Skybet mistake making the news :p

[syntynyt]

So, if BMW's website has an error where say a £29,999 new M2 is advertised for £2,999 you'd all expect the company to bankrupt themselves selling their stock at a 90% loss?

is not the best comparison giving the numbers.
'In this case a wrong price was displayed for around three minutes, and a small number of customers bet at the incorrect odds.'

on 23 november shortly after Black Friday the biggest online company from Romania, Amazon alike made a mistake in Resealed category all products having a value of 20 cents - 2 euro.
Galaxy S4 worth 325e at that time was bought for 20 cents
LED Smart TV 3D Philips, 117 cm, Full HD worth 1000e was bought for 70 cents
Ultrabook Dell Studio XPS Duo 12 worth 1100e was bought for 70 cents
switch Cisco Catalyst 2960 worth 2700e was bought for 1.70e

in around an hour 730 products were bought and the loss was 23.0000 euros. after sending an apology email stating that the price was not right, and like in this case a shitstorm started, company decided to honor all orders.
it was no publicity stunt as they are the biggest here and had the most successful black friday in 2014. nobody expected the outcome. very professional. in 3 minutes a small numbers of customers placed bets there. that could have been handled and look profi and customer care.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Actually by EU laws retailers must honour the marked price. My wife is a shop asst. manager and yes, they need to be careful with pricing, because mistakes cost them money. But I guess it must be different for different types of businesses. Some of you might remember this from last Christmas

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Once the items have been marked as dispatched, they were gone for 99p. And that cost some people fortune. The pricing company was from Derry if I remember well, wonder if they're still in business.

You're right, the pundits knew it couldn't be right and took a chance, the question is whether Skybet is obliged to pay by the law or not, since they accepted the bets.

This is the key phrase. In store, once you have paid at the till, it's too late for the store to cancel the purchase. Online, they have a distinct advantage in that there can be a significant delay between "purchase" and "dispatch". This allows them plenty of time to spot that customers have been charged too little before they have effectively "closed the transaction and left the store with the item".

It seems odd therefore that this "point of dispatch" when it comes to betting sites is after the event has finished, even though the transaction (bet) is "finalised" as soon as it is marked "accepted" by the bookie. It would appear that bookies have a special "carve out" in law that allows them to effectively cancel a transaction after the fact, rather like Tesco being able to visit your house and demand you return that iPad you bought from the local store for £49 earlier in the week.

Punters don't have the same right to correct "a palpable error" when they bet £200 instead of £20 on a match, even if they spot the error before the event has concluded.

 

[Gaz237]

Late

This is the key phrase. In store, once you have paid at the till, it's too late for the store to cancel the purchase. Online, they have a distinct advantage in that there can be a significant delay between "purchase" and "dispatch". This allows them plenty of time to spot that customers have been charged too little before they have effectively "closed the transaction and left the store with the item".

It seems odd therefore that this "point of dispatch" when it comes to betting sites is after the event has finished, even though the transaction (bet) is "finalised" as soon as it is marked "accepted" by the bookie. It would appear that bookies have a special "carve out" in law that allows them to effectively cancel a transaction after the fact, rather like Tesco being able to visit your house and demand you return that iPad you bought from the local store for £49 earlier in the week.

Punters don't have the same right to correct "a palpable error" when they bet £200 instead of £20 on a match, even if they spot the error before the event has concluded.

Vinyl. Your two weeks late to the party

 

[thebigs]

After working over 10 years in the bookmaking game i came across a few human errors on our side and most of the time i can recall they were honored.They did not have to be but were paid as a goodwill gesture.
I used to have a punter who would sit there watching the live golf and he would constantly take advantage of price moves and try to beat the system.
Due to the fact we had a bit of grace with allowing the punter to place the bet then normally he would get the price he was looking for even though it could have been long gone.
To be honest,sky bet should really should have looked to see how many bets they actually took at the inflated price and if it wasnt much maybe should have just paid them if the liabilities were not big.
I remember a case not too long ago where 2 women tried to take advantage of placing a bet on the Euromillions.
The draw was on the tv at 9pm i think here but had actually been drawn in Paris an hour earlier.They then placed the bet with winning numbers they already new were drawn about 1min after the actual draw had been made and then said they should be paid because they asked the cashier if they were on time and she had said yes.
The staff behind the counter are meant to check any prices that are requested but when your busy it is not so easy to do so if a punter chances their arm trying to get the bigger price and you only pay them at the price when the bet was placed can lead to a tricky situation.
In my 10 years i had 2 punters climb the counter trying to attack me until they saw the size of me and i had another wait outside until i finished to show me he had dented my car.
I am 3 years out of the rat race now and do not miss it one bit but i still have a heart for the people who work in the gambling game.

 

[quber]

IBAS have requested through Parliament that these terms are made clearer and fairer.

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Relevant passage:-

ii. Obvious Error Rules: The long established principle in bookmaking that an operator reserves the right to correct a price quoted to a customer where it is considered to be a ‘palpable error’ has evolved with developments in technology. Some operators now reserve the right to correct any error where the price offered did not match the intended available price as recorded in the company’s central database at the time the bet was struck; although not all have amended their operating rules accordingly. Different bookmakers’ rules describe similar situations in different ways, some referring to ‘obvious errors’, some to ‘mistakes’ and others to the broader category of ‘incorrect prices’.

With an ever growing range of betting opportunities available – particularly with the development of ‘in-play’ betting – the scope for incorrect prices being offered remains high.

There is also variety in the approach taken by bookmakers where obvious errors are detected. In some cases operators reserve the right to make void bets struck at prices they did not intend to offer, rather than resettling at the correct price; ideally, customers would be offered the choice of both where circumstances allow. Some operators resolve price disputes using the ‘best market price available at the time’, others the better price of either the odds available at the time or the starting price. Others have rules which mean that incorrectly quoted odds are simply replaced with the odds that company wished to have offered at the time. It would be helpful to have a more uniform approach and IBAS recommends that consideration is given to using either the LCCP or new regulations to achieve a fairer result for bettors.