Skybet Shenanigans

[daveg]

I’ve had a right palaver with SkyBet this afternoon which I thought I’d share, mainly to vent my frustrations, also to warn others, but also to ask for a bit of advice - apologies for the length of the post in advance.

I tried to log on to my Skybet account yesterday to find a message saying that my account had been closed down. Strange, so I immediately took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to contact SkyBetHelp to help clarify why I couldn’t access my account. Having received no reply after 12 hours I decided to contact the online chat help.

After going through the various security questions I got to chat to a human. I explained that I couldn’t access my account and they looked into the situation with my account. They informed me that I had closed my account myself, and the funds in the account had been withdrawn to my card ending 4733. WTF, I hadn’t closed my account, and I definitely hadn’t received the funds in my account. I responded in a calm way, but made it clear that it was not me who closed the account, and I didn’t recognise the card number ending 4733. The b*stard on the other end of the chat then said there was nothing else they could do, and promptly closed the chat without giving me the chance to ask any further questions.

I was pretty angry at this point, but got back into the chat queue and eventually got a second human. They could see my previous correspondence and said they would try and help. After a bit of to and fro, they eventually said that as I had closed the account myself, they couldn’t do anything as my 7 day cooling off period had not yet passed. When will these people realise, I didn’t close the account myself. At this point I’m thinking someone has hacked my account and withdrawn the money into their own account. At this point I should say that I had just short of £5k in my account, and was feeling pretty sick that I could be losing a substantial amount of money here.

After mentioning that I would be taking this to the Gambling Commission, the chat person seemed to take the situation a bit more seriously. Over the next 90 minutes I provided the chat person with all sorts of ID, some of which I wasn’t particularly comfortable giving, but I was pretty stressed that I had lost everything in my Skybet betting bank. Eventually the chat person said they were going to restore my account, which they duly did.

So after about 2 hours, I was able to log back into my Skybet account, and what did I find, the £5k was back in my account, and all the open bets I had in the account were also still there. I questioned how the money was still in the account when the first person I spoke to said that it had been withdrawn onto a card ending in 4733. They just said that the account had been fully restored, asked me if I was happy, and was quite keen to close the chat.

I was pretty relieved to say the least, but it left me feeling pretty uneasy about the whole episode. Needless to say I immediately withdrew the majority of the £5k into my bank account, which to be fair landed into my account within 10 seconds.

So what the hell were Skybet playing at, firstly closing my account without any warning, and then telling me the funds had been withdrawn, only to restore the fully funded account 2 hours later? Is it just me, or is there something quite fishy about 

And how do others manage their betting accounts? I guess I’ve always tried to keep my betting bank separate from my other outgoings so I’ve tried to limit the amount of money that I transfer between my betting accounts and my bank accounts - so I can keep track of my p/l a bit easier. Does anyone else keep a fair bit of money in their betting accounts, or should I be constantly depositing and withdrawing money into my betting accounts to avoid another situation like this?

Any thoughts?

[harry_rag]

Well first things first I’d say what the hell are you doing leaving so much money in one account!  Even from the perspective of them going bust it’s far too much of a risk. I’d get uneasy at £500 let alone £5k. Easiest way to ringfence your betting funds is to have a bank account used only for that purpose then maintain a much smaller balance on deposit with any one firm. It’s a matter of pragmatism between not leaving a “silly” amount on deposit and having enough of a float so as not having to constantly deposit (especially in this day of affordability checks) but £5k is an amount that most people would regard as an absurd amount to risk. There are people who would probably say they pretty much never leave anything on deposit with any firm.

As to what happened, who knows. Clerical error (wrong account closed), internal fraud or your account hacked. You could send a formal complaint explaining what happened and asking how it arose if you really want to know. In case the issue is at your end I’d change my password for the account and consider the security of the email address you used.