£200 of Betfair charges for exceeding '1000 TX per hour'

[Crazyskier]

Hi, newbie here.

I recently have been trying various strategies on horses and dogs with the Bet Angel Pro in both simulation and real mode, trading and in-play. I was shocked to find that a few days after starting, I have been debited with £147 and £104 charges for exceeding 1000 transaction per hour - these figues massively outweigh what I was able to earn from my trades; indeed over 95% weren't even matched, but apparently Betfair still count unmatched as a 'transaction'.

has anyone else been charged these scandalous amounts without even a warning or email confirmation of WHY? The guy in CS says I made over 16,000 'transactions' in one hour, hence the high fees of 2p per transaction over the first 1000.

Going forwards, how can I change the settings in BetAngelPro to avoid making more than 1000 per hour to avoid these ridiculous fees from Betfair? Should I just swap to Betdaq who apparently don;t charge these charges for high data requests / transactions?

All or any advice most welcome!

Regards

Crazy Skier

[LeTiss]

16000 transactions?

How on earth do you amass that many?

Don't forget though, that stakes under £2 get counted more than once, due to the modification of your stakes

[Crazyskier]

16000 transactions?

How on earth do you amass that many?

Don't forget though, that stakes under £2 get counted more than once, due to the modification of your stakes

Yes - I was using £1 stakes and didn't realise that they counted as far more than one 'transaction'. Even so, I am stunned at the charges with no warning or confirmation from betfair.

Is there a setting to limit the transaction number in the BA settings?

[marko236]

E-mail betfair and tell them you are very unhappy with this and that you may go to Betdaq and spend your money there, if you push them hard enough you have a chance of getting half your money back.

[Dallas]

To run up that amount of transactions you must be using automation so you would need to scale back on this some how.
Weather that's by lengthening the time between your re-arming so less bets are fired or shortening the time frame at which you start and end submitting bets into a market

You can see the number of transaction you have done on the bottom right of your screen (T x .....)

Fuller explanation is in the user guide (final Paragraph)

http://www.betangel.com/user-guide/unde ... 3D&mw=MzIw

[xitian]

I'm surprised they didn't notify you after the first day of exceeding the limit before extra charges. I'm sure they did have a notification for the first time when incurring charges for something else. That might have been for the old data request charges I think.

Anyway, I would still recommend you send Betfair a polite email (perhaps try [email protected]) and ask them if they would be able to waive the first set of charges as you weren't aware of them.

[PeterLe]

You could try emailing [email protected] and say you're new to trading and made a big mistake...(grovel a bit!)
They 'might' let you off...
7 or 8 years ago when I was just starting out I got a £600 charge for exceeding the data requests ( we don't have that restriction these days) I had a ghost process running on my system and I thought I had only one copy running...
Anyway they let me off, they usually let people off the first time, but if you've done it before then you may not be so lucky

[Crazyskier]

I'm surprised they didn't notify you after the first day of exceeding the limit before extra charges. I'm sure they did have a notification for the first time when incurring charges for something else. That might have been for the old data request charges I think.

Anyway, I would still recommend you send Betfair a polite email (perhaps try [email protected]) and ask them if they would be able to waive the first set of charges as you weren't aware of them.

Yes, I was surprised as even after charging me, there was no email confirmation or communication whatsoever! Poor service to 'steal' your balance with no warning in my view.

[Crazyskier]

To run up that amount of transactions you must be using automation so you would need to scale back on this some how.
Weather that's by lengthening the time between your re-arming so less bets are fired or shortening the time frame at which you start and end submitting bets into a market

You can see the number of transaction you have done on the bottom right of your screen (T x .....)
Fuller explanation is in the user guide (final Paragraph)
http://www.betangel.com/user-guide/unde ... 3D&mw=MzIw

Thanks for this Dallas - do you know if this uses the 'calendar hour' that Betfair use and therefore as long as I stay below 999 in any given hour I can be sure of zero charges?

Further, is there a way to actually SET the limit to 999, which would help me a lot?

Thanks to all the other helpful comments also - I have indeed asked for a refund due to inadvertent triggering of this limit and will indeed stick to minimum £2 stakes in future to avoid all the duplicate transactions that the current £1 stakes are causing.

[Dallas]

Ive posted some details in the FAQ section in relation to this.

Yes it is within the calendar hour then reset but you cant set a limit on your transaction to 999, if you could you would cause a even bigger problem of when the 999 limit is reached your automation will suddenly stop firing bets into the market but you could have several open positions across multiple markets leaving you with a large liability exposure, unless the time passes the hour mark and this is reset so your automation can recommence for you you will end up going in play with open trades.

The best way is how i said in my previous post which is just to look at the timings within each of your rules and reduce these in some way to fit into the 1000 per hour limit.

[Crazyskier]

Ive posted some details in the FAQ section in relation to this.

Yes it is within the calendar hour then reset but you cant set a limit on your transaction to 999, if you could you would cause a even bigger problem of when the 999 limit is reached your automation will suddenly stop firing bets into the market but you could have several open positions across multiple markets leaving you with a large liability exposure, unless the time passes the hour mark and this is reset so your automation can recommence for you you will end up going in play with open trades.

The best way is how i said in my previous post which is just to look at the timings within each of your rules and reduce these in some way to fit into the 1000 per hour limit.

OK Dallas, thanks again for the info.

One last question, if I may - if I stake £1 (as I have been) does the txn counter on BA directly match Betfair's one? I understand that it triggers 2-3 MORE transactions than if the stake was £2 or higher, but I'm not sure that the BA txn counter reflects these extra 'transactions' and need to be sure I'm not incurring extra fees. Are you certain that this BA counter is accurate for stakes above and below £2?

[Dallas]

Yes it is, if you submit a bet for less that £2 for example 0.20p it will instantly show as 2 transactions on your Bet Angel counter.

As long as this displays less than 1000 per calendar hour you wont incur any charges.

[Crazyskier]

Yes it is, if you submit a bet for less that £2 for example 0.20p it will instantly show as 2 transactions on your Bet Angel counter.

As long as this displays less than 1000 per calendar hour you wont incur any charges.

EXCELLENT!

I'm still waiting to see if Betfair refund either of my 2 charges as I'm currently showing a - (minus) on my balance due to the almost £250 they debited, but hopefully the BDP team will refund these today so that my experimenting with in-play dutching and automation techniques may continue without fear of unexpected charges to my account.

Thanks again to Dallas and all that commented, this forum has already been of great help to me.

[Crazyskier]

Just one more thought from a newbie:

Does the transaction count have any bearing on whether the Betfair website is open in my web browser?

Is this the normal way traders do it? I've been logging into betfair then opening BetAngelPro up and I can see the duplicated bets when I place them - this wouldn't be duplicating them in terms of Betfair's 1000 txn charge would it as long as I only place using BetAngel?

I'd be interested in hearing from other traders if they also have both the web browser logged in to Betfair as well as BetAngel to actually place the bets, or as I do mix-and-match.

Thanks again for your continued patience and help...

[LinusP]

Just one more thought from a newbie:

Does the transaction count have any bearing on whether the Betfair website is open in my web browser?

Is this the normal way traders do it? I've been logging into betfair then opening BetAngelPro up and I can see the duplicated bets when I place them - this wouldn't be duplicating them in terms of Betfair's 1000 txn charge would it as long as I only place using BetAngel?

I'd be interested in hearing from other traders if they also have both the web browser logged in to Betfair as well as BetAngel to actually place the bets, or as I do mix-and-match.

Thanks again for your continued patience and help...

The transaction count is done at username level so any bets you place, website / api / betangel etc count.