Unexplained Transaction Charges

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Panto Prince
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2020 12:35 pm

Hi folks, may I ask for some help, as something unexpected and unpleasant has happened.

Suddenly, today, £49 was debited from my account for transaction charges - the first time this has ever happened in seven years of using Bet Angel.

I run strategies to automate my betting via Guardian - placing a few bets on each horse and dog race each day, plus some football matches and selected other sporting evets. I have not altered these at all recently and have always been well within the allowed number of transactions. I would say I average 200 - 300 TX per hour - in a very busy period, say on a Saturday, this might reach as high as 500 but that's the top end. I know this because I keep an eye on the TX counter in Bet Angel.

Yet, somehow, on 15th June I managed to place enough extra bets in one hour to generate a bill of £49.17. The fact is, this simply isn't possible! I would have had to have placed thousands of bets for this to happen. I have been through my betting statement from yesterday and can see nothing untoward. So how can this have happened? Did something unusual happen yesterday to make the TX counter throw a wobbly, or what? Or have they changed their conditions in some way. Anyone else had a problem?

I am on the live chat with Betfair trying to sort it out, but not getting much joy so far.
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Dallas
Posts: 22674
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:57 pm
Location: Working From Home

The limit is currently 5000 transaction per clock hour, a transaction is each bet submitted to a market regardless of it being matched or unmatched, if a bet is moved/re-priced that counts as another transaction, but from what you've said you should still be well within this still.

If you contact the Betfair API team they will be able to give you a full breakdown of what the charges apply to and double check if they've been applied to your account in error
https://support.developer.betfair.com/h ... quests/new

Hope you get it sorted
Panto Prince
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2020 12:35 pm

Thank you for that link, Dallas. If I do not get any joy from the live chat (they are going to email back with a response) I will contact the API team direct.

Yes, there is no way in this world I could have got anywhere near 5,000 TX, my bots simply don't work that way and I've built in all manner of fail safes to cover almost every possible pitfall over the years. It must be an error! Still horrible to see £50 disappear, though, I'm only a small player.

Thanks again! I'll report back when I have news.
Anbell
Posts: 2004
Joined: Fri Apr 05, 2019 2:31 am

Panto Prince wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:40 pm
Thank you for that link, Dallas. If I do not get any joy from the live chat (they are going to email back with a response) I will contact the API team direct.

Yes, there is no way in this world I could have got anywhere near 5,000 TX, my bots simply don't work that way and I've built in all manner of fail safes to cover almost every possible pitfall over the years. It must be an error! Still horrible to see £50 disappear, though, I'm only a small player.

Thanks again! I'll report back when I have news.
It can happen if you do something like TakeSP every refresh, for example, and the race runs late
Panto Prince
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2020 12:35 pm

That's interesting - the Take SP thing, but that doesn't show up in the TX list. Also it is odd that it has never happened before as I do have Take SP on my rules files.
I haven't had any sort of response back from Betfair or the API team yet, hopefully I will hear something today.
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ilovepizza82
Posts: 490
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Location: Sewers
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Interesting what they will have to say.
Betfair has been very un-reliable on so many levels lately.
People being banned in error, unexplained behavior not to mention betfair being down so often
Panto Prince
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2020 12:35 pm

I'm looking further into what I've been doing, trying to come up with an explanation.

I'm running some rules on various ongoing tournaments (notably the Euros) and have some files that use keep all or sp all and are set to refresh every second - I am fearful that this is where I have fallen foul (as mentioned above) particularly as I had restrict refresh ticked off at times. I can see how this might have caused the problem. I have now amended my files so that this can't happen. I honestly did not know that "keep all" or "take sp" counted as a transaction.

I am extremely fearful now that if this is the case, my entire bank is going to be wiped out next time they come along to take a cut of the money. Thing is, why don't these things show up on the Tx counter?

Do you think (as this has never happened before) they might take pity on me if I plead ignorance? Also - why did they not email me to tell me this was happening or even give me a warning? I thought others that ran into this problem got emailed about it saying it had happened and warning they would get charged if it happened again. But I received nothing.
weemac
Posts: 1216
Joined: Mon Sep 16, 2013 8:16 pm

A few years ago I paid well over £1,000 in these charges and only discovered it because I was concerned my BF balance wasn't going up in line with my P&L.

No warnings, no emails, no discussion would be entered into when I raised it with them, and the charges are so well hidden they're almost impossible to locate other than visually scanning every transaction you've ever done - could be a million of those.

Of course the help desk knew nothing about this topic - they even called them "Text charges", as if someone was hi-jacking my account and placing bets by SMS.

Just another in the long list of betfair's mis-handling of operations.
Panto Prince
Posts: 16
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2020 12:35 pm

About ten minutes ago, the £49 was refunded as a goodwill gesture.
Five minutes after that, another £300 was debited from my account leaving me with a negative balance.
No email communication.
I believe it may be down to me accidentally unticking restrict refresh and having the "keep all" or "take sp" options refreshing over and over. How I never ran into this problem over the last seven years, I don't know, but it's done for me now. One mistake and that's it. I really don't know what to do now.
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Bog
Posts: 190
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2018 7:19 am

I had the same issue last year. They said I had too many failed transactions. Do you use streaming for price refresh or old Api? You should use streaming.
viewtopic.php?p=236675#p236675
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ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

Bog wrote:
Thu Jun 17, 2021 10:51 pm
I had the same issue last year. They said I had too many failed transactions. Do you use streaming for price refresh or old Api? You should use streaming.
viewtopic.php?p=236675#p236675
Streaming or not streaming only affects the way Betfair deliver market data to you. Transactions are handled through a seperate api.
Anbell
Posts: 2004
Joined: Fri Apr 05, 2019 2:31 am

Panto Prince wrote:
Thu Jun 17, 2021 9:40 am
I'm looking further into what I've been doing, trying to come up with an explanation.

I'm running some rules on various ongoing tournaments (notably the Euros) and have some files that use keep all or sp all and are set to refresh every second - I am fearful that this is where I have fallen foul (as mentioned above) particularly as I had restrict refresh ticked off at times. I can see how this might have caused the problem. I have now amended my files so that this can't happen. I honestly did not know that "keep all" or "take sp" counted as a transaction.

I am extremely fearful now that if this is the case, my entire bank is going to be wiped out next time they come along to take a cut of the money. Thing is, why don't these things show up on the Tx counter?

Do you think (as this has never happened before) they might take pity on me if I plead ignorance? Also - why did they not email me to tell me this was happening or even give me a warning? I thought others that ran into this problem got emailed about it saying it had happened and warning they would get charged if it happened again. But I received nothing.
You can ask them for a transaction report that might help locate the issue. I had one bot that had some messy logic and it backing everything above X and also cancelling everything above X so it did 50000 transactions in an hour that I didnt even know about.

With your Keep/TakeSP, you can set it to only go off if the # of unmatched bets is > zero. (or if you wanted to get clever about it, you could set it to go off only after you have a new bet (using signal increment)
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goat68
Posts: 2019
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:53 pm
Location: Hampshire, UK

Does anyone know how to identify if you've had any "Transaction Charges", any idea what time of day they get charged, what the "wording" is on the statement, and which of the several Betfair UI account statement/transaction views to find it in please?!
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Dallas
Posts: 22674
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:57 pm
Location: Working From Home

goat68 wrote:
Mon Apr 18, 2022 8:33 pm
Does anyone know how to identify if you've had any "Transaction Charges", any idea what time of day they get charged, what the "wording" is on the statement, and which of the several Betfair UI account statement/transaction views to find it in please?!
Wednesdays, they take it on a Wednesday

Not sure of the exact wording they use though
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goat68
Posts: 2019
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:53 pm
Location: Hampshire, UK

Dallas wrote:
Mon Apr 18, 2022 9:08 pm
goat68 wrote:
Mon Apr 18, 2022 8:33 pm
Does anyone know how to identify if you've had any "Transaction Charges", any idea what time of day they get charged, what the "wording" is on the statement, and which of the several Betfair UI account statement/transaction views to find it in please?!
Wednesdays, they take it on a Wednesday

Not sure of the exact wording they use though
Ah thank you Dallas, that may explain it, just suddenly thought it's grouped under the weekly wednesday PC charging regime... cheers!
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