Last week an American friend texted me asking if I could put $40 on the USA to beat Spain in the Confederation Cup (soccer).
The American betting agencies were offering 10/1, he had a good feeling about them, and was in transit so not able to get much money on himself.
I duly pointed my browser at Centrebet where I’ve once before placed a bet (on an election result IIRC).
Sadly I couldn’t remember my password. And their password retrieval system pushed my into an infinite loop needing to reset a temporary password before actually logging in, none of which worked.
No problem, create a new account… Only my credit card is already linked to the old account so they wouldn’t let me use it for the new account.
But hey… they offer BPay for payment! So having BPaid $50 into the new account… I discovered it would take a day to pay in.
OK… ACTTAB have been promoting their online gambling services.
So I started signing up with them. It all seemed to work. I punched in my credit card details, gave them another $50, and discovered that, even though they’d taken my money, before I could place a bet they would snail mail me forms from the organised crime fighting Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) which I would have to fill in and return to them.
Not exactly the instant convenience of the internet is it?
ACTTAB were offering 15/1 odds for the game, much better than the American agencies or Centrebet. But if they want to encourage the extremely casual gamer they really need to make sure they’ve got the same ease of use as the gold standard Centrebet (mind you Centrebet could improve their password retrieval).
I never did get the bet on. The USA won. My $50 would have netted between $600 and $750 if I’d managed it.
I’m $100 in the hole with money stuck in systems I have no great desire to use, I’ll have a go at getting the money back later in the week.
The moral of the story probably is that casual gambling is not a good idea anyway. To be honest outside of a licensed club I’m not even sure where I’d find an ACTTAB shopfront anymore since they knocked down the one in Dickson.
But as a Territory owned Corporation I’d like to see ACTTAB working to streamline their processes, it’s not as if they can’t get the laws changed to suit them.