Pay Me My Money, Ladbrokes

All the goodwill has gone.

I have managed to get two phone calls shut down by Ladbrokes.

The missing slip saga continues but problems have been exacerbated by slips I am struggling to get paid out on.

I had a couple of slips that I wanted to collect on. I went to a different, closer shop to get paid but was informed that I had to return to the original shops.

At one of the original shops they told me that the bet hadn’t been settled and that I needed to return some other time.

So, I thought I would call the customer helpline.

I explained that I had two slips and had been told that I needed to return to the original shops, gave the bet details. I was then asked which shop I was going to. I explained again that I’d been told of the need to return to the original shops. Apparently, I couldn’t do that as one of the shops had closed. I said I would pick them both up from the same shop but suddenly that wasn’t allowed.

I had to send the slips in. This does not sit well with me. It is like sending cash through the post, somebody can sign for it but there’s no evidence of what the contents are. I told the lady that and suggested that I scan copies so that they could find the bets. Once they found them they could let me know and I could provide them with the originals.

No, it couldn’t be done that way. All the time calling me ‘sir’ in a patronising, antagonistic tone that I had to tolerate until I suggested I should talk to her the way she was talking to me and gave it a go. That was enough for the immortal line ‘I’m going to end the conversation now’.

Not to be perturbed I called back to deal with one of the other issues. I got through to the person who had emailed me concerning the underpayment on my snooker bet.

I asked if they had any response to the email I had sent them. Apparently, they never received it (how often does something inconvenient get lost), so I asked the questions I had sent. As the bet was underpaid, did they have any way of telling if it had been paid out? The response was ‘Have you been paid out, sir?’

I remarked that I had asked the first question and would he able to answer that for me, but the response came back with him asking the same question. I answered that I had been paid out (not the right amount) but this, of course, meant that he could claim that if I had been paid out then he did not need to answer my question. It did make my question redundant, though. Why would he be asking me if I had been paid out if he had details about me being paid out. Yet again, the only logical conclusion was that he did not know if I had been paid out or not and their system couldn’t give them that information or the bet was showing up as not paid. I am not attempting to cheat them out of money. I just want the settlement to be correct and it is currently £300 short.

As regards another slip where I had a stake query his response to this was ‘I don’t believe you own that bet’ as I was asking what the stake was. I was asking for several reasons but, mainly, I don’t believe they actually have a copy of the slip. Nothing that happened today has changed my mind on that.

Anyway, because he had questioned my honesty and I had answered his question but asked him a question he refused to answer the line ‘I’m going to end the conversation now’ was repeated to me.

They are closing ranks to prevent me asking any questions. If they do this they think I’ll go away.

I have now hit 50 phone calls to Ladbrokes customer helpline and the one person who was really attempting to get to the bottom of it all has, rather unsurprisingly, been removed from my case.

50 phone calls and they still owe me money, want me to send the equivalent of cash to them in the post and have given me several reasons to think they lost a wad of betting slips.