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FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error

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Re: FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error

#201

Post by cannonedhamster »

EpicEng wrote: post #44
maxerickson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's obvious about that? To me the obvious thing is that bookies have to honor the bets they sell and get to eat their delicious mistakes. It's within their power to improve their automated system to not offer stupid bets.

>It's within their power to improve their automated system to not offer stupid bets So then it's also within your power to never write bugs. Have you ever written any? How did that happen? It was within your power not to do so, right?

It is very typical for contracts between businesses to include monetary penalties for bugs that are service or uptime impacting, so yes many other companies are required to pay for their major bugs, why not a betting company?

Re: FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error

#202

Post by cannonedhamster »

link_108 wrote: post #120
EpicEng wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now it only matters in finance? No one lost anything here. It's ridiculous to expect a payout due to an error like this. You wouldn't get one at a casino if e.g. a slot machine malfunctioned. What if the payout was $500M? Should they have to pay that as well?

Actually you won't get a payout if the slot machine malfunctioned: https://vegasclick.com/games/slots/malfunctions

The difference being that the slot machine owners are not the slot machine developers and it is not within their power to do anything to prevent the errors.

Re: FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error

#203

Post by turtlecloud »

Obviously from reading these comments, most people here are not gamblers and prob do not have much interaction with bookies.

With bookies your honor and reputation is #1.

When you gamble, you take a risk and the counterparts takes a risk. Then it is up to Lady Luck to decide.

If you take a bet, you can’t back out. Just don’t take the bet in the first place.

In this case the guy sure had his stars aligned. To not honor that is insulting to all gamblers who respect the unknown and risk taking. They broke the social contract between the gambler and bookie.

Fanduel absolutely does not deserve to be company and should be grouped together with all the shady overseas bookies.

Re: FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error

#204

Post by subjectHarold »

barking wrote: post #181
subjectHarold wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Insider knowledge" isn't illegal and they couldn't care less what the outcome is. They make money by attracting customers who aren't sophisticated. If they want to know what the "right" price is, they just look at the Asian books (they don't employ people to help predict outcomes either).

maybe you're right but it being a well documented fact that they discourage successful punters to the extent of circulating photographs to betting shops makes me wonder. If someone is doing unusually well on their exchange why wouldn't they use that data, PP are extremely good at maximising every edge they have.

Again, because that information isn't useful. It is useful if you care about the result...but if you are bookie, you don't. You look at the line on the Asian books or Pinnacle, that is the correct price (and is unbeatable for 99.9% of people). You make money on marking up that line to punters. PP's edge is marketing. They don't care about creating an edge because they know they don't have any, they are the most unsophisticated actors in the market (apart from punters). Their only concern is an unbalanced book (which occurs frequently in the UK due to the popularity of 1x2).

You also misunderstand what "successful punter" means. I have been banned from almost every major online book in the UK, they have no problem with people winning. If you are winning on their lines in a big liquid market, they really couldn't care less. They markup 5-10%, most syndicates can't beat that line so it is very unlikely that a random punter can. The problem is arbitrage (it is even worse in store). If you picked every winner this weekend in the EPL and won £100k, you wouldn't get limited...they would welcome you with open arms. If you put £1 on a price that is soft against Asian book, you will get banned instantly and your bets voided.

If you are sharp (much less than ~1% of the gambling population are), you will get limited but this is because most bookies can't provide the liquidity that sharps need. Again, their edge is marketing. They make money on the EPL or NFL. If you come along wanting £10k on Colo-Colo in the Chilean Primeria, they know they aren't going to make money on that. Asian bookies do respond to liquidity and will move their lines when the smart money comes in (that is how they make money). UK bookies don't (that can't make money doing that).

Re: FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error

#205

Post by mmt »

mikeash wrote: post #196
shawnz wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is yet another instance where companies automate processes that previously involved humans, then compensate for the newly introduced errors by blaming the customer In either the digital or analog cases of your example, the end result is that the customer ends up paying the intended price. The only difference is that with the digital case, they might find out about it slightly later. How is this a "newly found…

That’s not the end result at all. There are three possibilities: 1. The error is corrected before the sale and the customer pays the corrected price. 2. The error is corrected before the sale and the customer changes their mind. 3. The error is not corrected before the sale and the customer pays the erroneous price. Companies are trying to change a 3 into a 1 by blaming computers and saying the error should have been…

To be fair, they may also be trying to change a 3 into a 2 (or providing that option), but "trying" is the key word. There are enough high-value and/or physically large items that aren't cars (e.g. HDTVs, furniture) where undoing the transaction can be a huge imposition, even not considering that the merchandise is now no longer brand new and the customer must duplicate effort in the purchase process.

Re: FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error

#206

Post by [deleted] »

corobo wrote: post #116
dumbfounder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disgusting? So if you see a sign on a car for sale that says $19,95 because a digit fell off, the dealer is obligated to sell it to you at that price? People and systems make mistakes, that doesn't mean it's "disgusting" that they protect themselves financially from those mistakes.

The bet was already made, the details agreed upon. In your scenario if the dealer said "Yerp, whatever's on the window is whatever you're paying" and you hand over your $20 and they accept it as payment then yes, I would expect them to honor it. Would FanDuel void your bet if you misread the odds?

[deleted]

Re: FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error

#207

Post by ddingus »

tomtheelder wrote: post #54
heavymark wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine if they had to honor, they would make it priority number one resolving those bugs, and make changes to make the bugs more apparent to people in the process. If they don't have to pay, there isn't much of an incentive to prioritize the fixes, especially since I imagine if the bugs are in the favor of the company they can make a lot of money.

I'm sure it is already a high priority, but it is a system built by humans, and it will always have mistakes. What if they were being forced to pay out 82 million instead of thousand? What about 82 billion? There should be clear cut laws surrounding clear errors, like there are in most places, and ones like this should not be forced to pay out.

There are legal arguments that become valid at those amounts.

There is a difference between:

Ouch, that stung! Must do better.

That amount kills the business!

They own my whole enterprise now?

This is a sting. Quality control tax.

They should pay up, suck it up, maximize good will, and prevent it from happening again.

Given this gaffe, it is even odds they have pocketed more than this amount from errors going the other way.

Re: FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error

#208

Post by ddingus »

ddingus wrote: post #145
TwitchySeal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except then they have to pay out every other time there's a bug.

No risk, no reward.

Let me rephrase:

No honor, no bets.

I would not place a bet with them now.

Re: FanDuel not honoring bet that would have paid over $82,000 due to line error

#209

Post by 6nf »

TomMarius wrote: post #41
zacharycohn wrote: post #32

This is why smart contracts aren't nearly as good as people make them out to be.

What do you mean? A smart contract would force them to fulfill the bet, no?

Yea that's the problem. Let's say the smart contract accidentally burns the money instead of paying it out due to a bug in the contract code. No recourse.
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