Betfair: poker funds now missing

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Betfair: poker funds now missing

Betfair currently seems to be lurching from one crisis to another. In November it was the Happy Hour fiasco in the casino, where staff incompetence resulted in the loss of millions of pounds from an unlimited bonus offer, funds which were subsequently withheld from customers. Now, a software issue is causing poker players' money to vanish into the ether and Betfair does not appear fully up to speed with the matter four days after it was reported - see the BetFair - something weird is happening discussion on the 2+2 forum.

Betfair's initial response, though apologetic and otherwise encouraging, contained a rather bizarre requirement:

Please take note of the time and specific details, (screenshots, etc, if possible), so that your money can be refunded.

To which, one affected player logically asked:

...and how do you expect people to screen shot stuff that happened hours ago?

The Betfair poker forum has been awash with worried players - here's a handful of the threads posted:

No answers and no clue

Crashes

Cashing out problem

Why hasn't poker been taken offline?

Still missing 2K

Money disappeared

What is happening?

Update?

Can't see balance

Is this a bad dream?

Getting worried

Yesterday, the Betfair rep posted an update:

Betfair Poker is currently offline due to maintenance. Our technical team have taken this decision in order to fix the issue of “trapped funds between poker clients and accounts”.

The site will continue to be offline until the problem is resolved. We are unable at this time to give a time when this will be fixed, however, please be assured that we are doing everything we can to get the site up and running as quickly as possible.

All users that have been affected by this issue will be credited in full.

Our sincerest apologies to all users and thank you for your continued patience.

This was followed today with this:

The technical issues with Betfair Poker have been resolved and the site is available to use.

We are aware that some customers are still waiting for funds to be returned to their accounts following the recent poker money transaction problem. Please be assured that returning funds back to accounts is our priority at the moment. We have now processed 80% of trapped funds and duplicate transactions and funds have been returned to the rightful players. As soon as we have a timeline when all remaining refunds will be credited to users, we’ll post an update to this announcement.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused.

In addition to the above, this was posted at the 2+2 forum recently by the Betfair rep:

19th January

We are currently in the process of putting together a campaign plan for February to offer extra value to affected players. The timeline and campaigns will be published within the next few days and this will top-up our normal February offer.

Which is good. When a casino or poker room makes a mistake, a full resolution of the matter and a compensatory gesture to make up for the anxiety caused is the way to put it right.

So as it stands, it seems unlikely that any player will be left out of pocket after everything is finally sorted out. However, Betfair is currently piling disaster upon disaster and demonstrating incompetence and inefficiency. And all this, it bears remembering, comes on the back of the recent stockmarket flotation in October last year.

Is Betfair now simply too big to be efficient?

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