I think my situation is the worst up to date. I withdrawn 32000€ saturday night after the promo. I received them on Tuesday in my bank account, no e-wallet, no paypal stuff, just my bank account where are all my life savings. Guess what, on thursday, 18 November betfair debited 32000€ from my bank account. That was shocking and my family stills trying to forget this. It has been difficult days here for us, I´m in very bad psychological situation after this. My comp points earned for long time ago weren´t returnet (around 2k), my deposit wasn´t returned, no replies to my e-maisl. I talkd with my bank account manager and he said this was impossible to chargeback 32000€ 2 days after the credit, They are investigating the case and there´s a possibility of the bank give me back my 32000€ and solve the case with betfair. Please note that we´re talking about a Portuguese bank, of course it has more money than betfair, it´s called "Millenium BCP" owned by some chinese guys with a lot of €...
Anyway, sad days here, I still try to recover from this. I thought bank account was the safest place to have the money. I was wrong. Betfair went too far with this one but they will have problems. Yes they will. They will pay for this, at least here in Portugal. I have no doubts some Portugal ministers knows about this situations that betfair participation in Portugal is at risk. We have severe laws here. You can´t just go and chargeback 32000€ as if it was nothing. We´re not talking about 100€ or even 500€, we´re talking about A LOT of money that has been PAID. If they didn´t want to pay then why they processed my withdrawal? This is robbery, I feel robbed and I´m completly angry about this as you can see. I just want to recover my psychological situation though. Sorry for my bad english, just wanted to share with you my story, it makes me feel better to explain it on forums.
And I just wish you never have the feeling and excitement of winning 30k and loose them some hours later. Believe me, it´s really bad...
Cheers from Portugal.
Also I´ve found this great website and I´ve made a complain using your PAB section (if I´m not allowed to say this please delete it mods)
Thank you very much for having such a "service" and sorry about my poor english.
If you can be honest to your bank about this being a gambling transaction, you have a good case to take this up through the banking system.
Strongly in your favour is that they have "charged back" not just the winnings, but your initial DEPOSITS too. Further, they seem to have broken banking rules by "doing the impossible" by charging back a credit. Perhaps they were SUPPOSED to get YOU to initiate the return of the money, and the way they got it back was by PRETENDING this was a transaction authorised by yourself from their website.
Make it clear to your bank that you did NOT authorise them to take back the money from your account, and that whatever they did was without your permission.
They DO of course have your bank details, and criminals can use these to get money from a victim's account. They do this by FRAUDULENTLY presenting the transaction to the banking system such that it appears to have been authorised by the account holder. It works because to some degree the banks have to work on trust, otherwise the system would grind to a crawl if every transaction was double checked to ensure it was authorised properly.
The correct procedure for Betfair would have been to ask the bank to hold the money because it was subject to a dispute, and give YOU a fair chance to present your side of the case. It would then be up to the authorities in your country to decide who rightfully owned the money, and the WORST outcome would have been loss of winnings, and only that part returned to Betfair.
Since they are relying on "not in the spirit of" arguments, it is unlikely Betfair would have won the case, since it would be decided on the CONTRACTURAL terms and conditions, as they are written, and as agreed to by both parties. This would also be subject to "unfair contract" laws, which would disqualify some of the vague and ill defined terms.
Betfair have made it quite clear they will NOT discuss these cases further once they have made their decision, and they are even keeping to this when players contact the rep here.
Your best solution at present IS to pursue this through your bank, and let THEM take care of Betfair and it's lawyers. You might even find that your case IS with your BANK, rather than Betfair, if your bank made a mistake in allowing the money to leave your account once it had been credited.
Your position is far stronger than it would have been with an eWallet, who would have routinely returned the money to the casino based on the casinos' word alone, and you would have had to pursue the casino directly to get it back.
This case, as presented, is Betfair not only confiscating bonuses and winnings because a player didn't "play within the spirit of" this promotion, but confiscating the DEPOSITS too!!!
This is NOT what Betfair have been saying, which is that only a "minority of players" have had their "bonus and winnings voided" for "breaches of the general terms and conditions".
This could get far worse for Betfair. What if players started "charging back" their DEPOSITS, even where their grievance has nothing to do with this promotion, but just one of being a "sore loser". Betfair are demonstrating that merely feeling the "game wasn't played fair" is enough to not only void all the play, but in some cases REVERSE the overall outcome by converting a player win into a player "bust out" of all their deposits.
Do they not see all the gripes from players who "swear the games are rigged" after a few bad sessions, yet who (generally) do NOT go on to charge back all their deposits in a fit of "sour grapes".
With operators lowering their morals to a lower common denominator, they should be worrying that PLAYERS will increasingly start to respond in kind, and problems they once had with a very small minority of players will extend to problems with a significant minority of players who will no longer feel morally bound to treat the casinos with the respect they once enjoyed.
Players are already waking up to the realisation that all this "I am your friend" BS they got from their "VIP account managers" has been nothing more than a sham designed to extract more money from them. TRUE friends do not stab you in the back & run off when the going gets tough, as many US players experienced from their "casino friends" when the casino ditched the US players en masse.
