Warning: Transaction charge

[methodman]

Capt. - They don't link them at the moment becuase I get a better commision rat on main a/c. so hopefully will be OK.

[Captain Sensible]

They don't link them for the purposes of commission but when checking for the data usage they will. Just email datausage@betfair.com and they'll reply quite quickly with details of your usage for all accounts you hold and any likely charges you might incur.

[methodman]

Now I am concerned I just got a resonse to my email requesting a breakdown and the charges for Feb would have been 6,049.06 on my test a/c and 5,844.91 on the main a/c. I think there needs to be some big changes to the software or i'm finnished.

[methodman]

I think we are going to need some way of testing the effect of changes to spreadsheeets etc. without actually incurring charges as the proposed charges are totally frightening.

[GaryRussell]

Do you monitor 2 tabs per meeting all at the same time?
Do you use cell Q2 to vary the refresh rate, if not then this could be used to greatly reduce the number of requests if you don't need to refresh them all at the same rate all the time.

I will be releasing an update in the next few weeks so you can test the request throttling option.

[methodman]

Been looking around the forum and found I can use cell Q2 to control the refresh rate so will set it to a slow refresh until the race goes inplay. Hope this makes a big difference.

[methodman]

Hi gary
Just crossed msgs - I open up a tab for the win market and another for the place market, and repeat this for each meeting so I usually have eight tabs open (on both a/cs) and all have been refreshing as fast as possible. the Q2 will make a big difference I will set a slow refresh and speed it up when the event goes inplay. So I just need to work out how fast I can refresh inplay. I know from my testing that if I dont use a high refresh it has a big impact on my success rate.

regards
John

[Captain Sensible]

Now I am concerned I just got a resonse to my email requesting a breakdown and the charges for Feb would have been 6,049.06 on my test a/c and 5,844.91 on the main a/c. I think there needs to be some big changes to the software or i'm finnished.

Ouch!!!! I imagine you're not alone with those sort of charges as they'll be a lot of other BA users with many tabs open monioring markets. You only need to look on the forum to see people are monitoring markets/meetings in separate tabs. Some people are gonna be in for a shock come April.

[Castillo]

I will be releasing an update in the next few weeks so you can test the request throttling option.

I hope Betfair will at least give us some stats of our usage after April, because with transaction charges a debit is made from your account with NO notification or info.
Betfair obviously have to count the transactions and data requests made to apply the charges, so they should make this information available.

Gary, are there plans to implement the transaction counting facility earlier, as these charges are already being made by Betfair?

It would at least give us the opportunity to amend spreadsheets to bet <1000 transactions per hour and then later we can worry about data requests per second.

Cheers
Castillo

[Captain Sensible]

I doubt it will happen castillo. Betfair have all the data at their fingertips and should really provide us with access to some kind of data usage/transaction page we can poll to avoid charges.

Won't happen though because betfair would much rather just charge without any notification. When I asked about my data usage I also requested deatils of any other transaction charges I'd incurred but as usual that part of the email was convieniantly overlooked.

Maybe in years to come we'll see user action groups akin to the bank charges lobby How many other companies can get away making charges on your account with any notification or even a breakdown of how they set those charges.

[MarkRussell]

Now I am concerned I just got a resonse to my email requesting a breakdown and the charges for Feb would have been 6,049.06 on my test a/c and 5,844.91 on the main a/c. I think there needs to be some big changes to the software or i'm finnished.

Ouch!!!! I imagine you're not alone with those sort of charges as they'll be a lot of other BA users with many tabs open monioring markets. You only need to look on the forum to see people are monitoring markets/meetings in separate tabs. Some people are gonna be in for a shock come April.

As Gary said we have been told by Betfair that it only affects a small minority of our users. We will make every effort to prevent users from having a shock by insisting that they confirm they are aware of these charges before continuing to use the program. We are even considering disabling accounts where we have not been able to get this confirmation which will force them to contact us for an explanation.

[MarkRussell]

I will be releasing an update in the next few weeks so you can test the request throttling option.

I hope Betfair will at least give us some stats of our usage after April, because with transaction charges a debit is made from your account with NO notification or info.
Betfair obviously have to count the transactions and data requests made to apply the charges, so they should make this information available.

Gary, are there plans to implement the transaction counting facility earlier, as these charges are already being made by Betfair?

It would at least give us the opportunity to amend spreadsheets to bet <1000 transactions per hour and then later we can worry about data requests per second.

Cheers
Castillo

[MarkRussell]

I will be releasing an update in the next few weeks so you can test the request throttling option.

I hope Betfair will at least give us some stats of our usage after April, because with transaction charges a debit is made from your account with NO notification or info.
Betfair obviously have to count the transactions and data requests made to apply the charges, so they should make this information available.

Gary, are there plans to implement the transaction counting facility earlier, as these charges are already being made by Betfair?

It would at least give us the opportunity to amend spreadsheets to bet <1000 transactions per hour and then later we can worry about data requests per second.

Cheers
Castillo

The next update will count transactions and requests and enable you to throttle requests to 20 per second. With the throttling turned on and one instance of BA running and the website not being used it will be impossible to run up charges for requests.

[mantas779]

Mail from BF

Our data indicates that because you use a high-performance application


There is also a: Every £1 in commission (or implied commission) therefore gives you 5000 free requests above the 20 per second threshold.

gives me at least 25000 free requests per day

[methodman]

Some good news - I made changes to my code to set the refresh to 1.0 and then to 0.1 only during inplay and my charges for the last few days show as minus charges. So as long as you are aware of whats going on it should be OK.