BWIN.com Steals €2432 from player – Downgraded to D+
Posted by admin on 31 January 2012 in Betting Sites NewsSports Betting Sites downgraded Bwin.com to D+ due to a recent report by Justin7 of Sports Book Review (SBR) that they stole €2432 from a punter. In our young history this is the largest downgrade we’ve ever made as we had recently upgraded Bwin.com from C to B and then B to A- following the idea their past shady behavior had come to an end since merging with PartyGaming. It now appears this is not the case and Bwin is up to their old tricks again robbing winning players with little or no recourse. For reasons covered in this article we believe punters should consider boycotting Bwin.com.
Prior to reporting the news allow me to be clear our website has no association at all with SBR or the below video. However as a member of SBRForum.com and being well familiar with Justin7 this is most certainly a report I trust. Justin7’s real name is Elihu D. Feustel and he’s the author of the book Conquering Risk: Attacking Las Vegas and Wall Street that can be found for sale online at amazon.com. He’s an attorney, a professional sports bettor, and well before becoming SBR moderator Justin7 he was a member of betting forums and also worked as a prop line manager for popular Sportsbook Pinnacle Sports. I can’t recall ever following a complaint between a bettor and a sportsbook where I do not agree or understand Justin7’s position. With this said the video is below and allow me to cover the news.
Details of Latest Bwin.com Scam
According to a “Are You Serious” YouTube Video Justin7 released January 30, 2012: back on October 5, 2011 a sports bettor had their Bwin.com account locked. They wrote Bwin dozens of emails without getting a response and about a month and a half later found SBR and filed a complaint. It took SBR over one month contacting BWIN to finally get a resolution. Now during this entire time (October 5 to December 29) the player was not told what the problem was with her account. For a month SBR was not told the problem with the account. Finally on December 29th the player was paid €11,000 Euros which was €2432 less than the balance she had. No explanation for why the payment was short was given.
Justin7 claims to have written them around a dozen times trying to find out what the problem was with the account and then the reason for shorting the payment €2432. Finally he was given the response: “This user’s account has been closed permanently as we have reason to believe she is part of a betting syndicate”. After much pressing they finally said their reason for believing this was that several accounts placed bets within a few minutes of each other and €2432 was the amount of winnings from these wagers.
SBS Opinion and Action
Okay forgetting Justin7’s comments for now, to give my own which are similar. There are many reasons users might post bets within a few minutes of each other. Example a tout (someone who sells picks) might release a play. News breaks on some media site about an injury, someone running hot on twitter makes a tweet, heck ESPN or the local news station might say something that leads to this. There are even Free Picks Sites, as well as countless other reasons.
However let’s just assume it was a betting syndicate, even though there is no evidence of this. Even if it was, the solution is NEVER to void a bet after the match took place or to hold someone’s account balance hostage. You can ban the user, you can void the bet before the match starts, you can cut the users limits on future bets, but under no subjective circumstances (previously banned, stolen credit card, being non-subjective) is it correct to wait for the game to finish and then void the bet after the fact. Would they be voiding the bet and returning the losses had the bet lost? Of course not, this is a freeroll against the player, keep the money if she loses and void the bet if she wins.
Back to Justin7’s comments, he ends his video claiming this classifies as a theft and he’s voting for SBR to downgrade them. Well I’m just a member of that forum, but I do run a sportsbook rating guide of my own, and I’ve decided to downgrade BWIN straight from A- to D+. Again this is the largest rating drop in our sites young history. At such time BWIN returns the money they stole their rating will be reconsidered. Until that time, they are now Sports Betting Sites Rated D+.
Related Links
You can follow or comment on this BWIN theft over in this SBRForum Thread. Also quick shout out to my friend Steve who exposes BWIN Affiliate Program Scams.
Trackbacks
Special thanks to the sites below for assisting in spreading the warning about BWIN’s Rogue behavior.