Betfair Shambles

Another Saturday arrives and another Saturday we have a Betfair crash!

When is this recurring event of pure incompetence going to stop I ask? Never is the answer...

Betfair's instability has been a formality for years too be honest and this is no breaking news. But does this mean we just say ohh OK no problem, a company worth over 1 Billion is allowed to be unstable and have terms written in to their conditions to cover their backs when the %£$ hits the fan?

I don't have a problem with the scheduled down times that Betfair announce, as you simply stay clear of the markets for a day or so afterwards while they pull their finger out. But an outage out of the blue when you least expect it is a shambles. It's all a bit of a joke and there should be better rules and regs lined up to cover the customer if and more appropriately 'when' Betfair crashes again. Not just rules in small print to just cover Betfair, the principle is all wrong. Betfair are forcing us to play the all money on red situation when 'they' as a business can't keep the hamsters in their wheels running quick enough.

Lets be honest things aren't going to change for the following reasons:

1. Betfair can't take liability on all bets if a crash occurs.
2. Betfair are doing what is in their best interests and not the customers.
3. Anything can happen and systems can fail and become unstable.

But this is what I believe Betfair should implement: (in my dreams)

1. Build a bomb proof backup, (or 2) and have a carbon copy of the entire system with servers ready to go jump into action after an outage. This backup has to be running constantly and needs as much maintenance as the primary system. When a crash occurs it might be down a few seconds until the backup kicks into gear...but no worries. Money well spent in my eyes
2. Provide a better overall customer experience and listen to what people have to say.....at least send an apology email out to people for random outages and downtime. How hard is that?? Even go to the effort in offering people who are out of pocket a promotion... a free bet, a discounted voucher to the races, just anything to make the customer feel like their not been taken for a ride on a roller coaster with no harness.
3. When the downtime happens, offer everyone a chance to use the exchange at a discounted commission rate. Instead of 5%, offer a 2% day deal a few days later to make people smile and not frown. Give a little back to the people who are filling your pockets. It's really not that difficult.

There is too much taking and not enough giving back as fair as I'm concerned and its such a shame. I have listed just a few ways to really improve on things and take the exchange forward, and these are only ideas off the top of my head. However the honest truth is probably much of the same I'm sure...

So I'm guessing Betfair's next genius idea to build a better exchange is to....increase the premium charge rates. Ohhh you clever people you tut tut tut.

Post some comments below guys of your thoughts on how Betfair could improve. Cheers and cheerio :)