Take SP Bets Lapsing

[Deestar]

I'm 99.9% confident this is a Betfair issue, but hoping anyone can comment about any similar issues. All my bets are placed through Gruss with Excel triggers that are set to "Take SP" if unmatched. Occasionally these will lapse if the total liability of the lay bets is less than 10GBP. Last night in 3 Greyhound races all the unmatched Take SP bets lapsed. All had a liability of greater than 10. Coincidentally Betfair had some settlement issues last night and these were all settled late and presumably manually. The following is a not very helpful online chat I had with the BF helpdesk. They suggest it's the API I use. Anyone else come across the issue/have any problem? Any suggestions for getting more help out of an unhelpful BF?

Anthony : Hello welcome to Betfair you are chatting with Anthony. How can I help?

Me: Hi Anthony, I had some bets settled last night and I'm querying whether it was done correctly.

Me: The bet ids are 66620758483 66620758484 66620759744 66620761053 66620761457 66620761725 66620761995 66620762151 66620769730 66620769848 They were all placed as "Take SP" if unmatched, yet they were all lapsed as unmatched. Can you explain why?

Anthony: Let me just take a look for you
Anthony: Unfortunately this bets have been lapsed Can you please confirm that you selected SP?

Me: Yes. I use Gruss with excel automated through the API. All the bets I place are set to take SP if unmatched. I must have bet in between 70 and 100 GH and Horse races yesterday and do so every day. Every bet is set to take SP. Feel free to look at my betting history

Anthony: Please bear with me one moment thank you for you patience
Anthony: I am afraid that these are lapsed and this will be an issue with your API

Me: Nonsense. The bets were placed just like all the other bets were placed. This is definitely an error at your end

Anthony: This would not be an error here M as you are betting against other Betfair customers it is your API that has not placed these bets for you

Me: The bets were placed with Take SP matched. You guys had some settlement issues last night. These were clearly affected by this. The error is at your end. Why would all the other thousands of bets i have each day be settled perfectly fine at SP with the exception of these ones that you had a settlement issue with last night? It's not just a coincidence.

Anthony: I have spoke to a supervisor for you to clarify this and they have stated that it will be the API and that you will need to contact them M

Me: No, your supervisor has just had a guess. Can you get them to call me please

[alrodopial]

The only way to be sure what realy happened is to check ba's excel activity / ba's diagnostic files
Garry/Mark will guide you I believe - or someone else?

[Deestar]

Yes I've looked at the diagnostic files. Nothing out of the ordinary appears.

[Captain Sensible]

Have you checked the BetID's under the betting history screen on the website? Were they lapsed, cancelled? What perisitance does it show? There's an API call where you can call up all the net data that shows everything from the time placed to any persistance added, used to be available thru Gruss but no longer on there but you can probably access it via the API demo site.

A lot depends on the persistance you used, if you used the LAY-SP trigger rather than say the LAYSP trigger they do have probblems where they suspend early and reopen markets. Do you know the markets involved I'll see if I had any take SP's on them.

[Deestar]

Thanks for the reply. The bets are listed as Lapsed with persistence "P". That's the same as those that are lapsed with a liability of less than 10. Which is the only other time i have bets lapse. The races were Romford 21:30 and Nottingham 21:41 and 22:00 last evening.

I do use Lay-SP, but there was no suspension and/or reopening before the off on at least the 21:41, as I was watching that market from the time of my joining to the off. Possible on the other two. It seems odd that it has only happened on these races last night after BF were having settlement issues.

One possible now that I think about it, is these markets should not have had an SP option to begin with. As I think I'm correct that on a Monday night the last few races don't? Which then suggest it was a trigger error. As it Gruss should give an invalid persistence when firing........

[Captain Sensible]

Just checked and I had a lapsed back SP bet on the 21:30, can't see any reason why, stake and odds were all ok, it lost so no harm done

The bet was only £8 so didn't notice anything on my logs and cleared them this morning, I usually log if they're SP races so guess that would have been showing as a BSP one. I'll check the bet details later see if there's any obvious reason why they didn't take BSP on that race.

[Deestar]

Good to know it wasn't just me then.

[Captain Sensible]

All those 3 races were BSP races and prices returned for the runners so it was reconciled Customer services is usually useless try emailing them to ask why your bets weren't included in the BSP reconciliation process if they met all conditions like minimum stake/liabilities. They usually just give you a manual credit on the account where there's been an error just a case of getting thru to someone with some sense.

[Deestar]

"getting thru to someone with some sense" There was a winning horse returned a BFSP in Ire of a 999/1 last month. I think we are talking similar odds......

Thanks for looking into it. I will keep chasing them and report back.

[Captain Sensible]

They've always credited me where there's been an error so you should be fine, doesn't seem to be any non runners, here's the BSP data for thse races, last number is the retured BSP , number before is 1 for the winner.

124168721 BAGS cards / Romfd 11th Apr A1 400m 11/04/2016 21:30 10582066 5. Some Gesture 0 7.28
124168721 BAGS cards / Romfd 11th Apr A1 400m 11/04/2016 21:30 8794656 3. Buckhurstdiamond 0 8.63
124168721 BAGS cards / Romfd 11th Apr A1 400m 11/04/2016 21:30 11025479 2. Jaytee Chilli 0 8.63
124168721 BAGS cards / Romfd 11th Apr A1 400m 11/04/2016 21:30 9388915 1. Road Side Boy 0 4.32
124168721 BAGS cards / Romfd 11th Apr A1 400m 11/04/2016 21:30 10086265 6. Droopys Milk 1 4.32
124168721 BAGS cards / Romfd 11th Apr A1 400m 11/04/2016 21:30 11025481 4. Gemmas Ciaron 0 5.94
124168695 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 21:41 11026352 5. Ohmakneeliz 0 18.54
124168695 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 21:41 11026350 3. Kelva Den 0 3.81
124168695 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 21:41 11026348 1. Droopys Giuseppe 0 14.52
124168695 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 21:41 10659750 6. Roseville Billy 0 7.1
124168695 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 21:41 10817887 2. Droopys Pierre 1 14.52
124168695 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 21:41 10615654 4. Slaneyside Pup 0 2.47
124168697 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 22:00 8315793 1. Ballaghboy View 0 5.52
124168697 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 22:00 10417931 2. Barrack Prancer 0 6.38
124168697 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 22:00 9516145 6. My Little Dream 0 9.1
124168697 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 22:00 8634062 3. Newinn Smash 1 5.52
124168697 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 22:00 9504412 4. Droopys Haiti 0 4.28
124168697 BAGS cards / Nott 11th Apr OR 305m 11/04/2016 22:00 10452094 5. Edwards Memorie 0 7.27

[Captain Sensible]

Just noticed Greyhounds after 21:00 weren't settled til 22:22& 22:25 so I guess they must have had some issues and maybe didn't stick the match on close SP bets into the pot.

[Deestar]

Just to update that they did provide a credit. Thanks for your help CS. Their explanation was that "we incorrectly had BSP selected on this market".

[Captain Sensible]

Good to see you got paid out, Deestar, think we can take that explanation with a pinch of salt to be fair considering Romford is usually all BSP races and was for all the others in that meeting