Guess it's up to me to dedicate a thread to this immensely important development which threatens all honest, informed and responsible punters.

First, let's get the official quote correct.

Betfair claims this new premium charge affects:

"less than 0.5% of active customers"

Now what is an active customer?

From Betfair's material we can infer that any customer who places at least 1 bet in a particular week is considered an active customer for that week.

So someone who simply has 1 minimum bet a week on the West Coast Eagles (say) would be counted.

when I google news for "Betfair" I get 2,366 matches.

Trouble is that 797 of those matches happen also have "cashback" in the text.

Clearly there is a massive industry promoting a free money scenario at Betfair based on one bet per week.

So you have the opportunity for individuals to open accounts in as many names as they can muster merely to bonus binge. Then withdraw money from their account.

Can these people really be considered active customers?

You have inferred this. Moderators do not have time to be running back and forth to Betfair's site to see that fair comment has been made. Please substantiate your comment and provide the quote from Betfair that supports this.

Moderator 3.

"At the other end of the scale if we look at just a week then clearly the number of customers who’ve placed a bet will be less, but then so will the number of those who would be affected by the charge in the period, and the proportion is still about 0.5%. Any customer who doesn’t bet with us during a period isn’t included in the active number."

http://site.forum.betfair.com/jive3...hat+&schatname=

As we can see Betfair avoided defining an active customer until pressed. Then it responded in a roundabout fashion.

The criterion of at least one bet that week, is hardly what reasonable people would consider active.

It includes freeloaders, once-a-year'ers and many others whose turnover is so inconsequential that they are a loss-making segment for Betfair.

If instead Betfair had chosen a more meaningful group say "regulars" with a disclosed criteria of say 100 markets a month, then we would be in a position analyse Betfair's claims.

But obviously that sensible move would result in a figure far in excess of that 0.5%.

That figure of 0.5% received a thorough caning on the Betfair forum, since a very high percentage of posters found themselves affected.

And common sense suggests that Betfair would not bother tackling such a minor percentage - unless of course there was some far more significant statistic it was not disclosing.

Yet for some reason we find people actually going in to bat for Betfair, quoting that questionable statistic as if actually signified something.

You are arguing against yourself here, the figure also includes the traders, the arbers, the punters who bet every race every day. It also includes the bookies laying off huge amounts on the exchange.



Clearly there is some degree of misinterpretation here. The 0.5% figure relates to people affected, the rest actually pay no premium charge because they already have paid their share of commission. Many quite large investors on various forums have queried their account statements and done a premium charge reconciliation, finding they are not affected at all. Possibly in the future they may be affected, but this would be a one-off circumstance.



a very high percentage of posters claimed to find themselves affected, a very different thing.
They are scared that they will pay in the future. The number of posters claiming to be affected does not tally with all analysis of winning customers.
It is clear that people are inflating their own capabilities to mount an effective argument.



It's not a matter of going into bat for Betfair, it's a matter of getting some accuracy.
Betfair did not cause a mass exodus from the markets, punters overreacting caused it. The whole announcement has caused confusion and controversy because they did a very poor job of explaining it fully.
I will be affected because I don't pay commission unless I win on a market, therefore I don't currently pay as much commission as a punter.
However, I'm far from throwing in the towel to another exchange which has it's own problems.
There are ways to get around things, almost always.

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I find it mind boggling that Betfair seems to be up to their armpits in ambiguous rules, or am I wrong?

Mainstream long-term winners don't win every week.

The charges don't immediately apply in losing weeks, which is of little consolation, because even if Betfair garnishes you only 1 week in 10, it can slug you for up to 20-something% of all your profits for the past 60 weeks. So it will get you in the end.

Say that affected customers average 50% winning weeks.

If the 1st week reels in 1,000 the 2nd would also get ~1,000. But in week 2, 50% of the previous customers would lose and get a temporary reprieve, and 50% that lost last week would now win and get slugged.

So you would expected the cumulative affected customers in successive weeks to be:

1,000
1,500
1,750
1,875

until eventually 2,000 is reached.


But Betfair is claiming that its 0.5% figure is constant irrespective of how big the sample period is.

Considering my example above, that constant 0.5% claim is staggering.

If that claim is actually true then Betfair has withheld some other important relevant statistics from us.

There is no cumulative figure.

The Premium Charge only affects customers who are in profit over a 60 week period and have not paid full commission on winnings and is calculated weekly.
If you are losing other weeks, you are already paying enough commission.
This is why only .5% of customers are affected.
There is so much misinformation being bandied about, it's done Betfair more harm than the actual charging process.
I do find it unbelievable that Betfair have done very little to correct or explain the situation fully, and remarkably stupid that any client cannot have instant access to the 60 week report.

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Chrome, have you received the email............and even worse, the dreaded phone call??

Yes I have, I cannot risk the multiple account thingamy - they know and are watching for this I was told

__________________
RaceCensus - powerful system testing software.
Now with over 413,000 Metropolitan, Provincial and Country races!
http://www.propun.com.au/horse_raci...ng_systems.html
*RaceCensus now updated to 31/01/2025
Video overview of RaceCensus here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W821YP_b0Pg