I gotta agree with Shaun's comments that it is fair enough for the totes to protect their services and data products, but please provide some samples so we can get an idea of how to use them in say, Excel, without having to become a whizz overnight in VS2010 to master C#, & SOAP web services.

Tatts Racing did a great job of this by providing a simple little Excel file that used their xml feed. It was a brilliant marketing idea to get weekend warriors up and running with their own little 'systems'.

My point is that if a company sets out (intentionally or unintentionally) to make life difficult for their customers, those same customers will vote with their feet and go elsewhere to get what they need.

" Or, go to the track n back to basics. "

I actually tried that Puntz, as I live in SEQ I made it my business to get to every Saturday Metro meeting and a great deal of Sunday fixtures at the SC for roughly 10 or 11 months. This is going back about 2 years or so.
Worked handsomely for a while but the profits slowly dried up. too many distractions being one of the problems.

So, back to the computer in front of the Telly at home and the profits started to flow again.
Then, for no reason that I can grasp, about 12 months ago the profits started to dry up again, to the point where I am going to have to give them a spell for a while and collect my thoughts, and get a proper bank together. (too many distractions????)

Having said all that the Melb Carnival was great to me, but not enough to get me into profit territory for the year.

In fact my confidence was so low leading into the MC that I had a lousy $20 EW on Purple Moon, the horse that I had earmarked for the Cup 2 months beforehand.
Understand that this is coming from someone who has their top pick as a roving Banker with the Full Field for a half every year, and a fairly big slap EW as well.
Fair dinkum, I could have given myself a punch in the head.

Sooooooo, any help with the " Or, go to the track n back to basics. " would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers.

Well at least it looks like Betfair is here to stay -

http://community.betfair.com/austra...te-decommission

Jose, back to basics i meant it as a suggestion to an idea, not the rule.

I know Puntz, I know.
Was just getting a bit of phlegm off the old chest.

I'm keeping an eye on mayan fortune telling, 21, 12, 2 ,8, boxed trifecta.

Just out of interest I went to every Aussie racing forum I could find yesterday & each one has a thread on the new sites with approx 90% disapproval rate, people are not happy

I'm not surprised, the new site is the pits. Every move you make takes for ever. I do have a fast system and still takes at least 30 sec to load in the first place.

On top of that had to reinstall both IE and Firefox because they simply would not load the new site. Only Chrome did, now why am I not surprised by that?

And the PR guys have the hide to say they did it all to give us punters a better faster, interface, I think they called it a more enjoyable punting experience.
What a joke!

Agreed.

It's a bit like being thrown into a digital swimming pool where the only option is to sink to the bottom. . . s l o w l y ?

My theory is they want us all to migrate to a slick n quick mobile version because they know,
That's where the quick bets, losses (profits?) will come from..
Hence they make the main site almost unusable.

All of which is about as unlikely as a Mayan armageddon I guess,
But had to put my 2 pennies worth in..
Ho Ho OHHH ! (Bal available = ZERO!!)

Cheers LG

Well whatever the reasons, they didn't think this through well at all - with all the recent controversies racing has had to deal with & now we have these websites...,

Goose & Golden Egg anyone?