Stan James - Closed my account

[BetSmartUK]

I have had a number of interactions with Stan James this month regarding the closing of accounts. At the present time I am trying to understand the reasons for the account closures, the economic impact to the webmasters involved, and to ensure that appropriate actions are taken. Stan James claims the accounts they have closed are referring players that are net winners, so that they simply cannot afford to take on more referrals from the webmasters whose accounts have been closed. The best analogy I can give would be to a land-based casino host terminated by a casino because they kept referring blackjack players that were advantage blackjack players who knew how to count cards and therefore had an edge over the house.

At the present time I am taking the position with Stan James that they are required, under the terms of the code of conduct, to provide information necessary for us to investigate the situation with respect to specific webmasters, if the webmaster specifically makes a specific complaint regarding the closure of their account to the GPWA and also specifically authorizes the release of information to us regarding their account for purposes of our investigation of the complaint.

Stan James has been responsive to my inquiries, and has provided detailed account information on the basis outlined above, for one account going back to January 2013. Based on feedback from the webmaster, I am also requesting information further back in time.

It would be very helpful to include more webmasters as part of a more extensive investigation. Accordingly, I would kindly request that any webmaster who views they have had their account inappropriately closed, and would like to be included in our investigation, please contact me directly (via pm to MichaelCorfman). I will then advise you how to file a complaint, and the process that should be followed to inform Stan James that they are authorized to release information to us to facilitate our investigation of the complaint.

Michael

Closing accounts due to affiliates attracting too many winning players.
So, as long as your referrals lose they will keep your account open. I wasn't in a negative for a long time before they closed my account which means that my players were not winning. They stated to me they didn't like the fact that I was sitting back enjoying commission from legacy accounts whilst not referring new ones. But I was never given a chance to improve numbers.

[WATP]

Top marks to StanJames for their absolutely ridiculous excuses for this and nice to see they replied to GPWA but not any of the affiliates in question... Quite clearly they could rig stats of any affiliate "post closure" as mentioned above, since nobody can access their stats and I doubt many affiliates have a perfect memory of their last year of stats figures, especially since I doubt StanJames was the top priority for anyone here with other better bookmakers on the go.

Our job as affiliates is to refer players... If we could pre-determine and only send losing players, well everyone would be rich and it would be easy. The fact that only StanJames at the moment are up to such antics are the majority of the other competing hundreds of European sports bookies aren't doing this, shows how ridiculous it is, especially in this shrewd industry. Surprised to be honest, that they even did it this way, and didn't just start secretly shaving stats instead, at least everyone wouldn't be burying them for such an open abysmal set of actions.

Anything that happens after an affiliate does his job of referring a player, is up to the player and the bookie. Slightly confused as to why sending winning players is an 'account closure' issue.. You take the 30% (or whatever % they offer) of the loss as well, putting you in the negative to bring it back up and refer more players? So StanJames are covered for that and you gain NOTHING from losing players. Do they think the banned-affiliates are deliberately referring winning players... ? What are they going to do if a high percentage of "Non affiliate referred" players start winning, just close themselves down? I'll guess they probably just boot most winning players or drop them down to a max bet of 10p as well, since it seems to be a favourite tactic of many bookies.

Might start a tips site tomorrow, blast it on adwords with the headline "Norwich to win the Premier League at 5000/1", "Celtic and Rangers to live happily ever after at 25,000,000/1" and see if I can get some top losing bets in from new players at StanJames, is that what they are looking for. If you are, PM me, and I'll get you in top spot asap lads.

[-Shay-]

What they told Michael is merely an "excuse" and not the "valid reason" in my opinion. If their claim to you guys in the closure announcement is that you've not done enough for them in terms of referring new players, that is very different than what they're singing to Michael.

I strongly suggest PM'ing Michael to be included in his investigation. Give everyone the opportunity to do the right things.

[RacingJim]

Stan James stats are dodgy as they come (my account still open but who knows for how long).

Lots of the stats details you see in other companies using Income Access (Betfred, Coral) are just not there.

In Stan James I can't see how much has been deposited and things like that, so they're already hiding half their stats to start with.

[baldidiot]

Lots of the stats details you see in other companies using Income Access (Betfred, Coral) are just not there.

In Stan James I can't see how much has been deposited and things like that, so they're already hiding half their stats to start with.

This has been a concern of mine for some time, partly the reason why I never really gave them much exposure when I was promoting them.

[joert]

It's about time we all started banding together on issues like this.

Be proactive - Make a section on your site for 'Bookies to avoid' or whatever.

make up the reasons, it doesnt matter - I have two sections on my site and SAtan James are the only ones in it.

They closed our account too. We had shag all players with them really, but it's the principal of the matter.

If other bookmakers see us all banding together on issues like these it will give them a small yet actionable reason not to **** people over in future. Do it this week, let's f*ck them over like they're f*cking us over.

[pokerbanter]

Received payment today from closed account.

[4ndy]

POINT OF CONSUMPTION TAX

This is going to hit Stan James hard and might even finish them.

Are they up for sale?

[12Xpert]

Here's some relevant information...

Stan James Abingdon Ltd has been losing money. According to figures from its 2012 annual report recorded pre-tax losses have been as follows:

Year	Pre tax loss
2010	£1.7 million
2011	£1.8 million
2012	£1.5 million

Although betting turnover has been increasing during this time, Stan James Abingdon's net worth and available cash balance has been falling, from £17.8 million and £8.4 million respectively in 2009 to £10.5 million and £3.3 million in 2012. The 2012 annual report also reveals that Stan James Abingdon Ltd has been recharging costs to Stan James Gibraltar plc, and that a sum of £2.1 million (plus interest) is still owed by the Plc company to its UK Ltd counterpart. The need for recharging costs typically arises in the case of group companies. One can speculate on what these costs involved but presumably will be related to the operations of the telebetting and internet services based in Gibraltar. Whether Stan James Gibraltar Plc is actually making any money is not clear. However, if Stan James Abingdon Ltd hasn't been for at least 3 years and is still owed money by the Gibraltar company, doubtless we can all draw our own conclusions.


Over this period internet traffic to the StanJames website has almost certainly been falling, if not in absolute terms then relative to other competitors, if Alexa's traffic ranking provides a reliable measure. According to Alexa, StanJames was ranked around the 20,000th most popular global website in early 2012. Since then this rank has been on a steady downward trend, and was around 80,000 at the beginning of this year. According to Top100Bookmakers it is now ranked outside the top 50 bookmakers in its published list ranked by internet traffic. During this period comments posts about Stan James on Top100Bookamkers have almost all been negative, with most rating it 0 or 1 stars out of 5 and citing account closure as the major irritation.

Many of these appear to be after only a short period of betting. In fact Stan James sits in the bottom 10% in their customer ratings ranking, with an average star rating of just 2 out of 5, whilst nearly half of customer comments made about Stan James have been negative.

So what's going on. Well, Stan James is trying to run an "accept no winners" policy. I know that much because my own betting account was closed after just 17 consecutive bets at the start of 2013. Presumably they have been over aggressive in implementing this policy to the point where they've closed so many betting accounts and got such a bad reputation that their traffic and (possibly) turnover have suffered. Now it would appear than in a further cost cutting measure they are culling all but the largest affiliates (they'll keep those for fear of the backlash) regardless of the ethics. What else do you do when your business is staring into the abyss.

They also recently had to face a long running legal battle against the FA for fixtures and livescore rights with only a partial victory. No doubt this will have cost some money.

If that is what is happening then I would say "**** them". They deserve all that's coming. Other brands have proved you can make a proper business out of bookmaking by accepting winners. Stan James are on the wrong side of history here and they will die along with the rest of the waste of space bookmakers that are stuck in the 19th century.

[Scampi]

Their behaviour appears to extend to their betting shops. I had a comment recently from a player on the betting terminals being told they were not to bet a certain way!
It's a company not worth dealing with from both sides of the industry. At least everyone knows now.

[12Xpert]

Unsurprising.

The more people rubbish their name the quicker they can be consigned to the refuse tip.

In 2012 they also faced a tax hearing with the Inland Revenue over their move to Gibraltar being seen as a means of avoiding higher rate tax by the owners. No idea how that got settled, perhaps it hasn't yet, but that will have cost money too.

All the evidence IMO points to a brand that is in its death throws. Will be interested in seeing the 2013 annual accounts.

A skiing firm I regular book with is undergoing similar large cost cutting at the expense of what it offers its clients and the staff it employs. Of course its not the same industry and the behaviour is not entirely comparable, but this sort of thrashing about is surely typical of a company that is trying to survive. If it is, then they have themselves, and themselves only, to blame for it.

[12Xpert]

And to think it was only a few years ago they took me to the darts in Blackpool and had some superb affiliate managers. Not had a proper contact with the affiliate team for over a year. I would imagine most of their staff have been laid off too.

[casinovegas]

Been emailing them trying to get hold of some stats & payment info, no reply after 3 emails. Big surprise! Useless

[12Xpert]

Been emailing them trying to get hold of some stats & payment info, no reply after 3 emails. Big surprise! Useless

I wouldn't be surprised if you don't hear from them at all. It's easier for them not to engage in conversation with disgruntled affiliates. Like others have said, they will just try to ride this one out. But the problem for Stan James is why they are doing this in the first place, and if it's cost cutting because of company losses in previous years then that will be a much harder one to ride out.

Online bookmaking is just like the betting itself: winner takes all. Just look at the traffic ranking for bookmakers on top100bookmakers. You can see how it's now dominated by a few big players. Bet365 for example probably have 4 times as much traffic as the number 2. All it takes is for a bookmaker to do little things a little bit better than another bookmaker (like a punter is a little bit better at forecasting than another) and the first bookmaker will start to attract turnover and customers on a power law growth and the second will see the opposite (like the first punter will be able to leverage his profitability and make even more profit and the second punter will be faced with either loss chasing or quitting). It's call the Pareto Principle.

In Stan James case, their model of quickly (quicker than most) identifying and removing winners has obviously impacted on their traffic and turnover to the extent that they can't even attract the mug punters as well as other brands can, hence the fall in internet traffic. As in all business, stupid business decisions lead ultimately to the death of the business unless those decisions are reversed and a different tack is followed.

Don't see that happening with Stan James, but you never know.

[casinovegas]

Stan James can run reports on accounts even after the accounts have been closed.

Michael

I'm 100% sure they can, whether they will is a different story...........I am on the 5th email to them with no reply.

[thebookiesoffers]

[casinovegas]

Stan James can run reports on accounts even after the accounts have been closed.

Michael

How can we get this done Michael when no one at Stan James answers emails??

[casinovegas]

I take it this has all been forgotten about now and there will be no more info on it??

[12Xpert]

Not likely. Whilst the current management team at Stan James remain in place you're not going to get anything meaningful from them. The idea that they will pay any attention to what GPWA might say or do is wishful thinking beyond the extreme. If Stan James are stupid (and I think their business model is stupid - treatment of players etc.) then it's quite reasonable to assume that they will do stupid things. If Stan James are broke, it's quite reasonable to assume that they will take measures to save money. My belief is that it's all too late for them. Their traffic is tiny compared to brands like Bet365, William Hill and Betfair and has been shrinking over the longer term.

The only hope is that at some future time a new management will start doing new and better things and then start recruiting affiliates again. When they come knocking on your door you can suggest that for you to return to the fold before hell freezes over, they should reactivate the pre-existing account and honour all unpaid commission over the period during which it was closed. I did that with another UK brand and it worked.

[thebookiesoffers]

I take it this has all been forgotten about now and there will be no more info on it??

I raised a few issues with GPWA regarding what Stan James told them and have heard nothing back

If that is the end of it then you wont find me posting on here anymore

Not even suspending Stan James shows that this place seems to want sponsor money more than they want active affiliates that this place is supposed to help