Betfair Problem? again

[RJM]

It is not Gruss's fault.

Complain to Betfair.

[GaryRussell]

In case they remove it from the forum, which they usually do.

Betfair Engineering 31 Jan 11:22
We are currently experiencing issues with our API service (as of 11:15 GMT).

We apologise for any inconvenience caused and can assure our customers that this is being treated as the top priority and all available resources are working to restore service.



Betfair Engineering 31 Jan 11:42
Earlier API issues should now resolved. Once again we would like apologise for any inconvenience caused.

1.01 landed
All messages regarding outages have disappeared from Betfair's forum.

[mantas779]

Still not working here in The Netherlands!!

Bad service for BF , LIQ must be low on the website!!!

[MarkRussell]

Hi Everyone,

I'm really pissed off with Betfair. They should not allow a degraded service to continue to operate knowing full well that it can potentially lose people money.

They should just take it offline and fix it properly.

Rant over.

Mark

[Dai_Young]

You're not wrong Mark. Truly one of the worst days in the history of betfair. A near eight hour outage followed by a day in which the API went down on umpteen occasions. And it's still not fixed.

[olisav]

I would like to thank Gruss for keeping us updated.

I do have a suggestion, would it be possible to send an email when the API goes down, or is "degraded"?

I check my emails quite often, but dont start betting assistant very often.

I have to admit, it is extremly poor the way Betfair does not react to the API going down. This is a firm that is going to float itself on the stock market in Autumn and days like Saturday will hit turnover, especially as it was a big day of sport.

The problem when companies do go public is that they try and get the P+L as high as possible meaning they reduce the service, hence the cost and try to get as much money as possible with the premium charge. It is all about the short term gain at the moment.

Does anyone think it will be better or worse when they list?

[Steve Voltage]

I would like to thank Gruss for keeping us updated.

I do have a suggestion, would it be possible to send an email when the API goes down, or is "degraded"?

I check my emails quite often, but dont start betting assistant very often.

I have to admit, it is extremly poor the way Betfair does not react to the API going down. This is a firm that is going to float itself on the stock market in Autumn and days like Saturday will hit turnover, especially as it was a big day of sport.

The problem when companies do go public is that they try and get the P+L as high as possible meaning they reduce the service, hence the cost and try to get as much money as possible with the premium charge. It is all about the short term gain at the moment.

Does anyone think it will be better or worse when they list?

See ya at the purple site.

[doris_day]

I think its important to realise that nothing will happen if people only post on forums. Betfair will take action I believe if they have enough people complaining to them directly.

So I'd encourage those who were/are not happy with the Betfair service, which certainly includes me, to email them at either info@betfair.com or bdp@betfair.com Or preferably send emails to both addresses.

This weekend was one of the worst episodes and as Gary has mentioned, they really should have taken the API down completely until it was properly fixed.

[greenfingers]

I completely agree that Betfair should take the service down when it is not working properly. Unfortunately I can't see that happening until it hits them financially.

At the moment they can continue collecting commission for the bets that do get through to the system inbetween crashes and in the meantime just do a reboot or whatever to get the system back up asap in whatever state.

It doens't bother them if a bunch of traders lose money not being able to close their trades. If they faced losing a day's profit through the system continually being made available in a sub-standard state then they would make sure it was fixed before bringing it back up. They have no incentive.

I think it is appaling that they haven't properly acknowledged the problems this weekend on the System forum and the API message that was there regarding mobile, poker and video was taken down.

I am thinking about starting a blog to keep all the betfair forum posts available for good (by just copying them into posts). And to note when there are problems that aren't being acknowledged. Leaving the comments available for users will give any investors in the IPO some reality of the situation (If it is indeed happening, Mark Davies has again denied it recently).

What do you think about the blog idea? It would be good to start it off with any of the messages that have been posted this week. Does anyone have copies?

[Kevsy]

Yesterday was a disgrace. I've mailed betfair but no doubt I'll be lucky to get a reply. I ended up in a situation yesterday where some bets triggered and others didn't. I wasn't at my PC so there was nothing I could do about it and of course the losing bets all fired!!! But to make money I need all my bets to fire.

Greenfingers that is a good idea. I mentioned to them in my complaint that taking these service messages down means people have no idea when logging after a site failure that there has been a problem.

Gary, I know you gave more info than Betfair yesterday which was appreciated, but do you not have a relationship manager of some sort at betfair whom you can speak to on behalf of your users who surely must be paying hefty commissions and premium charges between them.

[GaryRussell]

Yesterday was a disgrace. I've mailed betfair but no doubt I'll be lucky to get a reply. I ended up in a situation yesterday where some bets triggered and others didn't. I wasn't at my PC so there was nothing I could do about it and of course the losing bets all fired!!! But to make money I need all my bets to fire.

Greenfingers that is a good idea. I mentioned to them in my complaint that taking these service messages down means people have no idea when logging after a site failure that there has been a problem.

Gary, I know you gave more info than Betfair yesterday which was appreciated, but do you not have a relationship manager of some sort at betfair whom you can speak to on behalf of your users who surely must be paying hefty commissions and premium charges between them.

Yes. I will be talking to my contacts in the API team. We have a good relationship. Unfortunately they do not work weekends so I could not speak to them until today.

[Kevsy]

Good stuff. I'd be interested to hear what they say. Although as somebody who deals with clients in in similar way in different industry I'm sure they will just lie.

[doris_day]

Give them hell....

"Unfortunately they do not work weekends so I could not speak to them until today."

And tell them that as the API is such an important element in their service a team that can handle API issues should be on call 24/7. I sent them an email to this effect too but the more people that say the same thing will help.

[2020vision]

Maybe I'm just a sucker for punishment - did me for another £27 a few minutes ago

Been hiccupping for me all morning but had Trader out ready for emergency.
Still caught me out right at the last few seconds!

Rang Betfair - they said sorry, trying to fix it, getting lots of complaints, etc.
Don't use it if you are not prepared to take losses.

Have now quit for a while. Why oh why can the outage ever seem to go in my favour?

Have a nice day - Michael

[GaryRussell]

I have spoken to Betfair and they are obviously aware of everyone's concerns. They still haven't found the root cause of the problems yet so we still advise caution. I have asked for better communication in future (especially at weekends) and they are looking into it.