There has been some criticism from customers, and in the press, that Betfair took too long to void.

"Quite simply, we made the decision after we were in full possession of the all the facts and input from the relevant internal departments. A decision was then made to void in accordance with our terms and conditions.

"We will update when more information is available

Crazy story of some rogue odds being offered at Betfair during the recent Christmas Hurdle (some type of horse race in Britain).

Crazy story of some rogue odds being offered at Betfair during the recent Christmas Hurdle (some type of horse race in Britain).

Stupid **** imo.

I agree Millhouse but those are not the rules and they never have been the rules.

They have been ignored because there is more cash at stake than usual.

If it was 30k and not 30 million it would have been paid out.

You seem to be a *wee* bit slow on the uptake old boy.

The fact that you think its an error, the layer thinks it's an error and those who backed the horse thought it was an error are, simply, irrelevances.

It all depends how it ended up getting there!  User input error or bot malfunction and I agree entirely.  If the idea that it's a one in a billion glitch where data has become corrupted is correct then I don't think anybody should be liable, though it does put the heat very definitely on Betfair.

It's the deafening silence after it the is starting to gall a lot of people. Especially after this

CUSTOMER COMMITMENT: A SECOND PERFORMANCE UPDATElaunch forum pop-uptopicsrefresh
Betfair Customer Services     Joined: 22 May 02
Replies: 3432 10 Nov 11 16:45 
We’ve now published a second performance update against our Customer Commitment – a set of 14 promises aimed at delivering the best possible service for our customers.

Launched in June 2011, the Commitment covers five key areas of our business; protection for customers and their data, integrity in sport, customer service, communication, and the reliability of our products and services. Where possible each promise had specific targets so we could report back on our progress. We’ve made excellent progress against all promises and we’re pleased to bring you this update with specific information on;

•    Exceeding our targets for average combined uptime over the last three months (Exchange was 99.96%, beating the target of 99.9%. And Portfolio products was 99.71%, beating 99.0%)

•    Completion of an academic research programme that will help the prevention of gambling addiction in Europe

•    The successful passing of all intermediate ISO 27001 audits – reinforcing the importance we place on information security

•    Our pioneering approach for supporting integrity in sport including work with the Professional Players Federation and with the International Olympic Committee ahead of London 2012

•    Confirmation that we exceeded the targets set for Customer Satisfaction and First Time Resolution for our service operations

Please visit promotions.betfair.com/customer-commitme... to view the full Betfair Customer Commitment update and if you want to make further suggestions for improvement please email commitment@betfair.com

We believe this initiative is important to support our promise to listen to our customers, respond to feedback, and strive to deliver the best possible overall service. The next progress report will be delivered in February 2012.

UPDATE 2.13PM



Last Trade: 759.50

Trade Time: 14:13

Change: -22.00 (2.82%)

Prev Close: 781.50

Open:  810.00

Bid: 757.50

Ask: 759.50

1y Target Est:

N/A

Why is nobody in the media asking Betfair why they continued to operate the exchange when they had identified a massive technical failure.

http://boyciesblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/betfair-must-act-now-to-protect-reputation/
Posted on December 29, 2011
Boycie's Blog

Sean Boyce. News and views on this and that

Betfair has a hard earned reputation as a good and fair operator. The company’s public relations have been an object lesson to others in the industry. Right now though the company faces its biggest ever challenge. The decision to void bets on the 2.00 at Leopardstown on 28th December could be a watershed moment in Betfair’s history. Betfair must act now to protect that reputation and they should immediately invite in an independent body to review what went on. I think that should involve the Gambling Commission, in fact I would say that the Gambling Commission should already be ensconced in Betfair’s head office making sure they get to the bottom of this.

Let’s be clear there is no scandal yet. The decision to void bets may be shown to be entirely justifiable. The bottom line though is that punters’ bets to the tune of £23 million are not being paid. It’s the biggest disputed bet settlement of all time. The Gambling Commission has a remit to ensure that gambling transactions are ‘open and fair’. We need to see some openness from Betfair in order to ensure what happened was fair. If that judgement is left to an internal Betfair investigation that would constitute a scandal.

The Gambling Commission has been a sleeping giant since its inception. This is a perfect opportunity for it to show its worth.

Betfair has said that the bet in question was offered by a single customer who had ‘exceeded his exposure limit’ due to a ‘technical fault’. Well, I’m sorry but that’s nowhere near enough information. They have gone on to state that this individual has no commercial link to Betfair.

This public statement from Betfair effectively rules out what must surely be the most logical explanation. My initial reaction was that only Betfair’s own in house ‘bot’ could be operating with that degree of financial latitude. Only Betfair’s own (under reported) trading activity within markets could operate with effectively a ‘no limit’ credit facility ‘underwritten’ by the company. The public statements already made rule this out though. Betfair have said it wasn’t them or anyone acting for them. So theory one goes out the window.

Unfortunately the public statements of the company, who have refused various interview requests, do not give answers to several pressing questions.

We are, apparently, dealing with a single customer who somehow managed to ‘exceed his exposure limit’ and get that bet fed into the market, and failed to cancel that bet, and watched as Betfair too allowed the bet to stand for several minutes during the race. The line that I’ve seen quoted that 29 was available as the mare crossed the line and was therefore ‘clearly wrong’ is of course nonsense. The odds in question were offered throughout most of the race. Besides which the ‘palpable error’ rule does not hold in the exchange environment. If it did we could all claim back for every misclick we’ve ever made.

The rogue/phantom bet then somehow managed to match the offers of scores of backers. What was the backers money being matched by? Thin air? It is a fundamental principle of the exchange platform that offers are matched only against available equivalent counter offers. If c£800,000 of backers bets were matched, and they clearly were, what were they matched against?

If the liability of greater than £22 million was outside of the customers exposure limit was it also outside of his available funds? If the answer to that is yes, then how on earth did it happen? How and why could Betfair keep trading that day against the knowledge that it was possible for legitimate customers to have their bets matched by fantasy money?

Unless of course this is a regular occurrence? Unless some accounts are allowed to operate on the never never on the basis that their M.O. means they will never lose? Problem is who picks up the tab when such bots go bad?

A forensic accounting investigation is now imperative. The Gambling Commission needs to find out everything there is to know about this particular account. How has it operated in the past? Does it have a track record of exceeding its available funds? If so, how was that possible? Who underwrites it? Who is responsible for any errors it makes?

Of course there may be a lot of smoke here and no fire at all. It may be that a small scale private customer tried to bet £2 and somehow that got converted into £20 million and somehow his account exposure limit was over ridden, and somehow his available funds limit was overridden and somehow real money was matched against his imaginary money and somehow this was allowed to continue for minutes and it was all down to a technological fault which applied only to his account and not one other account in the whole system. It’s possible. I do think it’s in Betfair’s own interests though to invite in a trusted, independent and objective third party to confirm what happened.

I’ve been shocked at how sanguine the media has been about all this. There are millions of pounds of punters’ winnings at stake here. Let’s hope the Gambling Commission takes this a bit more seriously than some pundits have.

Pretty good post Boyc

The line that I’ve seen quoted that 29 was available as the mare crossed the line and was therefore ‘clearly wrong’ is of course nonsense.


I’ve been shocked at how sanguine the media has been about all this


At farkin last..