Our mistake - can't give you £7.8 million here's £31.78 instead

cloneslad · 09-01-2010 03:00PM

After working in a bookies as a student for a few years I know for certain they don't have to pay out. A mistake can be made and if it's genuine then they don't have to pay it.

There is no way he should have gotten those odds as the bets are interlinked.

For example: If it snows in Dublin there is a good chance it will snow in Kildare he could place a fiver on in to snow in each place but he can not put them in an accumulater as the odds would be totally unfair on the bookmaker.

Ladbrokes, I would imagine will give him a few grand and try get some good publicity for themselves but there is a maximum level of payout in each bookmakers. You could go in and place €1 on an accumulater and predict the scores of every match in England which could net you tens of millions however my old bookies paid out a max of €200k on football and I think ladbrokes were €1million.

It was obviously a genuine error and as has been pointed out before, acceptance of the bet is not acceptance of liability. Ladbroke could probably just refund him his stake as he placed a bet that is void therefore they don't actually have to pay out.

lugha · 09-01-2010 03:15PM

cloneslad wrote: »

After working in a bookies as a student for a few years I know for certain they don't have to pay out. A mistake can be made and if it's genuine then they don't have to pay it.

But can they refuse if they bet is kosher? Do they have to make a case that there was an error in the bet? Can they say "we just aint paying"?
Also, would they pay out if an error was made in their favour? i.e. if some
one placed a 500/1 bet but it was wrongly written down as 500/1 on, would they honour it?

Mike 1972 · 09-01-2010 03:21PM

bonerm wrote: »

I think I heard somewhere (possibly from a gambler!) that bookies technically aren't obliged to settle ANY bets (even correctly quoted ones). They only do so in the interest of keeping customers and continuing business.

Think you might be right.

Same way as a punter with a gambling debt cannot be sued. Hence bookie shops almost always insist on cash upfront (Otherwise a defaulting gambler could say it was all a mistake)

cloneslad · 09-01-2010 03:40PM

lugha wrote: »

Also, would they pay out if an error was made in their favour? i.e. if some
one placed a 500/1 bet but it was wrongly written down as 500/1 on, would they honour it?

when bets are taken all that we do is take a picture of it, it's a quck scan capture of what you have written.

we then have to manually type in your bet onto the system. so if you were to have written 'shergar 3:50 at kempton 33/1' and he was actually running in wolverhampton then it would make no difference as the computer would automatically put in the track name itself from the horses name.

If the odds were actually 3/1 not 33/1 then the computer would not allow us to enter the odds as they were never that price, the compuet would also override us entering 33/1 if it was actually 300/1 so it would favour the customer in this instance.

If the horse was 12/1 (for example) but the odds went down to 10/1 a few minutes before the bet was placed and you wrote 12-1, then we could over-ride the system and put in the 12/1 odds as the computer would beep at us and say 'odds changed 12-1 to 10-1 at 14:10pm'.

And if you wrote 12-1 but it went out to 14-1 then we would give you the better odds.

The people working in bookies aren't out to screw the customer through lies and falsifying bets, if we can make you happy and keep you coming back to place your bet with us rather than the competition then we can screw you through your gambling addiction and lack of skill in choosing a winning horse.

Remember, most bookies, before the recession at least, were paying each of their shops a yearly bonus based on the shops net profit. If we screw you out of a €50 in one bet and you get angry and go elsewhere then we lose the next 500-1000 euro you might have lost with us throughout the year.

it's better to take the hit of one small bet that you won instead of many years of your losses.

cloneslad · 09-01-2010 03:45PM

lugha wrote: »

But can they refuse if they bet is kosher? Do they have to make a case that there was an error in the bet? Can they say "we just aint paying"?

It all depends, as I said in the last post, bookies no that bad publicity will lose them customers. We have never refused to pay out on a bet that was placed on time and was 100% kosher.

However, if the bet was 100% kosher but above the maximum payout a customer can receive in a day then we could deny the customer the excess (if 200k is the limit and you win 500k then we will refuse the extra 300k).

Legally a bookmaker can refuse to pay out on any bet they want. placing a bet does not mean you enter into a legal and binding contract with the bookmaker. If the owner doesn't want to pay out then he/she doesn't have to do so, but they will have to give you back your stake otherwise they are just stealing from you.

Again it's highly unlikely such a thing would happen unless it was like the frankie detorri case where bookmakers went belly up on those bets.

Size=everything · 09-01-2010 03:57PM

He has no case.

When you make a bet you agree to their terms and conditions. Ladbrokes terms and conditions will state that they do not accept accumulators on novelty bets. As one of the terms and conditions were broken there is no contract. As long as there was no malice (i.e Ladbrokes knowingly taking the mistaken bet) they are in the clear.

Our mistake - can't give you £7.8 million here's £31.78 instead

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