Oh Dear

I'm sure most people reading this will have received the same e-mail from Betfair that plopped into my inbox earlier this evening. In essence it was to publicise the launch of the much vaunted Sportsbook, something in which I personally have zero interest in. I have sportsbook accounts elsewhere and with Bf's form will not be in too much of a hurry to add them to that portfolio.

But, buried deeper in the email was the news that they were still intending to close the old (for which, read current) Bf site in favour of the new one. We should, however, be reassured  that

We've been listening to your thoughts on the new Exchange site, and - while it's still our intention to close the old site down - we will continue to develop the new Exchange site in line with your feedback before doing so. 

Fair enough, they've been listening to customer feedback - there's always a first time, I suppose! So I beetled over to the Forum expecting to find page upon page of posts praising the new look site and suggesting pay-rises for the developers of same. Hmmm. There were plenty of posts about the subject. But guess what? I couldn't find a single, solitary, one in favour of it!


I don't use the Bf website as a trading medium, preferring Geeks or Evo depending on what I'm doing, but, as I said previously, I do like to have the in-play coupon available as a scrollable list on one webpage, which the new one doesn't necessarily offer . My issue seems trivial compared to those being endured by people who actually use the site to bet or trade. Why they don't use software is beyond me, but it seems ridiculous that Bf can't make a betting site work for its customers.

I hope the move to this new site, and to a sportsbook, don't emerge into a winding down of the exchange model. For all their faults, surely Bf don't want to become a reverse Kodak, do they? Let's hope not, and in the meantime let's hope that, for once, they do take some notice of what their customers are saying.