BetFred is being accused of pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. The U.K.-based gambling operator swooped in to grab the customer database of MoPlay just as the rival site was going under, asserting that it would provide compensation to those customers. However, it now
appears that BetFred isn’t willing to follow through on its promise, leaving a number of former MoPlay users without their money. Company executives assert that the accusations are false, and that it is doing everything by the book.
When BetFred intervened last month and gave MoPlay customers a beacon of hope, it asserted that MoPlay users in the U.K. and Ireland would be “given the opportunity to have their cash balances honored by BetFred.” In hindsight, perhaps the statement was open to too much interpretation, as “given the opportunity” doesn’t necessary translate into guaranteed payouts.
MoPlay, which was being operated by Addison Global out of Gibraltar, fell on hard times when Gibraltar and the U.K. yanked Addison Global’s licenses. It declared itself virtually penniless toward the end of February, and BetFred came in to save the day. The company asked that MoPlay users register for an account in order to proceed with the payouts, based on their MoPlay accounts, and successfully paid some users before the channels went silent.
There were around 180,000 MoPlay accounts that had transitioned to BetFred, and some of these received their funds. However, many more haven’t, and, according to chatter on the gambling forum Justice4Punters (JP4), BetFred didn’t want to pay these out because they had been too successful at sports gambling on MoPlay.
The Guardian spoke to Brian Chappell of J4P, who explained, “We’ve received a fair number of complaints. All the complaints seem to have one thing in common — they have restricted betting accounts, be that with MoPlay and/or with BetFred. From what we’ve been sent, it’s certainly not clear to J4P why these customers are being treated differently, except it all seems rather commercially convenient.”
That makes it sound like BetFred didn’t want to pay out those accounts that were too profitable, possibly leaving just the smaller accounts to receive funds. BetFred denies that this is the case, though, explaining in response to the complaints, “We did not conduct any due diligence on the profitability of individuals in the MoPlay customer database, nor did we close any BetFred accounts to prevent migration of MoPlay balances. Our actions to date are 100 percent in accordance with the terms of the contract with the liquidator, and for those customers who did not migrate, we are directing them to the liquidator to submit a claim in the liquidation.”
To be fair, based on BetFred’s initial comments to MoPlay users, it never promised to reimburse 100% of the customers – it only offered to give them an opportunity to seek reimbursement. A play on words, of course, but an effective one for the business.
