If you thought the Gambling Commission was there to protect the interests of punters you may just have to think again.
Recently the Government announced it wanted a review of the way in which bookies identify and treat so called VIP customers. In broad terms these are people who are generally losing significant sums gambling and the evidence seems to point to bookmakers actively encouraging this despite the safeguards that are now supposed to be in place.
Naturally, the Gambling Commission was charged with conducting the review but has astonished almost everyone but themselves and the bookmakers by putting a bookmaker in charge of the review. Even worse the review will be carried out by the GVC group who own Ladbrokes Coral who were fined £5.9m last year for failing to protect vulnerable people gambling large sums. One politician suggested the action was the equivalent of putting the Mafia in charge of looking into organised crime.
If you do have specific problems with bookmakers that you cannot resolve don’t just accept their decision. Take it further through people such as the
Justice for Punters group which has a great record for helping where all else seems to have failed.
Another area you can have issues with are tipping services and here again the Gambling Commission is about as much use as the proverbial chocolate teapot. When I was investigating the nefarious activities of Chris Beek (who took nearly £1.5m from his victims) I asked them several times for information about regulatory requirements but was completely ignored.
But here there is good news – myself and Chris Sowerby (who ran Tipstars and writes reviews for Betting Rant) have joined forces to set up an organisation to regulate tipping services – it will be offering a vetting process so that reputable operations can display an Approved Status which will mean the only thing you have to worry about is the results! More news about this within the next month.
As well as the services Punthub highlighted above if you like your National Hunt racing then
Snowy’s Bets is certainly one to consider. In 3 months we have seen a 200% capital gain at an impressive ROI of 34.46%. His poor spells do not seem to last very long and he certainly knows his racing.