William Hill Irish Lottery

bmd1980 · 23 April 2015 at 8:36AM

Sorry for the long message but i want to see if anyone has been treated in the same way by william hill which i find frankly scandalous.

I placed 8 weeks worth of numbers for the Irish Lottery 6 ball draw with William Hill online. On the last weekend i had purchased numbers for (28th March 2015) 2 lines came in meaning i had won £576 per line.

Upon checking my account i found that i had been refunded some of my stake money some 40mins after the time of the draws. I called William Hills customer services number and spoke to an agent there. They looked at my account put me on hold and said there was a problem but someone would call me back in 24hrs.

No one called and i repeated this process 3 more times, with no call back from william hill at any stage. I then called william hill yet again explaining the situation to be told this time that there were no results for the draw (28th March 2015). I was shocked given that the Irish Lottery is a National Lottery, Is televised, results printed in newspapers etc and William Hill actually had a link on their website to those results.

The agent said still said there were no numbers available for the draw. I said this was unacceptable and asked to speak to a manager at which point the agent said that they would not talk to me. I asked what i could to do complain and they gave me a complaints email address which i duly sent a message to explaining the situation. I received an automated message and eventually got a reply promising a response in 24hrs. A reply eventually came offering me £20 worth of free bets whilst they looked into my case.

I politely said that i wanted my winnings that i felt were due and that if i was to use the free bet what guarantee was there that i would get any money paid out at all given that my original winning bets were still not paid out.

2 further emails were sent by myself chasing up my complaint, i asked on 2 separate occasions for a copy of their dispute procedures in line with the guidance given from the gambling commission which they ignored.

Finally almost 3 weeks after my bet should have been settled and after multiple phone calls and emails i was paid out my winnings, no reason as to why it was not paid out or as to why they decided to pay was given and no apology was made.

I cant help but thinks that without digging my heels in i would not have received a penny from the money i was due. I wonder how may bets William Hill just refused to pay out like this.

Surely it calls the whole operations integrity into question. If you place a bet with them are you not entering into a contract with William Hill? I could understand that if there was a problem before the draw and the bet was voided but to do it afterwards and say there were simply no results is a disgrace. Whats to stop them saying similar for a football match or the grand national or any other event that they just dont want to pay out for?

Has this happened to anyone else????