Pricewatch query: Boyle Sports punter perplexed by place-market result

A Dublin reader popped into a Boyle Sports on Dublin's northside on the weekend of the Grand National to place a bet. "We always go there on Grand National day and then watch the race together, with our fingers crossed," he says. "Other than Grand National day, I don't bet and I don't know my way around betting shops."

“I wanted to go to a shop that would pay out for the first five places (you win money if you bet on a horse to ‘place’ and it finishes in the top five). I saw a number of newspaper ads for other bookmakers that were offering to pay out for the first five places, so I was glad to see that our local bookmaker was plastered with posters on the outside saying ‘We’re paying five places all Grand Nationals.’ ”

He has sent us a photograph to prove that.

“There were 10 of these posters covering all of the windows, so you couldn’t miss the message. There is no doubt that ‘five places’ is the major selling point. What you could miss, however, was a tiny message in the bottom left hand corner saying ‘T&Cs apply’. On many of the posters this message was actually obscured In any case, I don’t believe ‘T&Cs apply’ can change the basic meaning of the English language.”

Anyway, while he was in the shop, a young member of staff came over, “obviously spotting that I needed help”, and asked what he wanted to do. “I called out the names of the four horses we’d picked and she wrote out the betting slip. We bet a fiver each on three of them just to place and on the fourth horse we bet a fiver on it to place and €2 on it to win. The total cost was €22.”

This reader and his family watched the race “mostly with sinking hearts because our horses weren’t doing very well, but at the end we were delighted to hear that Goonyella had finished fifth. That was the horse I’d picked and we’d put a fiver on it to place, so I told the kids we were off to collect €25 from Boyle Sports – a profit of €3.

“But when I got there, they said that we hadn’t won anything. They told me that they only paid out if the horse finished in the top four. I told them that couldn’t be right because the place was plastered with posters saying ‘We’re paying five places all Grand Nationals’. They gave me a complicated explanation, which I really couldn’t understand, and they weren’t interested in my argument that their posters had one meaning and one meaning only. Naturally my kids were very disappointed.”

He did not want to let it lie. He rang Boyle Sports head office to complain, “but I got the same gobbledegook answer”.

He also called Citizens Information to see if he could take it up with the Small Claims Court; he makes it clear this was not about the money but the principle. It turns out that under the Gaming and Lotteries Act, a bet isn’t a legally binding contract, and the Act states that you don’t have recourse to the courts.

He also called the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to see if there was an avenue of complaint for false advertising, but they said they couldn't deal with it because bookmakers are licensed directly by the Department of Justice.

He persisted with the bookies and eventually extracted an apology and a commitment that they would pay him the €25 and also give him a “free bet” of €25.

“They continue to suggest that there was a complicated misunderstanding, and the suggestion is that it was really my fault, notwithstanding their apology.

“They say that when I said I didn’t want to bet ‘each way’ and just wanted to bet on a place, that caused their staff member to put the bet on a specific, separate ‘place market’, which only covers the top four, not the top five.

“As much as I can make sense of it, they’re saying that if you bet each way, then they’ll pay out for the top five. But if you only bet for a ‘place’, then they’ll only cover the top four. How on earth that can be reconciled with posters that say, ‘We’re paying five places all Grand Nationals’ is beyond me.”

We contacted the company and received the following statement. “We at Boyle Sports believe it is very important that our customers have a positive experience even where bets are made in error or where there is confusion around the terms of a particular offer. In this case we took the view that a genuine misunderstanding did occur and so paid out on the bet in full in the customer’s favour.”