Poker Forum

Over 1,247,000 Posts!

REGISTER
Subscribe to FTR web feed
Already Registered?      Username:    Password:   Remember      Forgot Password

Poker Forum

  > 

News, Reviews and Discussions

  > 

Cheating and mistreating customers. A Betsafe story.

  
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Display Modes
Ben Poker
Old 08-25-2008, 07:38 PM     Post subject: Cheating and mistreating customers. A Betsafe story. #1 (permalink)  

Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 1
Ben Poker
By Danish Poker Player Ben Sørensen Angel 9,

Is poker Jungle Law territory?
Should Poker sites be allowed to break legal agreements?

In March 2008 I signed up as a semi-professional player
with Betsafe, a Scandinavian skin under CryptoLogic.
2 month later the deal was called off out
of time, without proper cause, without compensation
and against a solid verbal agreement. Without the means
to press charges and after being repeatedly stalled and
ignored by Betsafe staff and CEO it’s about time other players
are warned against Betsafe’s methods.

In March 2008, I signed up a contract with Betsafe giving me a total of 72-75% rakeback and we agreed it would run for at least a year. It would then be renegotiated. I initially asked for a deal in writing but Betsafe’s agent convinced me that a verbal deal was enough, due to Betsafe’s high moral standards.
In March Betsafe’s mother company, WagerLogic, changed the rake for all Cryptologic skins and I had to accept a deal of 70% total rakeback, obviously against my will but under threats of having the deal cancelled.
In the start of April I was informed by Betsafe that my deal was cancelled as it was too favourable. They are only allowed a certain number of special deals by WagerLogic and they wanted to give it to someone else. I contacted Betsafe and informed them that they had illegally cancelled a deal out of time. They maintained that the deal was off and refused to pay compensation.
I then contacted WagerLogic, who forced Betsafes CEO to contact me. But after having 2 mails ignored by the CEO and getting no further help from WagerLogic, I decided it was time to warn other players and start a discussion of ethics in the game of poker.

My opinion is that Betsafe has done this for one reason only. Because they are used to get away with it! Players can’t be bothered to keep up their complaints against uneven odds. They back down and Betsafe can then get out of their unlawful and unethical acts without paying compensation.
The question is whether we should accept that poker gets a somewhat shade Wild West reputation for deal-breaking and mistreatment of players?
My answer is no. It’s bad for business. Hopefully for Betsafe in the long run, but also for us players as new “customers” are scared away by such behavior.
Poker will get a bad reputation if the various poker sites are not controlled. That would be done best of all by the mother companies. In this case that is WagerLogic who totally failed their responsibility and didn’t put proper pressure on Betsafe.

In the end if nothing else works it is time for players to act on their own and speak up out against the “rotten apples” so that their acts doesn’t go unpunished. If enough players speak up, poker sites like Betsafe start to loose customers and money. And I think for now, that’s the only language they understand.

For those interested I’ve put in a couple of quotes from mail correspondence to show that I’ve taken this serious and aren’t exaggerating:
First quote: From my Letter of complaint.
"I stopped playing at Betsafe two weeks ago after having a special deal terminated ahead of time.

In the start of February I made a deal with Betsafe. At the time I could get 38% rakeback + 1000$ bonus and on top of that a 10000$ tournament buy-inn from for every 50000$ rake were added. It was a part of the deal that I couldn’t attend any other promotions though.

I negotiated with David. After the deal was struck he reassured me that it wasn’t necessary to have anything in writing as Betsafe was a serious business. I agreed that it would just be a verbal deal. And I’ll remind you that a verbal deal is just as binding as a written one. This is not just a matter of good business. This is the law.

I started playing the 9th of February. On the 1st of March Betsafe changed the rakeback and bonus rates and we adjusted it to a new deal of 50% rakeback + the 10000$ buy-inn for every 50000$ rake I made.

On the 10th of April I was told on Messenger that it was too good a deal and that it was terminated.

I have never in my years of poker been mistreated this way. I spent time negotiating a deal and played for two months keeping my end of the deal. I even accepted going a bit down in rake when you changed the rakeback and bonus on the 1st of March, because David had made a mistake. After that I was fair enough to inform you, when you mistakenly invited me to a tournament I wasn’t eligible for according to the terms of our deal.

You on the other hand, changed the deal once and then terminated it a month later way ahead of time. Any serious business with any respect for fairness, the law, their own brand and pokers reputation would have let the deal run its first term and then renegotiated."

Second quote.:From Betsafe's letter of termination.
It proves that Betsafe terminated the deal out of time. Note that the deal was changed to a 70% rakeback in march, which means that it did make financial sence:
"After carefully reviewing you situation we have decided the following.
• During your time with Betsafe you have raked a total of $7131
• Our initial agreement was 38% rakeback, 17% back from your $1000 bonus and 20% towards tournament buy-ins. Which equates to approximately 75% return on your rake. This was based on the criteria that you raked $50,000 total
• We terminated this agreement early due to the fact that this deal did not make financial sense and the facts were that we were actually making a loss on this deal."
Reply With Quote

Play for FREE and practice your game at...

Join the FTR Poker Forum to disable these banners and start posting!
Reply
Latest Poker News
Bbickes Old 06-02-2012, 08:10 PM    Merge Network 6.0 Looks to Retain Current Player Base
In an effort to perhaps keep players from moving to the new Revolution Network setup by the former Lock Poker, Merge Network has taken drastic steps to respond to their player base's requests to impro ...

« Previous Thread | Next Thread »
Thread Tools
Display Modes
Linear Mode Linear Mode

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


All times are GMT. The time now is 12:26 PM.

Contact Us - Archive - Top

FTR Testimonials

All content
© FlopTurnRiver.com 		Advertising  |   Partners  |   Testimonials  |   T&C  |   Contact Us  |   FTR News & Press  |   Site Map  |   Search FTR

Full Tilt  |   Titan Poker  |   UltimateBet  |   Poker Stars  |   Ladbrokes Bonus  |   Sportsbook  |   Cake Poker  

Play Texas Holdem Online, Online Texas Holdem Strategy, & Poker Forum
This is not a gambling website.