Bookie refuses to pay out £7 million on snow bet

[Ninja Elephant]

I did it e/w, making 30 bets if that makes a difference? I think it was 10p. each bet, and I got a first and second, which paid out about £1.56. Not like it ran into thousands!?

It would seem the Lucky 15 is an ideal bet for 4 independent outcomes?

Baffling tbh

You did it each way?! I can't say for deffinite, but I don't think you can bet on a team to win a league "each-way". That might be the confusion, because the top 2 go up from the Championship, and League 1 but you only have 1 winner of the Premier League and the top 3 go up automatically from League 2. Unless it was clearly defined what would classify as being an each way placing, then the bet wouldn't be taken. I wouldn't take an each way lucky 15 on league winners to be honest, assuming I looked at it first (Durlston raises a good point about us not paying attention!), because it is ambiguous.

But yeah, a lucky 15 bet is a good one if you've got 4 teams/horses/whatever you think are very likely to come in, because you've got singles, doubles, trebles AND an accumulator all to profit from. Or a lucky 31, with 5 selections or a lucky 63 with 6.

Or try a Goliath, which has 8 selections and 247 bets!

 

[Mtoto]

Yes you can, Ninja, at the start of the season and then usually for several months afterwards too depending on how things develop. The third-place team in the Championship may not go up, but they still finish third. It's usually 1/4 odds a place, 1,2,3, though it may be 1/5, particularly if there is a very short favourite.

 

[Durlston]

Beware of Betfred! Not the bonus kings they make out to be.

Last year i lost my outright stake on the tennis when Andy Roddick had to retire injured in his semi-final of the Queens Club Championship.The match was 5 games all at the time so a real injustice.I only bet on matches now and Maria Kirilenko/Sharapova or Victoria Azarenka.

Also had money on Wayne Rooney recently to score first.Price at the time was 7/2 but they only paid out at 3's.Being on a plain slip,staff laziness cost me £5 by not bothering to put the odds on.I always thought first scorer prices stayed the same anyway?

 

[Poyetry In Motion]

Its called moving the goalposts and its outrageous. Regardless of who's fault it was, surely ladbrokes accepted the bet fair and square ( although in error in their eyes ) and therefore have the responsibility to pay up to the declared maximum at least (which i believe is £1m per bet?)

Its yet another example of people and organisations in this country unwilling to accept responsibility for their actions when it doesn't suit them. It's always someone else fault isn't it?

 

[New Carpet?]

Stories like this one are hardly unusual, but do not necessarily suggest that bookies are evil bastards who will pull any trick going to avoid paying out. Most of the time, the punter involved is a chancer who knows full well that their bet should not have been accepted, but has managed to get it past a new or particularly stupid member of staff, who might not have seen a bet like this before and was probably just trying to be helpful.
As has already been pointed out, it is a related contingency. Would you expect to have a bet accepted that snow will fall on your house and the houses either side, and be treated as a straight treble? The locations may be more separated, but the principle is the same: the odds about one event are affected by the other.
If this bloke sues, it proves only that he was an honest, but hopelessly misguided, punter. If he does not, it would suggest to me that he knows he's trying it on, and does not stand a hope in hell.

Mtoto, you're spot on.

Of course it's a related contingency. The customer has no chance whatsoever with the adjudicatory body, IBAS. If Ladbrokes make any kind of compromise payment offer (which will be something paltry in comparision like a grand), then this guy should just take the money and run.

Obviously, a lot of people see this customer as being hard done by, and in a way he is because the staff member was obnoxious or naive enough to accept the bet without paying any true attention to the wager (it's par for the course for betting shop cashiers), but for the customer not to realise that if it snows one day in say, Croydon, then it doesn't mean that there is more of a chance that it'll also come down in Brighton, then he's just as naive.

It's most likely that in this case, the punter and cashier have been as unbelievably thick as each other.

 

[Dr. Notthenineo'clocknews]

great thread this, a cashier on minimum wage with probably no or little knowledge of bets (or even sport) should be sacked, hung drawn and quartered because they took a bet that had been written by the individual (not by the staff), first time punters think they can walk into any high st bookie and place a bet on how long it takes their neighbour to mow the fuckin lawn. Betting shop staff are constantly threatened with thier job for merely serving someone who's 21, without checking ID (despite the minimum age being 18) I'd place a bet that you could write any old bollocks on a betting slip and as long as the stake was filled in it'd go through the till.

PS with regard to Spun Cuppa's L15, the only reason that bet could have caused problems was that double the odds/10% for four winners didn't apply to ante post bets inc football and would (despite being accepted) confuse the till when entered into the system, however the elements of singles doubles trebles etc is clearly acceptable and the bet would simply be settled without the bonuses

 

[£1.99]

great thread this, a cashier on minimum wage with probably no or little knowledge of bets (or even sport) should be sacked, hung drawn and quartered because they took a bet that had been written by the individual (not by the staff), first time punters think they can walk into any high st bookie and place a bet on how long it takes their neighbour to mow the fuckin lawn. Betting shop staff are constantly threatened with thier job for merely serving someone who's 21, without checking ID (despite the minimum age being 18) I'd place a bet that you could write any old bollocks on a betting slip and as long as the stake was filled in it'd go through the till.

Well maybe the cashier should learn the knowledge of taking bets and learn his job properly !

 

[Ninja Elephant]

Well maybe the cashier should learn the knowledge of taking bets and learn his job properly !

Because they didn't know that you can't do an accumulator on snow fall, they need to "learn how to do his job properly"... Interesting. Two things;
1, How many snow bets do you think get placed?
2, Do you know EVERYTHING about the job you're doing?

People shout their mouths on most subjects, myself included, but if you actually gave it logical thought you might come to the conclusion that you can't expect someone to know EVERYTHING. The bet was taken in error, I'm sure they know that now... but at the time it probably seemed a bit of a laugh. It's just gone a bit sour! Neither the first time, nor the last.

 

[Kylies Stunt Arse]

Hang on, it's not exactly f***ing difficult for the major bookies to make sure that in the run up to Christmas all the staff are aware of the acceptable bets for snow etc. Punters are always looking at the white Christmas bet.

I'm not convinced this punter is being thick though. I reckon he's definitely trying it on, simply because he placed TWO bets on the same thing at different times.

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

I don't understand why ladbrokes don't have to pay because its against their rules? What about the law? If i decide that my rules allow me to murder someone, i'm not sure i'm getting away with that.

 

[Mtoto]

Because all bets are accepted subject to their rules, and simply putting it through the machine does not mean that it has been accepted. And the rules are mainly there to protect them from fraud rather than winners - as I said earlier, they operate on turnover, and winnings paid out one day will come back as losses, with interest, the next.

The amount of cash circulating in betting makes them an obvious target for fraud, and the cashiers are always - whether innocently or not - going to be the weakest link in the chain.

If a Tesco employee goes around changing the shelf price on the widescreen TVs to 50p, and a mate is following behind putting them all in a trolley, would you say that Tesco should be forced to honour the 50p price tag at the till?

Whether there is fraud involved here or not, there has to be a framework to protect them from staff incompetence, because if there is not, their businesses will not last five minutes.

 

[withdeanwombat]

Yes,yes.

I'll have one of those 50p tellies,but only if they're BOGOF.