17/12/14

Heard the latest? Tattsbet is going to change its name and become UBET. What a stupid idea – as I can think of a stack of negative slogans straight off the cuff that would have negative implications which could be linked to the name UBET. So I used one in the naming of this article.

Why do companies change their name as we progress along the path of life? I mean the State Government Insurance Office (SGIO) is now Suncorp. The South East Queensland Electricity Board (SEQEB) is now Energex. Nothing changes but as the saying goes “a change is as good as a holiday”. So UNiBET (what Einstein thought that having a small letter “i” – that would no doubt be the deal maker) became Tattsbet on 31/1/11 – and now after just a few short years of violating punters – they want to become UBET. Then at some time in the future they’ll want to become some other name. So as entities UNiBET and Tattsbet can commit all sorts of corporate atrocities like say false advertising (as per today’s Brisbaneracing website picture) and move on – but I for one don’t think anything will change.

After all, irrespective of the name they traded under, they have been for many years what I‘ve rated here as “one of Queensland’s most pathetic big businesses” and it’s their “false advertising” that really gets on my goat. They claim to “bet the best fixed price more often”. But as I’ve proven here time and again over the years in exclusive and random audits by my website – that’s garbage. In fact my research in those random audits revealed the fact that a more realistic and honest slogan would be that “we bet the worst fixed prices more often”.

I’d go so far as to say from my observations that UNiBET and Tattsbet have been what I would call “totally hopeless” at managing their business. It is my considered opinion that they couldn’t successfully run a chook raffle in a wharfies pub on a Friday afternoon at 5.30pm with well-proportioned topless ticket sellers. As a measure of just how hopeless they are, walk into a major Brisbane club like say Easts Leagues Club at Coorparoo and there is no Sky Channel 2 in the joint. The club management obviously doesn’t care whether Sky Channel 2 is there or not and Tattsbet hierarchy is totally impotent at making them do the right thing by their alleged “valued clients” called “punters” and having Sky Channel 2 available at that club. The last time I randomly audited Easts Leagues Club, where incidentally I’m a member, they had just on 300 poker machines there. So that proves that they are 1) a relatively big club and b) via a bit of fat off the meat with their pokies, they can certainly afford to pay for Sky Channel 2 from losses incurred by all the desperate and dateless that play those hideous poker machines. Will anything change at Easts League Club because they are UBET? No – of course it won’t. Someone with some testicular development from UBET needs to get their arse out of their air conditioned office and make an appointment with the sheila that’s the General Manager at Easts Leagues Club and do something constructive about righting that wrong. And don’t think for one minute that Easts Leagues Club is an isolated case – it isn’t – as the same scenario happens across Brisbane.

When the punter is forced to endure dealing with UBET, there’s a distinct lack of customer service at many of their outlets. I was in a club within the last seven days when an elderly woman said to the chap serving drinks at the bar that “I’m at the TAB waiting for service”. His reply which I heard with my own ears was “well we’re busy”. He may as well have said to her “well **** you lady”. How disgraceful. And that’s typical of some of the pathetic service that customers of UNiBET, Tattsbet and now UBET have had to endure at many pub and club outlets. To be balanced, I randomly check service at many of Tattsbet’s own agencies outside of pubs and clubs and have found that their own agency outlets seem to offer good customer service. So it’s at some pubs and clubs where punters are treated as second class citizens and on occasions are forced to virtually beg to simply hear the description of a race. I was at Broncos Leagues Club in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago and walked into the TAB there to watch a race and there was no audio coming of the event through either radio or television. I said to the bar person “what happened to the volume”, to which he replied “oh. I’ll turn it up for you”. Terrific – but my question is “why the hell was it turned down in the first place”?

I can walk into Tattsbet outlet after Tattsbet outlet where they have multiple terminals – yet they only have one terminal open and as punters we all know what happens then. The punter waiting in line cannot get set because the person in front has stuffed their ticket up by backing a scratching, or whatever, so the person and/or persons waiting behind the bloke (a woman wouldn’t be that stupid) with the incorrect ticket can’t get on before the race goes. Then the horse or dog of a person in the queue who missed getting on wins. Now you have an unhappy client on top of the other problems. And that is as dumb as the dog derivative in my opinion – as about the first rule in business is that “the easiest client to keep is the existing client”.

But you’ll never keep the client happy if you can’t offer Sky Channel 2 at every outlet, or can’t get your client served in a prompt and courteous manner, particularly if they can’t hear the race. That elderly woman at the club that I referred to earlier – I’d personally witnessed waiting at that TAB terminal for five minutes to get served before she decided to walk to the barman, only to be told, “Well we’re busy”. That’s pathetic, as apart from anything else if she had a mistake on her ticket, which had long gone through the machine, she cannot now change it, as she only has a narrow window of opportunity to change it from a time perspective and that would have passed.

And as recently as last Saturday night, UBET were still ethically a dreadful mob to have a bet with, for as per the photograph associated with this text, punters would have only got their stake back had Terror To Love won the Ballarat Pacing Cup last Saturday night. So when the horse got beaten quite easily, all punters who backed the pacer on the normal UBET pool lost their money, yet even if Terror of Love had won by half a furlong, punters that backed the horse would not have got anything better than their money back, so they couldn’t have shown a profit on their outlay. So punters can lose – but they were no chance of winning. In the “good old days” Terror To Love would have been treated as a “refund scratching” by the then Queensland TAB, which has now morphed into UBET – and that horse would have been taken out of the pool before the race jumped and punters who had supported the horse got a full refund, whether the horse ran first of tenth – on the premise that “if you can’t win, you can’t lose”.

Another area UBET is ordinary at – and you can probably blame this one on the Australian Racing Board – is deductions on late scratching. So it’s not ancient history a horse called Zeeva was a late scratching at Caloundra last Sunday. UBET’s deduction was 16 cents in the dollar as per their website photo which is displayed on Brisbaneracing website today. On course bookmakers deduction was 13 cents as per the relevant Caloundra meeting’s stewards report, so again the person who had a decent sized bet on the winner feels like he has been introduced to “Big Bubba” aka UBET, at some correctional facility, via having unwittingly dropped the soap in the communal shower and bent over to pick it up.

And on the score of “deductions” they can be made larger than they should be by TABs or corporates simply by having horses shorter than they need to be when the betting entity knows the short priced favourite won’t run when markets go up. As a case in point and so it’s not ancient history, take Rudy last Saturday – the horse was already in Sydney to run in the Villiers when he was still a very short priced favourite for the Brisbane Handicap at Doomben being run on the same day. So betting entities knew very well that the horse was never going to run in Brisbane, meaning they had the opportunity to make him artificially short priced, on a very high percentage market thus maximizing their early fixed odds deductions when he doesn’t start in Brisbane.

Today on www.brisbaneracing.com.au there’s the second montage of photos from Doomben last Saturday plus photos relating to Tattsbet’s deductions and other in that Caloundra race last Sunday. On www.sydneyracing.com.au there’s two harness racing stories, whilst on www.melbourneracing.com.au Victorian racing is perused.