ANOTHER TOTE MALFUNCTION LEAVES SOME CUSTOMERS AT A LOSS
By Ray Paulick
TwinSpires advance deposit wagering company has posted a message on its website acknowledging an outage on Sunday night involving tote company Amtote that affected Hollywood Park’s ninth race and the 11th race at Sun Ray racetrack.
The outage was brought to the Paulick Report’s attention by a TwinSpires.com customer who said his wagers on Hollywood Park’s ninth race were acknowledged as “completed” on his wagering history page but were not paid out when his winning wagers came in. The outage is at least the third tote problem since Kentucky Derby day when another Amtote malfunction caused numerous ADW customers to get shut out on their Kentucky Derby bets. A tote problem involving Scientific Games equipment surfaced at Monmouth Park on Belmont Stakes day, causing a drop in handle at the New Jersey track.
TwinSpires acknowledged the problem and said it was refunding wagers but apparently not making good on winning selections that were “lost in transmission.”
Following is the note posted at TwinSpires.com:
“Amtote experienced an outage Sunday evening for approximately 10 minutes which resulted in wagers for race 9 at Hollywood Park and race 11 for Sun Ray Park not making it into the host track’s pool. All wagers were refunded. We are working to gather the details of all the races, wagers and players impacted by this Amtote outage. We will provide more information on the situation as soon it becomes available. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.”
The following email was sent to the Paulick Report by a TwinSpires customer Sunday evening:
“I placed multiple wagers through Twinspires.com on race 9 at Hollywood Park, today June 27, and they are not honoring any of the wagers because they say there was a tansmission error on Am tote’s end. I do not understand this because I pull up my wager history at twinspires.com and all wagers I have placed says "completed". The wager was successfully submitted on my end and to twinspires. Since the wager was sucessfully transmitted aren’t they essentially booking my wager and not paying me what I am do for my WP and trifecta payout? They paid out all multi race wagers ending in race 9 such as pick 3, DD, pick 4 etc, but they are not paying out any intra-race wager made on race 9.
“Several of my wagers were made with at least 10 MTP, some closer, but they all say completed on my transaction history, which I printed out, but they were all refunded. This does not seem right. They accepted my wager. I am betting with twinspires and not amtote. i could have printed out my wager ticket right after I bet it on twinspires and should be paid on that ticket right? They dont wait until the last minute to transmit wagers and even if they did they removed the funds from my account on the wager. Every dollar I spent on race 9 was taken out of my account. So they obviously accepted it. Even if it did not get submitted from twinspires into the pool, which seems unlikely, it was accepted by twinspires so shouldnt they be liable?”
So TwinSpires said wagers will be refunded, even though a customer’s wagering history showed the bet as “completed.” Should the company be required to make good on winning wagers (where a customer can show that his transactions were “completed)? Wouldn’t TwinSpires simply pass the loss along to Amtote?
If the wagering provider was required to make good on such tote malfunctions, more serious efforts might be made to upgrade and modernize the aging tote systems that seem to be plaguing the industry’s customers with increasing frequency.
Copyright © 2010, Blenheim Publishing , LLC
Savvy businesses recognize value. Advertise in the Paulick Report.
Sign up for our Email Flashes to get the latest news, analysis and commentary from Ray Paulick
Tags: amtote, Hollywood Park, Paulick Report, Ray Paulick, twinspires
June 28th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Ray: As a lawyer, i believe that this man has a case for breach of contract, if his records say the transaction is complete. the basics of contract law are offer and acceptance. If the bet was lost in transaction by twinspires, unless their agreement with their customers allows them to do this, then he has a case. He needs to talk to a good lawyer in his state….Regards ,, John Roark
June 28th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
This is free rolling the customer. I’m sure Twinspire won’t admit this, but if they had significant losing tickets far outweighing winning payouts, they could keep their mouth shut and pocket the money. And why if tickets were placed before the Amtote problem, are they not honored? For instance, tickets that may have been placed the morning of the race…….if Twinspires is saying they wait until the last moment to submit all wagers, that sure sounds like pool manipulation to me.
June 28th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Heads I win, tails you lose. Nothing has changed since the Fix 6 and the big Guiliani consulting contract.
June 28th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
and this is why it is hard to get new people into horse racing. absolutely ridiculous. twin spires should guarantee that every bet that is “completed” gets paid out, regardless of their problems with Amtote. What if this had been a $30K payout? They would be looking at lawsuits.
June 28th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Rules, regs and (in some states) statutes scrutinize and govern on-track pari-mutuel conduct. ADW operations have been out in front of regulation ever since TVG took the first legal on-line bet. Maybe we need an industry committee or summit to look into things; shouldn’t take any time to clear things up.
June 28th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Regardless of teh reasons for the “malfunction.” Twin spires should do the right thing and honor the bets. It is just good buisness. Take care of your customers and they will take care of you. Treat them poorly and they will not come back. What could this actually cost them? Come on Twin Spires do the right thing!!
June 28th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
The industry was told years ago that its tote systems were outdated, poorly managed, and in need of safeties that ensure the public isn’t getting ripped off. The tote providers might be running things on newer computers and with more capable technicians, but the bettor is probably worse off than 20 years ago with the amount of incompetence that’s gone around. Basic security in horse betting to ensure that the public is getting fair play and fair payouts seems at a bare minimum.
It is difficult enough to handicap a race and cash a winning ticket. Where does it leave the bettor when the reliability of the track and ADW totes are a gamble in themselves? Between the Fix 6 (which could very well happen again), cases of past posting, and botches like this, how can a bettor possibly put down ANY kind of money and fully trust the system? If the very setup through which betting operates at tracks like Churchill, Monmouth, and Hollywood can’t be relied on, this sport is RIP.
June 28th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
I’m sorry if the money is taken out of your account and you have a print out that is pretty much a contract in my book. The problem is how many people who got “screwed” are willing to take this to were it should be taken court. I’m sure they would be willing to “settle” than have this dragged into court costing them lots more in legal fees. We as bettors bend over how many times a year when we bet on a horse and lose later to find out the horse that beat us has been DQ for a medication violation and we have no recorse? Somebody need to take a stand for the wagering public and I think this is a perfect case.
Bob
June 28th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
@Robert : Court would be a first step, but I think this is a situation where the federal government has to get involved. I hate government and they’ve fouled things up in parimutuel gaming many, many, many times, but I doubt the racetracks, ADWs, and OTBs are going to fix these problems on their own. If by some longshot racing was overseen on the federal level, any entity that is fouling up the pools could have their licenses revoked or have their wallets hit with fines. Maybe then, they’ll listen. For now, they’ve never cared about the public’s complaints, and never will.
June 28th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
As a lawyer Mr. Roark, before making such an ill-informed comment, you might want to read the TwinSpires Terms and Conditions (they are published on the home page and don’t require a login), which everyone who signs up for an account must agree to.
It clearly states that “If for some reason we are unable to commingle your wager with the host racetrack wagering pool, your wager will be refunded to your account.”
BTW … It’s also not unique to TwinSpires either, all the ADWs in Oregon have the same policy.
Having said that, every time this happens the ADWs that had the communications failure seems to give the customer a refund of all their losing wagers (according to the policy) and a ‘customer service adjustment’ for winning wagers once they are able to get the information from the tote companies on which wagers were thrown out. The ADW never ‘wins’ in this situation. They refund everything, and end up paying the winners.
It’s happened to me a couple of times over the years with AmericaTab, TwinSpires and YouBet. There have also been published reports that its happened with TVG and XpressBet, so it’s not just isolated to one one ADW. Sometimes it gets done quickly, and sometimes it takes a couple of days depending on what happened and how long it takes the ADW to balance the transactions.
By the way, it’s no different than what happens when you buy a ticket on track, or at an OTB. If the pools don’t get transmitted there, you are also getting a refund unless that location has a policy of ‘booking’ bets or creating its own pools which will vary by State laws as well.
Should it happen? No, but communications between all of these systems is going to make it happen every now and then. Until there is one centralized tote system things like this are going to occur, and even then comm lines between the device taking the bet and the centralized tote will still be an issue.
June 28th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Regardless of policy TwinSpires should pay the customer and AmTote should pay TwinSpires.
June 28th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
You gotta pay the customer if he won, its as simple as A B C. If the error is on your end, you have to eat the damages.
June 28th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Head of Churchill Downs came from GE. They are one of the worst in any sport for doing right by their customers. If you get paid it will be because they can’t win in court. Put nothing past them. They had a handicapping tournament that the customers truly enjoyed. It’s gone replaced with a half price contest. I buy nothing from GE and no way I will bet on a CD race.
They don’t care.
June 28th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
The same thing happened to me at TwinSpires on the 2nd race at Hollywood on June 16. I placed my wagers well in advance [to win and exacta boxes], got confirmations that the wagers were accepted, and, as usually is NOT the case, I hit both. When checking to see how much I won, TS indicated that I won nothing and my wagers had been refunded. I couldn’t figure out what happened at the time, and had been meaning to call TS to find out what happened. Upon reading this article, I checked my account and noticed that the winnings ultimately were credited to me on the 19th.
TS ultimately did the right thing, but the process does not inspire confidence, particularly given that based on this report it is a recurring problem.
June 28th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
One of the weaknesses in the tote system has been and continues to be the communication links between the hundreds of wagering sites transmitting data back and forth. Two of the US based tote companies have new ownership in the last few months - does anyone believe that new investments will be forthcoming and the systems upgraded?
June 29th, 2010 at 2:32 am
I personally got stung on this and if they dont honor the bets we posted,,,let’s do a class action,,I have several attorney friends in California and one of them is as pissed at I am. Just another way of running people away from horse racing.
June 29th, 2010 at 6:53 am
#15 Danzig. I have the answer to your very legitamate question:
“NO!!!!!: