Justin7 at SportsBookReview devoted this week’s “Are you serious?” video to a frustrated female sports bettor who said bwin had ruined her party. On Oct. 5, 2011 Bwin abruptly locked the punter’s (puntress?) account, then failed to respond to the punter’s repeated email queries as to why bwin was buggin’. After six weeks of radio silence, the bettor ran to her window and started belting out Bonnie Tyler’s I Need A Hero. SBR put down its nachos, put on its shiniest armor and mounted its swiftest stallion, but even they couldn’t convince bwin’s dark knights to come down from their gothic castle’s parapets and do battle.
Then, on Dec. 29, the bettor received €11k from bwin – about 80% of the bettor’s balance – but still no explanation. Justin7 stresses that bwin is ordinarily very good at dispute resolution, but says they really “dragged their feet” on lowering that damn drawbridge this time. After another month or so, one of bwin’s pages was dispatched with a message for Sir Justin:
This user’s account has been permanently closed as we have reasons to believe that she is part of a betting syndicate … our grounds for suspecting this is identical bets to one or more accounts all placed within a few minutes of each other … The [€2432] is the winnings from these identical bets.
Justin7 humbly highlights the myriad alternative conclusions to Bwin’s syndicate evidence – multiple bettors responding to a forum post, a tout issuing a pick, a random universe – but suggests that even if this was a syndicate jumping on a weak betting line, voiding bets after an event generates all the wrong kind of publicity.
Which segues rather uneasily into this next item. Kids love themselves some iPhones. Lots of great apps coming out every day. Like Talking Tom, starring an alley cat you can punch (tap the screen) in the face and stomach until his dick hits the dirt. But don’t worry, kids: Tom always gets up. (No, Bobby, you can’t try this on your sister.) Even better, Tom has great ears and will repeat anything and everything you say to him, no matter how vile and degrading, with a smile on his puss.
You can also give him glasses of milk, which he heartily enjoys. You can even kit him out with a wardrobe, like the fetching Real Madrid shirt in the above screen shot. But since the in-app “funny money” price tag on said kit equates to a few unfunny real world dollars, kids might need to ask their mom for a lil’ help. And so long as we’re asking questions…
Mommy, what’s a bwin?
Uh…
Mommy, what’s an accumulator?
Uh oh…
At some point soon, some angry parent is going to send bwin a strongly worded letter, and we humbly suggest bwin doesn’t let four months go by without offering up a response. In the meantime, we consider this a sad commentary on the wafer-thin online gambling profit margins to be found behind the European markets’ walled gardens. Is it really any great surprise that hard-squeezed public gaming companies have been reduced to marketing to toddlers? How else will bwin.party afford that enormous marketing budget? Still, so long as bwin’s a little bit pregnant, why not continue priming this demographic? How does a ‘Tinky Bwinky’ campaign grab ya? (The purple subliminally reminds people of PartyGaming!) It might not do the company any good at the moment, but the numbers for Q3 2030 are gonna kill analysts’ forecasts!
See ya in the future, kid!
