Wacky BETDAQ
Unusually, I spent most of today watching TV: the royal wedding and the Grand National.
Luckily, I managed to pick the winner, Hedgehunter. Ruby Walsh didn’t let me down and I was delighted to see him win the race for the second time. Although it would have been even better to see Carrie Ford become the first woman to win the National. Fair play to her for coming fifth.
Typically, I had ended up backing a few horses, but at least my winnings covered all the other bets and will buy me a few fizzy cola bottles! I bet online at Paddy Power, Betfair and BETDAQ. These sites make betting accessible, quick and simple (possibly too easy!).
I discovered BETDAQ, an Irish owned betting exhange, recently and really liked the service up until today. I had it in my head somewhere that the minimum bet was €2. However, this morning I found that I was able to put through bets of €1. I got very excited as €1 is my ideal betting level - I’m not made of money!
I decided to consult the help section to find out the minimum bet and eventually found that it said €2. I had just put on a €1 200/1 bet for my Mum. The bet had gone through and the money had been taken from my account. However, since I don’t have €200 lying around, I just rang to double check this €1 bet was valid. That’s when the fun started:
[me]: What’s the minimum bet?
[BETDAQ Girl (B)]: 2 euro
[me]: I have put through a couple of €1 bets on your site this morning
[B]: you should not be doing that. Those bets will be noticed and you will be contacted and told to stop.
[me]: OK, but the system let me place the bets and took the money from my account.
[B]: Yes, it lets you do that, but you are not supposed to do it.
[me]: OK Well what about the bets I have already placed? Will they stand? Will I be paid if I win?
[B]: I’ll check that for you… Yes, those bets are fine but please try to stick to €2 bets in future. When reports are run it will be noticed if you keep placing lower bets and you will be contacted
[me]: But one of the bets I placed only allowed me to put €1 on. And in general, if your system takes my money and allows a bet to go through, how am I supposed to know that it may not be valid? You have to look deep in the help files to even find out that the minimum bet is €2. If I had not seen that, I would not have called. I would just be assuming all bets that were accepted by your system were valid.
[B]: Yes, I know what you mean but you are not supposed to bet less than €2. If you keep doing that your account will be suspended pending investigation.
[me]: investigation? for betting €1? it’s not like i’m suspected of insider trading! Betfair and Paddy Power won’t allow you to place bets below their minimum limit. If you refuse to accept bets for less than €2, that should really be enforced on the website. How are users supposed to know?
[B]: Yes I know that the site lets you do it but you’re really not supposed to do it. Try to stay above €2 in future. If everyone started just betting €1 it would not work.
[me]: Well, I’m a web developer and I know that the functionality on your site is extremely complex. However, adding some validation to ensure users can’t place bets for less than €2 is trivial. If you don’t want to accept such bets, it’s really your responsibility to enforce that on the site for everyone’s benefit.
[B]: Yes, I know there is not much involved. I will pass your comments on to my manager and try and get the site changed.
Unbelievable. I don’t think Betfair, the premier betting exchange site, have too much to worry about. Now if only I could afford the €4 minimum stake…
Incidentally, if you like a flutter and want to join Betfair, Pigsback have some attractive offers at the moment - I joined too soon to benefit as usual! I take no responsibility if you go bankrupt but a cut of your first million would be nice 
April 11th, 2005 at 11:17 am
“I will pass your comments on to my manager and try and get the site changed” - you know what *that* means, don’t you??
I must admit that I used that line a couple of times during my customer service employment. Generally, it was rolled out for customers who wouldn’t accept the standard response that we were trained to regurgitate and wouldn’t go away. (Here, it seems that the standard response is that although the site accepts 1 bets, you’re `supposed’ to stick to a minimum of 2). In my case, I always *did* tell my supervisor, who generally responded with an attitude that they shouldn’t bother those higher up with such trivial nonsense, particularly since I’d successfully gotten rid of the customer and was now free to take more calls.
Of course, such a change is a fundamentally trivial one and it appears that it would save them a lot of hassle (if they’ve gone to the bother of creating a canned response for your question, they must get a few people asking about it, plus it would save their investigation team the time it takes them to weed out those who aren’t sufficiently wealthy to use their site `properly’).
Anyhow, fair play to you for pointing it out to them - I don’t think I’d bother anymore (I used to email sites about broken content but never got any responses). What they decide to do after that is their problem.
April 11th, 2005 at 11:42 am
I didn’t get my arse in gear in time to place any bets, but I was cheering for Hedgehunter. I watched the national last year and cheered for him then too, so was doubly glad he won this year.
Would’ve been nice if Carrie whatsherface had won, but fifth aint bad
April 20th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
A while back I figured out how you can put 1 bets on Betfair. What you do is make a bet of 4 at some outrageous price. e.g. 999. Then it obviously won’t be matched, so you go into the ‘My Bets’ section where you can edit the stake/price.
Now what you do is increase the stake value to 5 and press submit. Again it won’t be matched but this time you’ll notice that in the ‘My Bets’ section your 5 bet at 999 will actually consist of a 4 bet and a 1 bet.
Now you simply change the odds on the 1 bet to the market value and cancel the 4 bet, which results in a 1 bet at the market price.
It’s a roundabout way, but plenty of people do it and there isn’t much wrong with it!
April 25th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
betfair don’t mind £1 bets as long as you are losing! if you place bets “under the radar” which don’t show on the current screen for amounts under £2 and consistently show a profit then your account WILL be suspended.
April 26th, 2005 at 8:24 am
thanks for the info dave - much appreciated
how do you figure this stuff out?
you sound as if you speak from experience gadge? still, at least you must be some use at betting unlike me
and daithi, i do not envy you your customer service experiences! but i was not ringing up for their benefit - i just couldn’t afford to pay my mum her winnings if she had won and the bet was invalid!
November 4th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
The minimum bet on betdaq is now 1 of whatever currency you use. i.e. β¬1 , Β£1, $1 etc.
Hope that helps.
November 5th, 2005 at 9:56 am
that’s great to hear paul - thanks for the update