BetFair Arcade seems to be a play-money / real-money gambling product that is going to bring problem gambling to a higher level —if the testimony of this recent winner (£11K) is to be taken seriously.

Posted on September 24, 2008 by Chris F. Masse

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BetFair Arcade

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About Chris F. Masse

Founder and President of Midas Oracle
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7 Responses to BetFair Arcade seems to be a play-money / real-money gambling product that is going to bring problem gambling to a higher level —if the testimony of this recent winner (£11K) is to be taken seriously.

  1. Medemi says:
    September 24, 2008 at 4:33 PM

     

    zz
    24 Sep 14:01

    There are several other stories on the arcade forum like betterluck,except they were less fortunate.

    Land a Hoy 23 Sep 00:26

    Just lost £300 of real money playing culdo between races, thought i was playing for free as i am self excluded from exchange games and i just fancied a look. The top 3 games all say play for free so i had a go. I got bored and started looking at Cleudo and started playing for what i was free but to my horror my account is now £3oo down. I have complained to betfair on the grounds that they should be able to see it was a mistake , i believe others have had the same problem . If you look at my betting account they can see i am self excluded and why is there no warning on switching boxes. I am so ****** off as i learnt from previous mistakes no to play exchange games but because of the lack of racing tonight i just felt like a few free spins. These free spins have cost me £ 300 at £60 a spin. Please be careful….

    alun2005 24 Sep 00:35

    Welcome to the club Land Ahoy.

    I myself inadvertently lost 60 quid on one click on the Cluedo game on Monday afternoon, and only discovered it half an hour later when I looked at my balance after a few racing bets came in !

    My guess is that there are many out there who have done similar things. Quite a few have already admitted so on here.

    Doommeister 24 Sep 10:13

    I’m in the same boat lads – I work nights but was still up @ 6pm – tired so would have noticed a bit sooner otherwise, but I’m not blaming myself here.

    Played a few games on homepage & thought pretty good so looked through A to Z. Started playing Monopoly & was £250.00 up after 4 spins!! I’d won £120.00 + £180.00 in one go. It took my balance up from £76.65 to £335.65. Seeing as I’m a minimum stakes kind of guy I would have walked away at this point!!

    Thought to myself, real shame that I’m not playing live, that would never happen!! & thought my balance was the play balance bought forward from the previous ‘free’ games. Thought about double-checking but then changed my mind – oh the irony!! I’d thought that Betfair would NEVER make me play against my wishes & know how…

    I carried on playing then changed games – My balance above still read my original starting £76.65. I hadn’t refreshed by this time.

    Carried on playing a few other games such as Deal or no deal (What a sham!! Double your stakes for 2nd prize!!) & frittered my entire balance of £325.00 down to what I have left – £2.65
    Of course, absolutely furious about what has happened, how can Betfair presume that we want to play these games WITHOUT OUR PERMISSION FIRST.
    I have been talking to Customer services regarding this issue.

    There should be a seperate games wallet for the Arcade as A) You would be able to control your spending better (b) you would have more control & would know exactly what you are doing. I was told that Poker works by double clicking the picture but it’s on your desktop of your PC, so again more control. If you click on the pictures on the Casino for example NOTHING HAPPENS.

    All of this is of course very ‘untrapful’ & as some of the defaults are 15.00 to £60.00+ going to trip over a lot of people.
    I shall be contacting Customer Services EVERY DAY until this has been resolved because in my mind this is not just plain unethical it’s more than that.
    Please contact me on Username@H&tmail.com if you want further info…

  4. Medemi says:
    September 24, 2008 at 6:46 PM

    How the hell could they get this wrong ? It ‘s not like they have a lot of trust/credit going for them.
    I see all these young people working for betfair (even before I got to look inside!) and I’m thinking maybe they are too young. A dynamic, young and foolish company is how I used to describe betfair. 

  5. Chris F. Masse says:
    September 25, 2008 at 5:15 AM

    According to my gathering, BetFair say that is a “known problem”. Let’s give them time to fix that.

  6. Medemi says:
    September 25, 2008 at 1:50 PM

    I don’t have to give betfair anything, just because it happens to be in their best interests to resolve this issue quickly. Should they have come forward, and announced this problem publicly, then they would have earned some respect. In the mean time, we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed that some unwitting punter won’t lose his life savings because betfair feel it’s better to keep things quiet until their planned upgrade.

  7. Medemi says:
    September 27, 2008 at 4:26 AM

    I think betfair had that upgrade yesterday. It should also be noted that a lot of people have been refunded their money, according to some threads on the betfair forum. At least they are doing the right thing, although I see 2 problems with the way they handle these things.

    1) People who are critical and blame themselves are not refunded, and not rewarded. Only the ones who complain.
    2) You don’t sell a product when there is a significant default and a hazard for the consumer. In this case, it also provides the consumer with an opportunity to abuse their goodwill.

    Betfair arcade is down now due to technical problems, so maybe they are putting it on hold now.
    It’s in the service announcements.

     

    Betfair Customer Services
    27 Sep 09:35


    Due to technical problems we are experiencing, Betfair Arcade is currently unavailable.

    We apologise for this disruption to our service and confirm that our engineering team is working to rectify the problems as quickly as possible.

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