Your luckless correspondent (SP 1771) who has had to refund a bookmaker due to a technicality he knew nothing about, is just another illustration of how the SA punter always gets the short end of the stick.
On Thursday, for my final wager at the Vaal, I saw an opportunity to strike an attractive place bet with Telebet. The horse ran the drum and I was content but when I phoned the next day for a new transaction my credit balance as relayed by the Telebet operator did not coincide with my records, (I record each and every bet in writing). My figure was short by precisely the amount I calculated I should have won on my last bet on Thursday.
I queried the situation but was informed that my bet had been recorded as a WIN. I asked for the recording to be played and sure enough it indicated that I had ordered a PLACE bet. I had placed the bet at the OFF via my cell. The operator taking my bet had (apparently unheard by me) confirmed the bet as a WIN.) The clerk handling the query, smugly pointed out that in terms of Telebet’s rules, they only react on the recorded CONFIRMATION of the bet, NOT WHAT THE CUSTOMER ORDERED.
No matter how I argued about the morality of the issue, the clerk was not even prepared to offer a compromise to refund the stake. Significantly, earlier in the day I had had to also query a Telebet credit which had been somewhat short and which they had had to correct.
Over the years you have recorded several such instances where the punter was short changed. (Remember that case with the indigenous Stellenbosch punter who was also short changed thousands by a local bookmaker hiding behind his own maximum payout rule?
Rules are necessary, but here in South Africa where we struggle to gain public support in racing, our lack of morality is hardly an attraction to new punters.
via email – Disenchant
