I WAS reminded of a remarkable case earlier in the week, and although it’s important to note that the scenario comes from a year ago, and was brought up out of context, the underpinning principle remains.

In December 2016, a story ran in various news outlets about a punter who found that Ladbrokes had skimmed almost £1,300 from his betting account using an obscure rule as justification. Like most online firms, Ladbrokes brought in a clause in their terms and conditions allowing them to deduct an “administration fee” from accounts which had been left inactive for a period of 12 months or more. The fee is set at £2 per month, or 5% of the balance of the account, whichever is greater.

You might think that a £2 charge for administration is not anything to get too wound up about, but there are two issues to consider in deciding whether such a rule is fair.

MONTHLY CHARGE

The first is that there is no real administration required beyond an automated e-mail, so no fee is really justifiable, for all they have become the norm across the industry.

The second thing to bear in mind is that even if it were justifiable or defensible to apply a monthly charge to inactive or dormant accounts, then that charge should be a flat rate.

The unfortunate punter, who eventually got his fees refunded by the betting giant, wasn’t being charged £2 like most punters in his shoes, but 5% of his balance, as that was the greater amount.

Having had a couple of significant wins, his balance at the time the charge was first applied was around £8,800, meaning the monthly administration fee started at £440.

Let’s cut to the chase here – charging punters two quid for inadvertently leaving money in dormant accounts is outrageous, for all it’s largely unnoticed. Charging £440 for the same lack of service is nothing short of robbery, but is allowed because of historically weak regulation, which has allowed betting companies to levy whatever fee they feel is appropriate.

It was reported that Ladbrokes made a full refund and apologised to Mr Mackay, but it’s again important to put this in perspective. The money was refunded because a court challenge would almost certainly have left the firm with no choice, and the only thing Ladbrokes apologised for was not sending their customer a message to let him know he was about to see his funds siphoned off.

ANOMALY

There is absolutely no limit to the charge which can be levied, and while the notion that a basic fee can range from £2 to £440 or higher might seem to be an error in administration, the wording of Ladbrokes T&Cs has not been changed to reflect this anomaly, and means that massive chunks of punters’ money is still under threat in similar scenarios.

It’s possible that the lack of communication between Ladbrokes and their customer in this instance was purely accidental, but such emails are easily automated, and it’s hard to excuse the apparent slyness of the manoeuvre.

It’s not enough for punters to find themselves victimised by unfair terms only for firms to issue a trite apology when called out. This is akin to having your pocket picked in the street, catching the felon in the act, only for him to smile, slip your wallet back in your trousers and pat your backside as he walks off.

I talked last week about how Ladbrokes have work to do in order to re-establish customer trust, and while this case is an echo of past misdemeanours, the fact that the rule which allows the taking of funds by stealth survives shows that Ladbrokes are merely going through the motions.

What the firm, and others with similar rules, should do is to change this clause so that at worst a capped charge is applied, or preferably that no charge is made at all and every effort is made to inform customers with funded but dormant accounts that they have money to withdraw. That should be a common courtesy.

LIVING IN HOPE

I genuinely live in hope that one of the major players in the online betting market will realise that it might make better commercial sense to engage with their customers from the outset, and set out their terms and conditions in such a way that they resemble a two-way street establishing a fair field of play, rather than a set of traps to catch the unwary.

It’s impossible for customers to read through dozens of pages of rules and regulations every time they open a betting account, and even if they could, they would soon get sick of finding out the terms had changed every time they logged in.

Bookmakers, as a rule, aren’t trying to steal money from the unwary, but the application of such rules make it seem that some of them are, at least some of the time.

What astounds me more than the pettiness of applying needless and often obscene charges is that the response when such issues are tackled is to grudgingly refund and say nothing.

It’s not the done thing to admit that penny-pinching policies are loathed by customers, and the potential damage done to future revenue makes any short-term gain pointless, but it should be.

Bringing fair play back to the table might just be a winner for bookmakers.