Betfred Closed account - Refusing to pay £114k

[jasonuk]

Also if it does go to court and the plaintiff loses, then they will not only be liable for their own costs, but also the costs of the defendant. As the amount being claimed is over £5,000 there is no protection as to how much costs they will be exposed to.

It looks like this process has been streamlined somewhat in recent years, where they now have "tracks" of claims - small (up to £10k), fast (£10k-£25k) and multi-track (above £25k).

As mentioned, the court fees can be eyewatering - a £10k small claim has a court fee of £455 and for larger amounts the

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

mentions 5% (capped at £10k) of the claim... this doesn't include any additional fees that may be incurred (which can be hundreds or thousands of pounds).

 

[mack341]

To me a fair outcome if the wins are voided, could be for betfred to be fined £114,000, and the money goes to gamstop or other gambling help charities.

Obviously, this would be dependent on what's happened here, did betfred apply the correct background checks at the registration stage, on the surface it would seem they're applying a more stringent search or check upon someone winning a large amount of money, which seems wrong, because when the (gamstopped but got through registration) player loses money it will obviously not be checked and flag up in the same way.

^hope I'm making sense here, my brain's not functioning too well after the US election!

 

[jasonuk]

Obviously, this would be dependent on what's happened here, did betfred apply the correct background checks at the registration stage, on the surface it would seem they're applying a more stringent search or check upon someone winning a large amount of money, which seems wrong, because when the (gamstopped but got through registration) player loses money it will obviously not be checked and flag up in the same way.

[For clarity, this reply is unrelated to the OP - but for general background]

At registration, there will be automated checks in place - no system is going to be 100% fool proof. When it comes to something like a CDD check, there will be additional reviews in place, potentially done by a real person who will see things the machine couldn't.

When the new procedures were coming in - I recall a lot of lobbying by the industry to push back on checks at registration, because the more checks required and the less likely that player is going to complete them... which gives us the other, nastier, scenario where they likely have a withdrawal hanging over their head.

Particularly relevant in cases of self-exclusion fraud where the person has deliberately entered a "slightly different" piece of information to evade the filters, they will tell you about the one time they registered successfully and got caught, but conveniently neglect to mention the dozens of previous registrations that were correctly rejected by a GAMSTOP check.

That's why the T&Cs are so harsh now on self-exclusion cases, because enough people saw a "freeroll" opportunity and were willing to commit fraud to do it...