Leopardstown - 14:00 - Christmas Hurdle - Voler la vedette

[Iron]

Not necessarily.

You could have £10,000 in your Betfair account, but tell Betfair that you didn't want your liability to exceed £5,000 at any time without your prior authorisation, to prevent yourself from over-exposing yourself accidentally.

I know Betfair don't always express themselves in plain English, but if a customer has bet with money he doesn't have, why not just say so?

Jeff

The lay money at 29 clearly didn't exist.

Possibly, but then why did Betfair say that the customer had exceeded their allowed liability, rather than saying that they bet with money they didn't have?

Jeff

Isn't that the same thing?

[Iron]

That could be the case, but if so then it's irresponsible for Betfair to offer credit to customers without making sure that there's humanly no possible way someone could exceed their credit limit, accidentally or otherwise...

It's a bit like a bank not putting measures in place to prevent someone going over their £1,000 overdraft limit and buying a Boing 747!

Jeff

Betfair wouldn't have a clue about the customer's assets, Jeff.

It came out in the Findlay case that they were offering credit to certain clients. I'm sure plenty of the larger syndicates prefer their cash earning interest in their bank accounts rather than Betfairs.

[spreadbetting]

I'm sure Betfair do some vetting of their credit accounts, Jeff. Doesn't seem this problem came from a credit issue but a flaw in the software. Makes more snse for them to refer to this as someone exceeding their exposure limit rather than opening another can of worms by refferring to it in other wording

[Iron]

I'm sure they do.

What I'm wondering is whether they gave someone a credit limit of (say) £100,000, and for some reason that didn't kick in and prevent them from placing bets with a combined liability of several million pounds...

Jeff

I'm sure Betfair do some vetting of their credit accounts, Jeff.

[CaerMyrddin]

I do wonder about who created this mess. Was it intencional?

A legal process would clarify things a bit, but my guess is we won't know how this happened.

It would be great to know how to make this kind of incident happen, wouldn't it?

How many of us have tried it already?

[freddy]

Further update to 2pm Leopardstown race

Firstly, we would like to re-iterate 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. A further update on this will be made today.

Contrary to some media speculation, we can confirm that all in-running bets on this market would have been voided, had Voler La Vadette 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.

[Euler]

I posted this summary this morning as a possible cause: -

http://www.betangel.com/blog_wp/2011/12 ... ility_voi/

[andyfuller]

It is understood that the extraordinary events of Wednesday, which led to a theoretical in-running payout of £23m, were the result of a malfunctioning bot, controlled by a customer Betfair stated had no connection to the firm.

http://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-ra ... 68819/top/

[Euler]

Tony Calvin from Betfair will be on ATR at 4pm. I may not be around to listen at that point so if anybody can summarise that would be useful.

[Euler]

I'm catching the back end of this interview but it sounds like Betfair will give a much more detailed explanation at some point in the near future.

[chuck536]

Hi peter,

All he said was "i dont know the specific details" - "it was a technical glitch that i dont know about fully" - "betfair trade their own markets but it was nothing to do with betfairs money" yada yada yada..... would of been wrong to expect much else really

[Iron]

Given that the technical glitch was obvious, I'm not sure why they can't give us the detailed explanation right away.

Maybe they need to discuss with their PR company how best to spin it...

Jeff

I'm catching the back end of this interview but it sounds like Betfair will give a much more detailed explanation at some point in the near future.

[spreadbetting]

The backend of the interview was exactly the same answers repeated ad nauseam from the start, Peter. You didn't miss anything

Despite them stating yesterday

"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"

Unfortunately no one was kind enough to fill in Tony with the facts before his interview.

[CaerMyrddin]

"betfair trade their own markets

Are they entitled to do that? Or is just a xm reference?

[spreadbetting]

Betfair have continually stated they're a bookmaker, CaerMyrddin, so can play their own markets within the t&c's.

I don't think they actively trade the markets as such now other than hedging of multiples, x matching, high roller accounts liabilities etc. They did supposedly have a trading arm in Gibralter/Malta?? at one time but gave up as their traders at the time weren't up to scratch and just cost them money.