Betfair Bonus Fiasco

Jufo

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Finland
Hitler plays Betfair Casino happy hour

Background: On last Saturday (13/11/2010) Betfair Casino offered unlimited happy hour bonus with only 10x playthrough. Once they realized how much they lost in this promo they started locking account and confiscating funds.

 
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I forgot to add, that video is based on real events from last Saturday when Betfair offered unlimited reload bonus with 10X playthrough and started closing accounts and confiscating funds when they realized what had happened.

Did they have any explanation or announcement about this? It's ridicullus to ban members who took advantages on their bonus offer.
 
Did they have any explanation or announcement about this? It's ridicullus to ban members who took advantages on their bonus offer.

I think they are still investigating. Some members have had their accounts re-opened and have been able to it withdraw. Betfair probably did a mistake with their bonus offer, making it unlimited and now they are trying to get the money back.
 
Hitler plays Betfair Casino happy hour

Background: On last Saturday (13/11/2010) Betfair Casino offered unlimited happy hour bonus with only 10x playthrough. Once they realized how much they lost in this promo they started locking account and confiscating funds.

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That video is the most fucking hilarious thing I've seen in YEARS!!! :notworthy
(In fact, I think I wet myself...)
Did you make it yourself?

Sounds like a pretty serious cock-up at Betfair though - I hope someone can keep us informed how it turns out.

KK
 
Someone at Betfair will probably lose his job. Wonder how much damage was caused?
Betfair will eventually have to pay everyone.
 
That video is the most fucking hilarious thing I've seen in YEARS!!! :notworthy
(In fact, I think I wet myself...)
Did you make it yourself?

No I didn't make it. Someone posted it at Beating bonuses.

spiderlegz said:
Someone at Betfair will probably lose his job. Wonder how much damage was caused?
Betfair will eventually have to pay everyone.

Someone reported that Betfair lost 8 figures on this promo. That's a huge sum of money even for a large-scale operation like Betfair.
 
Recent message from Betfair (not to me):

"Certain customers attempted to profit from the promotion through adopting gaming patterns and activity in contravention of Betfair Casino’s Standard Terms and Conditions. As a result, we have withheld both bonus funds and winnings derived from such activity on those customers’ accounts, of which yours is one."

Casinomeister can be expecting a load of PABs on this one.
 
Recent message from Betfair (not to me):

"Certain customers attempted to profit from the promotion through adopting gaming patterns and activity in contravention of Betfair Casino’s Standard Terms and Conditions. As a result, we have withheld both bonus funds and winnings derived from such activity on those customers’ accounts, of which yours is one."

Casinomeister can be expecting a load of PABs on this one.

Going to be a hell of a mess clearing up. If they get away with it then online gambling will lose all its credibility, the little it has left. They are after all one of the high profile operators.

Their FU clause, term nr 22:

If Betfair becomes aware of a customer who, in the course of participating in a promotion or offer, has become able to guarantee wins and/or profits with no or only minimal risk, and/or benefits from a promotion or offer by participating through more than one Betfair account, and/or displays irregular or unusual playing or betting patterns which Betfair deems to be abusive, Betfair may in its absolute discretion elect to do any one or more of the following: (i) close the customer’s account(s); (ii) invalidate the transactions or game play which was in contravention of this term; and/or (iii) withhold the customer’s winnings from such transactions or game play.
 
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Well, if players did nothing more than take the offer as advertised, with no breaches of the terms, Betfair are in serious trouble. They will have to JUSTIFY the grounds on which winnings were confiscated, else lose the trust of many players.

After all, it was THEIR mistake, and if they were "on the ball", someone would have noticed things were going seriously wrong, and they would have pulled the promotion early. Sure, it would have generated complaints, but NO player would actually have been "screwed" by having winnings confiscated under the vague "F.U. Clause".
 
vinylweatherman said:
Well, if players did nothing more than take the offer as advertised, with no breaches of the terms, Betfair are in serious trouble. They will have to JUSTIFY the grounds on which winnings were confiscated, else lose the trust of many players.

After all, it was THEIR mistake, and if they were "on the ball", someone would have noticed things were going seriously wrong, and they would have pulled the promotion early. Sure, it would have generated complaints, but NO player would actually have been "screwed" by having winnings confiscated under the vague "F.U. Clause".

Reading posts made by players, they started taking back already credited bonuses as soon as after 3 hours the promotion started. But aside from taking back bonuses they started nullifying winnings derived from play as well, and in some cases even deposits. The have also taken back already successful withdrawals from Moneybookers by contacting Moneybookers, who has locked players accounts and returned the money to them.

I predict that this will turn out to be the the largest and most severe confiscation issue of this year and maybe even past several years.
 
I too was affected by this, I deposited into my account and claimed some of these happy hour bonuses. By 1AM they were removed from the account in full. The terms and conditions said there was supposed to be a 12 hour expiry period on these bonuses so my intention was to play them through early the next morning. Which would have been permissable by the terms. The next day my account was locked, it is now unlocked and my deposit has been returned.

They have not emailed me once to confirm any of these actions, they just went and did it!.

It is rather disgusting to offer a promotion, encourage deposits then behave with this attitude.

As soon as they realised they had made a mistake the sensible thing to do would have been to stop any further players claiming the bonuses in the casino and honour the ones that had been claimed, thentake a long hard look at their promotion structure to ensure something like this doesn't happen again.

I am not happy with Betfair at all. It just goes to show they can't be trusted. Like most online gaming operators these days. They have advertised an offer that they didn't honour.

Why should I believe the next time Betfair has a promotion on the same won't happen again?. It's false advertising, mis-marketing and deceptive at the highest level!.
 
I too was heavily affected by this. Betfair refusing to pay any of the bonuses I cleared nor the winnings. This is the email they sent me:

We recently ran a Casino promotion called Casino Happy Hour in which you participated. The promotion was live during the weekend of 13 and 14 November 2010.

During and after the promotion, we suspended certain customers’ Casino accounts after it was alerted to some irregular and unusual gaming and depositing activity. Your account was one of those suspended.

Certain customers attempted to profit from the promotion through adopting gaming patterns and activity in contravention of Betfair Casino’s Standard Terms and Conditions. As a result, we have withheld both bonus funds and winnings derived from such activity on those customers’ accounts, of which yours is one.

We have taken steps to make sure all of your actual deposits have remained in your account, and your account will be reopened within 48 hours. You are of course then free to continue to use your deposited funds to play in the casino, or to withdraw them at any time.

We appreciate this has been an inconvenience to you, but are happy to have the situation resolved and to make your deposited funds available to you again.
 
Crazy. I wonder if the era of huge bonuses has seen its day. While it's obviously necessary for casinos to promote themselves somehow, it doesn't seem like the bonuses are getting them players who are there to play. What I mean is, a bonus like this might have ended up being a long-term net positive for the house a few years ago, but now there are enough professional bonus-cleaners out there to make it not worthwhile. All it would take would be for the "some players" they're referring to to be more than 25% or so, for them to start losing, and I'd bet that number's more like 75% now because of the information that's out there.

So what BetFair did here was disgusting, and it's even worse because they didn't do their homework. They obviously have an obligation to honor their agreements come hell or high water. But I bet they won't be offering anything like this again soon. And I think other casinos will probably think twice as well. I think this may be the start of a tectonic shift. But maybe fewer bonuses ain't such a bad thing. When I hear some of the offers out there, I just know the casinos offering them are going to scalp their players somehow. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to get back to basics... you know, a 10% bonus or a round of drinks on the house.
 
Question is, did only winners get their funds confiscated and deposits returned?

Even at 10xB (50xB on BJ I understand) there would have been those who, through variance, would have lost on the promotion.

So have Betfair refused to pay the winners while keeping all the funds from the losers?

If so that is shameful
 
BETFAIR = ROGUE

Betfair have shown themselves up here to be a very amateurish, disorganised, naive and immoral outfit and are acting like a really small-time casino. They offered everyone unlimited bonuses and then when people (myself included) had the audacity to claim a lot of bonuses they start stealing the bonuses back out of peoples' accounts WITHOUT EVEN INFORMING US! They've still not even admitted this or given a reason for it.
Now after locking peoples' accounts for 3 days without any updates they are refusing to pay out any winnings. I have done nothing wrong, nothing agains their Terms & Conditions. They say I am guilty of "adopting gaming patterns and activity in contravention of Betfair Casino’s Standard Terms and Conditions." I have done no such thing! All I did was deposit, claim their bonuses and then play through the wagering requirements on allowed games. How can I get justice?
I think this thread should be moved to the main section. This is no joking matter.
Do any reps from Betfair come on here? I'd love to hear what they have to say. Betfair's name is going to be mud after this.
BETFAIR = ROGUE.
 
So have Betfair refused to pay the winners while keeping all the funds from the losers?

From what I've read elsewhere, yes. Shameful indeed. Sort of thing you'd expect from a small semi-rogue outfit, not from one of the biggest there is. A dark day for online gaming this if even the biggest places can no longer be trusted. It sounds like they got hit hard by people taking them up on their promo and they then realised that their offer was too generous so decided to turn rogue.
 
It seems moronic of Betfair to sacrifice their reputation in order to save a few quid.

Edit: Sorry for the ranting but I am fuming about this.
 
I think it's shameful either way. But if what you're saying is true...and from the sound of that email they sent out, it might be...then it's purely criminal. I don't see how any amount of money can be worth so thoroughly destroying your company's reputation, but then people are shortsighted.

The only way to make this right would be to return the winnings to every single player. Having said that, if they are intent on rolling back the bonuses, they should certainly be expected to refund any losses incurred by other players over the weekend as well, on any deposits that were made while the house was falsely representing the bonus the player would receive.

After reading this, and I've been kicking around this question for awhile, I've decided I'm never giving more than a 25% bonus on anything when I start up. Better to just do guaranteed pots, player points buyins and rakebacks, and give decent odds, let players come for the games and not just to scrape. Giant bonuses are looking more and more like a lose/lose proposition for casinos all the time. Although I've never heard of a ****up quite as idiotic as this one was.
 
I think this thread should be moved to the main section. This is no joking matter.

I agree that because of the gravity of this matter this thread should be moved to the main section. I was really surprised that I was the first one to post about this issue here. It was also not my intention to make fun of anyone who got money stuck in there. The video was just too much spot-on description of the events to not be posted.
 

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