IBAS would like to take the opportunity to remind consumer visitors to the site of the importance of taking all reasonable steps to try solve a dispute with the company before turning to IBAS.
Last night (Thursday 28th December) a Premier League football match between Crystal Palace and Arsenal caused apparent dissatisfaction among some statistical bettors regarding the way that a particular match incident was recorded by a third party data provider. Apparently, the feed supplied by the data provider was used by bookmakers to settle bets. In this particular incident, the disputes concern whether an attempt on goal by one player was correctly recorded as a 'cross' or a 'shot'.
The match concluded shortly before 10.00pm but between 10.00pm and 2.00am, IBAS had received over 100 new consumer registrations, the majority of whom immediately submitted a request for adjudication on a dispute with their bookmaker. Further complaints continued to be received during the morning and afternoon today (Friday 29th December).
In our view, this is too quick a turnaround time to realistically claim that every chance has been given to resolve a dispute.
We fully appreciate that discovering a bet that you believe to be a winner has been settled as a loser is both frustrating and concerning and we understand that you will want to have the matter examined and resolved at the earliest opportunity. However, the purpose of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) like IBAS is to act as a near-last resort after you have tried as much as reasonably possible to sort out the situation with the bookmaker.
Typically, before you complete an online claim form we would expect that you would:
a) Telephone, email or write to complain about the settlement of the disputed bet
b) If you are dissatisfied by the response, contact the company again to set out the reasons why you think that their position is unfair
c) If that does not produce a reasonable outcome, request that you complaint is looked at by a senior customer service manager
d) Finally, explain to the company that you feel left with little choice but to take the matter to an ADR service like IBAS. Ask them for confirmation that they agree no compromise can be reached.
On some occasions there may appear little prospect that a compromise can be achieved, but if you have not taken the steps above before contacting IBAS, there is a good chance that the process will stall at our end because the bookmaker will not have recorded your dispute as having reached a 'deadlock' stage.
It is in everyone's interest, most of all your own, that IBAS forms are not completed on impulse but only at a time when it is clear that the company considers its position to be final.