The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!!

[Conans]

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Just a note to inform you all that the ASA are finally putting a little pressure on those tipsters that advertise in racing publications. We recently received this e-mail (I've deleted any reference to individuals or tipsters but feel this is long overdue and wanted to applaud it). Hopefully those tipsters who have made a living from conning the general public and giving our trade a bad name will soon be unable to advertise! The ASA is responsible for regulating non-broadcast advertisements in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />UK. It does so by ensuring that everyone who commissions, prepares, produces and publishes advertisements observes the British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (the CAP Code).

In addition to investigating complaints, the ASA conducts regular compliance checks. Your advertisement that appeared in The Racing Post on XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX came up in one of those checks.

Your advertisement makes a number of claims about winning horses that you have correctly predicted and profit figures for those, as well as success rates for those predictions.

Marketers must be able to substantiate claims that they have tipped particular winners or achieved a certain level of profit. To do this, they should “proof†forecasts, i.e. lodge all forecasts with an independent third party before the events to which they refer take place.

Ideally, marketers should “proof†forecasts with an independent third party such as a well known and reputable firm of accountants or solicitors. If marketers “proof†forecasts with the publishers of their advertisements, the publishers should be able to provide documentary evidence that the forecasts were lodged with them before the relevant events took place and that their “proofing†systems for recording such forecasts have been approved and regularly monitored by a well known and reputable firm of accountants or solicitors.

I attach the Committee of Advertising Practice Help Note on Betting Tipster Services for your futher reference.

Please send us, in writing, information to support the claims in your advertisement by XXXXXXXXXXXXX, or your assurance that the advertisement will not appear again without suitable amendments to bring it in line with Code requirements .............

I hope you find this of interest and realise that not every tipster is a con artist!

[maria]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!! Maybe to you, as a tipster, that feels like "pressure". To me, it sounds very like empty and powerless rhetoric from an alleged watchdog with absolutely no teeth at all, and that you can throw it in the bin with impunity and absolutely no adverse consequences at all, and certainly continue to advertise in the RP, whose "proofing" claims are an unverifiable joke, and like any newspaper, tend to be on their advertisers' side when the chips are down. Call me cynical ... :eek

[Conans]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!! Maria - thanks for your reply. The ASA may have no teeth however they can, and are preventing tipsters from advertising in publications such as The Racing Post, if they do not independently verify their results. Brimardon missed one week of adverts because they could not verify their results - can anyone remember a Saturday's Racing Post without their drivel? I honestly believe this pressure has to make a difference and is at least forcing tipsters to proof to an independent verifiable proofing site. I'm not sure if you know but (extract from an e-mail I received) :- Marketers must be able to substantiate claims that they have tipped particular winners or achieved a certain level of profit. To do this, they should “proof” forecasts, i.e. lodge all forecasts with an independent third party before the events to which they refer take place.”

The only independent third party that the ASA have officially approved, to date, is Best Tipping which was approved from June of this year, following some amendments in their proofing procedures, at our request.

So we do not allow any Betting Tipster to make claims other than on this basis. Quite a number of companies have amended their advertising accordingly at our request.

So in order to keep that ‘level playing’ field we have discussed, we will need an assurance that you will amend your advertisement accordingly.

For your information, if we do not receive it, we shall consider invoking those sanctions available to us. That may include us issuing an Ad Alert advising the industry not to accept advertising by your company without first consulting the CAP Copy Advice team. The ultimate sanction is referral by the ASA to the Office of Fair Trading under the Control of Misleading Advertisements Regulations 1988 (as amended).

Thank you for your co-operation.

[Layer]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!!

Brimardon missed one week of adverts because they could not verify their results

Easy to assert' date=' Conans, but can whoever told you that actually prove it?

"we shall consider invoking those sanctions available to us. That may include us issuing an Ad Alert advising the industry not to accept advertising by your company without first consulting the CAP Copy Advice team.

And who will they listen to, someone "advising" them or someone paying them? Wow, that's "pressure"? Scary biscuits! You must be quaking in your little fur-lined boots!

[Conans]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!! Layer - why the scepticism? Get copies of the Racing Post from 6th October to now and you'll see how often they are in. Adverts from anyone with an Ad Alert against them cannot be published unless the specific advert has been CAP approved. Isiris have an Ad Alert against them and have to get every advert authorised individually. Not sure what my fur-lined boots has to do with it but seeing as advertising generates a fair proportion of our customers, I think this is significant.

[Layer]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!!

Layer - why the scepticism?

Because if your tips really made a steady profit' date=' you wouldn't need to sell them, and wouldn't want to, either. You would want to keep as quiet about them as possible, and back them with your own money.

advertising generates a fair proportion of our customers

You surprise me: they don't all come from personal recommendation, then?!

[Conans]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!! Layer - that old chestnut! I only follow 2 of our services because the others don't suit my style (I'm not saying they don't make good money, they just don't do it for me) but you tell me where I can regularly get £250 each way on selections that average 14-1 and am not limited and I'll stop selling the tips. It can't be done and that is why tipsters sell their selections. A few are from personal recommendation but the vast majority are from advertising and search affiliate programmes. I get the impression you are negative because you've had a bad experience? Not uncommon but uncommon with us (and I'm not saying we haven't had any disatisfied clients because we have but all those staking correctly and with a little patience make excellent money). Sorry I didn't post to try and push my service, I wanted people to know that some people are trying to stamp out the con artists and I support that wholeheartedly.

[Layer]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!!

that old chestnut!

That's the one - that old' date=' inconvenient, chestnut which neither you nor any other tipster can actually answer but quickly try to dismiss one way or another.

I only follow 2 of our services because the others don't suit my style (I'm not saying they don't make good money, they just don't do it for me)

Oh, what a shame for you. All the rest of your services doubtless make steady and consistent profits too, and you could have retired on them by now, in fact, if you'd wanted to, but they don't actually "suit your style" so you prefer just to let your paying customers make all the profits from them without getting involved yourself.

you tell me where I can regularly get £250 each way on selections that average 14-1 and am not limited and I'll stop selling the tips. It can't be done

I agree. And that's one of the reasons why it's so dishonest to sell them as you do with the inference (and sometimes - although not in your case' date=' I'm certain - a good deal more than just an "inference"!) that one can get substantial amounts of money on. You can't do it and neither can your clients.

all those staking correctly and with a little patience make excellent money).

So if they can't duplicate your claims, they are either staking incorrectly or impatient? I see. What a bugger for you that your paying clients are all so badly educated that they can't be trusted to use correctly the services that you also can't make a living from yourself because they "don't suit your style".

Sorry I didn't post to try and push my service

How would it have looked if you had, I wonder? But maybe your membership wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes if you'd tried that, and maybe you somehow knew that already, intelligent, sensitive and perceptive guy that you are.

[Conans]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!! Layer - whatever I say you'll try to turn it on it's head so I'll leave this thread as it is yet hope that Rix, Brimardon, Isisris etc cease being able to make the false claims they have (until now) been able to get away with. Good luck to all but particularly to you as you obviously need a great deal of assistance .....

[maria]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!!

Good luck to all but particularly to you as you obviously need a great deal of assistance .....

I think that such patronising comments here will not endear you at all to the members, Conans, and are completely unnecessary and quite disgraceful really ... :@ Layer has made a number of excellent points to you in this thread, to none of which, unsurprisingly, you have managed to respond adequately; indeed one could be forgiven for assuming that you have not even understood them ... :sad The main point which I think you are failing to appreciate is that members of this Forum, being in the fortunate position as we are of having a plethora of consistently profitable threads, systems, methods and sets of selections to follow, have absolutely no need whatsoever of commercial tipping services of the type you sell, not even the ones from which you so sadly can't profit yourself because they don't suit your style ... :eek

[Conans]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!! Maria - Apologies if I've upset anyone but I haven't mentioned my tipping service by name. My sole reason for posting was to bring the fact that the ASA / CAP are taking the issue of tipsters being able to "say whatever they want" extremely seriously - and stopping it! I do not need to endear myself to people like Layer (or you for that matter) and don't need to justify myself, my business, our profits or my level of education to anyone. I hope you continue to profit by following your "plethora of consistently profitable threads, systems, methods and sets of selections".:wall

[maria]

Re: The ASA are putting pressure on Tipsters!!!

Maria - Apologies if I've upset anyone

Speaking for myself, I accept your apology; thank you. My guess is that Layer and many others who will have been offended by your behaviour here would have been more willing to accept your apology if you had been able and willing to respond intelligently to some of the excellent, persuasive and entirely valid points he made here in his posts above, rather than so feebly attempting to dismiss them without apparently being able to do so. I appreciate that you must feel that your reception here was somewhat on the hostile side, and I hope you'll take the time to consider the underlying reasons for which that might be so. Goodbye.