tanda

I happen to like BRISBet. I appreciate their efforts to give a discount to its players as opposed to YouBet charging a wager fee (although that fee may be history now, I thought I read to that effect). The wagers are processed quickly (or appear to be proceesed quickly, see below) and they have made efforts to upgrade their wager services.

However, I have noticed that they sometimes stop accepting wagers before the horses are loaded in the gate when MTP is 0. In the past, I could always bet until the horses left the gate. Recently, I was shut out with the tot reading 0 to post, but the horses had not even arrived at the gate. This does not happen always, but sometimes and recently.

But, I digress. I want to report an outrageous situation which occurred Monday. I entered a variety of wagers early afternoon Monday. I am testing software and wanted to test its top pick regardless of odds and the wagers were nominal. Normally, I do not bet without seeing near final odds.

When I printed out my bets later in the day, I had 6 or 7 refunds. I presumed they were late scratches but considered the number a bit high (I had checked the program scratches).

Then, when reviewing the result charts I saw that the refunded runners had ran!

I called BRISBet and was told that the system went down and wagers during a certain period of time were not processed. Well, I can certainly understand not placing new wagers when the system is down. But my wagers were placed hours before hand and I received conffirmation with a ticket serial number that the bet was placed. I discovered that BRISBet does not place the wager when you enter it, instead they send it in later. Is this normal for all simulcast outlets? Do the 1 minute and earlier numbers contain no simulcast numbers? I assumed that bets were transmitted from outlets on a regular basis throughout the wagering?

Anyway, my bitch is that they give you this serial number (and receipt if you care to print it out), but it means nothing. Since the wager is not actually placed when the serial number and receipt is issued, it represents a bet that may or may not ever be placed. It is a joke number. If BRISBet fails to place the wager (or claims not to have when it did), the receipt means nothing.

The operator commneded me on my pleasant demeanor. That is because I won 1 of the 6 lost wagers at 4:1, Thus, I would have lost a very small amount on the wagers and the refunds helped me. He did say that others, those with should have been winning bets, were pissed. No kidding!

How about this? If you take my wager, say that it is placed, give me confirmation of that and do not place the wager, then you pay me, if I win, out of your pocket. Is not that how a business should be run. The system went down hours after my bets were placed. Why could they have not placed them when they were made?

I was not screwed Monday, so I have no short term complaint, but I am preparing for it to happen again.

PaceAdvantage

It is my opinion that you have every right to expect to be paid on those wagers....however, I'm sure there is some fine print somewhere in the sign-up process with BRISbet that details exactly this kind of situation and explains that a refund is all you are entitled to....

I had my own situation once with YouBet....the race in question had about 4mtp, and I placed my wager, but was told by the YouBet software that a timeout of somesort had occured, and my bet was not placed....thus, I proceeded to keep sending through the bet in hopes that it would eventually get through...BUT, I was told each and every time by the software that the bet had not gone through...

Well, the race goes off, and I lose...but I'm happy because YouBet was having problems and wouldn't accept my bets...or so I THOUGHT.....I innocently checked my account balance, and was shocked to see it depleted by so much...turns out that the wagers I thought had been rejected were actually being accepted EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!! (This was when YouBet was running their bets through Call-A-Bet)....

I called YouBet and then Call-A-Bet and within a few hours, they had given me back all of the wagers in question....wonder if I would have called up and complained if the horse had won???


==PA

JustRalph

I use a service that is piggy backed onto the front end of Bris Bet. They used to belong to my local track (Beulah stinkin park) and the attorney general of our state ran them out of town. So they latched onto Brisbet and now they are affiliated with America Tab. Everything looks the same as brisbet. My account number is able to log into brisbet with the America Tab account number, but it hiccups if I try to wager and tells me to log into the other system. Anyway...
On breeders cup day last year I tossed $500 in my Account about 4 hours early and things seemed fine. When It came time to play, of course the system was down and a telephone message warned of a temporary problem. I went over to Youbet (I think it was youbet) and funded that account and was able to play. But my $500 sat in the other account for two days while they rebuilt the system. I couldn't even get thru to have them mail me a check. Now I have about 4 accounts just in case. I can imagine how pissed I would have been on Breeders day if I couldn't have played at all. I ended up a couple of Grand ahead that day. I work in computers, so I can understand some of it. But the biggest wagering day of the year should be a no brainer...extra servers, extra everything. What is there to figure out?
I have been locked out several times at the above service and Brisbet. They seem to do whatever they want some days. One day its 2 min to post and closed. The next it is right until the gate opens. This is of course watching the races live on TVG. If you are playing on the Internet and watching via the Net, some tracks have a 4 minute delay. They are much better than they used to be. The race actually goes off about the time the online tote video shows 4 min to post. Turfway park was the worst this year. They pump their signal thru Penn National on a web page at http://www.pngaming.com/cgi-bin/showme.cgi
and sometimes its real good and other times its the 4 minute delay. This web page has different tracks all the time. It can change from one minute to the next. Give it a try at the link above.

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Principles before Party!

ranchwest

Satellite signals are usually a few seconds off of real time, so TVG would probably be about 10 to 15 seconds late. One time, my father was telling me what was happening in a football game before I could see it on satellite. That was wierd.

GameTheory

I think pretty much any live broadcast has SOME delay. The minimum is probably 7 seconds...

Tom

If you have a receipt, I say BRISBET is obligated to pay you on winners and keep losers. I don't care what any fine print says, they are morally obligated to you. BRISBET is nothing more than a legal bookie and a bookie without integrity is worthless.
I would look to legal actioin on the principle of it. Perhaps you could spearhead a class action lawsuit. The very fact that BRISBET allowed this to go this far gives me serious doubts about their credibility. I have an account with them and fully intend to persue this them until I get a satisfactory answer, and until I do, I will not place another wager with them. I will post here any response I get from them.
It may only be a few dollars right now, but this is a very serious
problem. So far, BRISBET appears to not be very customer-focused on this matter. A street bookie would have broken legs by now. Or worse.

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Etch-a-Sketch....the Amish Laptop!

tanda

I must emphasize that I did not lose money on the foul-up. I actually saved a very small amount. At this point, I am just an observer and have not been harmed, but it will happen again with tickets that are profitable and I will be angry.

However, as somebody noted above, I am sure that the account agreement states that the bettor is only entitled to a refund in these situations. So, legally they are probably okay. yet, it remains a bad way to do business.

My biggest complaint is the receipts and serial numbers. If they mean nothing, why give them to us? To fool us? I love people/businesses that give "official" confirmation documents/numbers that are really meaningless. I was recently given a confirmation number on a utility dispute. When the credit did not appear on my bill, I called and gave the confirmation number. They had no record of it! Thank you for wasting my time and having me write down the "confirmation" number. I wonder if the operators make the numbers up as they read them to you? They must get a kick out of it!

That being said, I am generally happy with BRISBet. I used the Beulah affiliate (winticket.com) and was happy with them, but switched for the BRIS discounts.

But I did want to pass on the information.

ranchwest

I'm not an attorney, but it is my understanding that generally you must have damages to seek relief in court. The loss on the tickets might disqualify pursuing this case.

Topcat

I could be wrong but I beelive this is common practice for many online betting operations.

IMHO online betting is another example of the chasm between technology promises and technology reality -this failure to perform or deliver is what brought down the dot coms and why old fashioned brick and mortar models beat the pants off of the new economy "kids". It will continue to do so until the word integrity measn something to them.

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TC

GameTheory

In fairness to them, it is not ONLY a matter of integrity -- there are real problems with the technology that make it unreliable sometimes. They have no control over network outages at remote locations, etc. The other option in some of these cases would simply be to not offer the service at all rather than set themselves up with a potentially huge liability.

On the other hand, if they can't actually place the bet when they take it, maybe they shouldn't take it (that's the rub -- then you couldn't get in any advance wagers). I think the purpose of the confirmation numbers is for disputes over what the wager actually WAS (Win on #2, or whatever) and if it was placed at all, in order to resolve disputes over the amount of a payoff, or whatever. In other words, it is a record of the wager, not a guarantee that the wager will actually placed in the pool, which apparently they confirm by not giving you a refund.

I must say I haven't had any particular problems with BrisBet other than every once in a while (not often by any means) the system has been totally unavailable for stretches of 10 minutes or so. But that is to be expected with any internet setup, and is part of the risk of playing online, as some things are totally out of their hands. I usually make my bets at the 1 MTP mark, and have never been shut out of any track.

I also believe that both BrisBet & WinTicket are affliates of America Tab, not one of the other. BrisBet just puts their name on it I think. All technology issues, collecting & processing wagers, etc is America Tab...

tanda

Oh, I certainly have not been damaged and could not pursue it legally. I would not want to either.

I just found the whole thing amusing ... for now.

I would note that the wager confirmation says "Bet successfully placed". For some crazy reason, I understood that sentence to mean that the BET WAS SUCCESSFULLY PLACED! Apparently, my knowledge of the english language is deficient.

I now know that the phrase means THE BET HAS NOT BEEN PLACED, IT MAY BE PLACED IN THE FUTURE, WE WILL LET YOU KNOW.

When an on-line order for other goods and services is placed, we usually receive a message such as "Order received. Your order will be processed within 24 hours." That makes clear that although the order has been placed, no action has been taken on it by the merchant. BRISBet's phrase would be similar to on-line merchants instead replying with "Your ordered merchandise has been shipped" when they actually will not act on it for 24 hours.

BRISBet and others should have the same honesty as others and say "We have received your order. It will be placed in the pool at [insert time]. Until that time, it has not been placed and is merely pending."

Also, BRISBet does not let you cancel wagers. Why not? Since some wagers are not processed for hours, why cannot a wager be canceled during this period of pendancy?

But remain aware that "Bet successfully placed" does not actually mean your bet was successfully placed.

ranchwest

I am a programmer, so I understand that this is all highly complex, but I really don't see the difference between getting a ticket at an OTB outlet in person and getting it online. They have to keep track of it and submit it into the pool in either case.

GameTheory

The bets they take in the normal window of time right before the race must go right through -- they've got to get it into the pool after all. But BrisBet will accept wagers on any track (it seems) that is running that day as soon as they start accepting wagers for the first track in the morning. You can probably bet Mountaineer night races as soon as Aqueduct starts in the afternoon, but there are no Mountaineer pools yet so they hang on to them for a while...

ranchwest

I don't understand why they would operate differently from the track, except that the track has to answer to the racing commission. I've watched tellers request clearance for early wagering. It appeared that someone establishes a connection and thereafter wagers go through, but I don't have specific knowledge of how it works.