RaceCafe..#1...Tipsters Thread.... Share Your Fancies For Fun...Lets See Who The Best Tipsters Here Are.
rdytdy

New FOB and Shutdown

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17 hours ago, crustyngrizzly said:

Good to see the old results format back.

Yes great go spend $40 mill then give us exactly what we had, you couldn't make up how poorly run NZ racing is if you tried and got a gold star stamp for it!

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18 hours ago, rdytdy said:

 Go and ask him why they no longer display option numbers. 

They obviously don't want to admit WHY?  The reason is because Paddy Power don't want computer robots accessing their odds from other bookmakers hence make it as difficult as possible.

TRANSLATION. To hell with the customers we want to protect our business

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34 minutes ago, slam dunk said:

They obviously don't want to admit WHY?  The reason is because Paddy Power don't want computer robots accessing their odds from other bookmakers hence make it as difficult as possible.

TRANSLATION. To hell with the customers we want to protect our business

They probably don't display them because there is several 1000 of them aren't available in retail outlets which may cause some confusion.

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14 hours ago, pakari said:

They outsourced the whole lot mate not just pre match. You do realise that don’t you? If the prices are stale why don’t you take advantage then?

Na. Haven't had time to have a close look since that day. But thanks for asking x

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I know I've already made this point and I hate to repeat myself but have just logged in and the overwhelming first impression is again how effing slow it is. I don't have this problem with any other firm, I wonder if it's because they have so many blobs and boxes and crap aside from the important stuff ,i.e. runners, sides and prices. If one can call a spade a spade, and without wanting to be too negative, the whole thing is a piece of shit. $60 million? $50 million? What for????

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15 minutes ago, Phantom said:

I know I've already made this point and I hate to repeat myself but have just logged in and the overwhelming first impression is again how effing slow it is. I don't have this problem with any other firm, I wonder if it's because they have so many blobs and boxes and crap aside from the important stuff ,i.e. runners, sides and prices. If one can call a spade a spade, and without wanting to be too negative, the whole thing is a piece of shit. $60 million? $50 million? What for????

$41m so far Phantom according to genius Allen.....and they will be going back for more to fix it....:rolleyes:

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15 hours ago, pakari said:

Not 1 bookie over here, including the TAB display stakes so clearly they don’t see it as important. Why do you want to see it? You only bet if the purse is over a certain level?

Sometimes I may use stake money level as a guide to gauge just how hard some connections are trying. 

Of course they are all trying all the time (snigger snigger wink wink), but if the coin is up, then the level of trying usually follows suit, which in turn gives me increased confidence to put my hard earned on. 

Not the most important aspect when trying to read a race, but the more information one has, the better. Also, if something wasn't broken beforehand, why try and fix it? 

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Question (Because just by chance  no one is answering the phone on the help desk)

 

Where do we find the 'Loss Ticket Form" on this high  new performance website :)

 

Its doing my head in Thanks for spending 40 mill on another lemon John

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19 minutes ago, Thepaw said:

Question (Because just by chance  no one is answering the phone on the help desk)

 

Where do we find the 'Loss Ticket Form" on this high  new performance website :)

 

Its doing my head in Thanks for spending 40 mill on another lemon John

Lost ticket claim forms can be completed at a TAB retail outlet.

From the new website, go to main menu, then under the "Support" heading click "Help". Type "Lost ticket form" in the search field and  bit more info will come up. But I couldn't see a form that could he downloaded anywhere. It appears it is a function only instore, but I stand to be corrected. Wouldn't rely on that new bloody website anyway, maybe quicker to pop into a TAB if ya close by to one. 

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Cheers Rusty for the advice (and I will be heading there tomorrow) since I can obviously NO LONGER DO IT ON-LINE

It astound me that we have paid some bloody idiots to develop this new website and yet they seemed to have miss the 101 stuff  

Those that constructed this user friendly website must have deemed it was unnecessary to include this as part of the infrastructure  

Anyone taking bets on accountability  for this shambles;  John ALLEN maybe Glenda its a f'n disaster and is making NZ Racing look like a knock shop in a side alley (sorry hash on the ladies in the alley)

 

 

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6 hours ago, Ohokaman said:

$41m so far Phantom according to genius Allen.....and they will be going back for more to fix it....:rolleyes:

Deloittes costed the farce at upwards $72 million. They are professional accountants. The $41M figure probably dosen't  include all the sundries like interest, inhouse expenses, travel and restaurant expenses. And how is the $25 million pre paid on imaginary income going to be treated. Surely its an expense as sure as hell there's not going to be additional income generated for this fairy tale. And that does not include the opportunity cost i.e. the income generated if the $50 million had been spent wisely.

AS the saying going "something" soon is going to hit the fan.

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12 minutes ago, slam dunk said:

Deloittes costed the farce at upwards $72 million. They are professional accountants. The $41M figure probably dosen't  include all the sundries like interest, inhouse expenses, travel and restaurant expenses. And how is the $25 million pre paid on imaginary income going to be treated. Surely its an expense as sure as hell there's not going to be additional income generated for this fairy tale. And that does not include the opportunity cost i.e. the income generated if the $50 million had been spent wisely.

AS the saying going "something" soon is going to hit the 

So do you think Slam Dunk that stakes will double this year ? 

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This wonderful new website  just keeps on giving :) 

Thought I'd ring the help desk to see if the "Lost Ticket Claim' option was still available online; I mean this been the most model TAB site around so it should be YEAH RIGHT.

 First problem click on  both the Help & Contact Us pages zip naught just blank page,. Finally fluke the 0800 number and spoke to lovely lady who advises me " No we no longer provide the lost ticket claim online", Bugga me  are you kidding me. In this modern world where almost every transaction can now be done electronically the  heads have decided that we should return to the pen and paper. MY aussie account is looking more appealing each day

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Disclaimer: I work at the TAB (I won't say where other than in the capacity of a customer facing role) but I'd prefer to remain anonymous for the sake of job security.

I'll put some points out there and let people take from it what they will:

1) When calling up the help desk or phone bet - remember, the staff that answer the phones didn't make the choice to change the system, yelling and screaming at them along with a barrage of swearing won't magically bring back the old site or get the operator to fix something that they themselves cannot fix.

2) The OpenBet platform is a good platform (at the core of it) but the problem is that they tried to retrofit it with the old jetbet system for backwards compatibility with the retail sites and touchtone betting along with integration with the legacy parts of the system. What they should have done was to stand back and take a big picture analysis as to the direction the betting industry is taking and develop a system that didn't require the mess of compromises. The result of what you see today and the money spent is the result of so much work being spent trying to get the new system to integrate with the old processes.

3) With the moving of the data over to the new system they did some really stupid decisions for the sake of 'simplicity' - the new system only allows one card per account thus you cannot use the same card on more than one account which is fair enough from a fraud prevention point of view.  The problem is that when they migrated the data across it resulted in all the old accounts with the same card being used across multiple accounts also migrated across with the net result of deposits failing. Why did they do it? apparently for the sake of convenience but what is more inconvenient - spending 2 minutes to re-enter the credit card number on the account or waiting 30 minutes on hold to then having the operator trying to locate the other accounts where the credit/debit card is used? Same can be said for the race tracker - why not just get the customer to enter it again where as they're now going to spend thousands of dollars more to try and retrieve the information off the old database with no guarantee that it can be migrated - why not just start with a clean slate and get the customers to choose them again rather than promise something only to find that the end result is iffy reliability?

4) The payment processor, IP Payments/Bambora, has always been a mess even before the change over with the constant breakdowns; the problem made worse by the fact that the system works by doing pre-authorisation, security check but the problem comes when the security check fails because what is meant to happen is a 'message' is sent back to IP Payments/Bambora to release the pre-authorisation but it doesn't resulting in people seeing money being deducted multiple times - it should drop off after 5-10 days but for the average person who needs the money for other things then the current system is unacceptable.

5) The website itself is one of those things that one can chalk up as "sounds great in theory" but in reality it becomes "if you try to be everything to everyone the end result is no one is happy". The website is meant to scale and adapt to screen sizes hence the mobile app looks the same as the website on a mobile phone web browser when being run on the same device (I wonder whether the app itself is nothing more than a Progressive Web Application (PWA)) but when you make such a choice you end up making compromises - buttons have to be bigger because you're not only catering for mouse input but also touch screen thus the target has to be big enough for a customer to easily press. The net result is that it isn't information dense enough resulting in the inability to display the full field of runners when trying to place a racing bet resulting in time spent scrolling up and down the page. I was thinking to myself, "maybe it is great for sport but bad for racing' but even for sports it is a mess.

6) With the attempt to be 'everything to everyone' the result is also lousy performance - it took 20-30 seconds to load up the results page for the EPL - and this is on a high end computer on a 100mbps fibre connection so it is hardly a situation where I lack the 'grunt'.

7) One thing to keep in mind that the programmers are working on the issues but keep in mind that the original scope of the project was laid down by the TAB/NZRB - it was ultimately TAB/NZRB that chose to to do what they did.

8) The one theme I am hearing 'on the streets' is about John Allen going on television saying, "everything is great, everything is awesome" and I can't help but be reminded of 'Baghdad Bob' with a side of 'Nero playing the fiddle as Rome burns' - the least he could have done was gone out and said, "we are aware of some teething issues and the transition wasn't as smooth as expected but we are working on addressing the sore points that our customers have provided feedback regarding..." - at least then he would win bit of a kudos for having a degree of humility but the fact that he keeps claiming everything is ok demonstrates just how out of touch he is with the day to day operations - that some how he can 'Donald Trump' his way to success by boasting benefits and ignoring the legitimate issues the customer base does have.

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I've got a question for SneakyTrader, and a warning for all TAB acc holders.

Last week a friends TAB account had a sum of money subtracted for a 'Fixed Odds Bet'...the thing is this bet was never placed!! It claimed to be on 'thoroughbreds' and it also claimed that the start time of the event was long gone when the bet was 'placed'. In account history under description: it says 'unsettled'.

As of now it still says 'unsettled' 5 days later.

This was the TAB just subtracting money when there was no bet placed!!

Now I know what you're thinking, but I insisted my friend ring and demand an explanation and sure enough the lady at help desk said straight away "yep I can see this is an error, you didnt place this bet" she then said she would email someone and get it sorted.

And we are still waiting for a reimbursle 5 days later!!

So my question to SneakyTrader and infact all account holders is have you heard of, or had this happen to your own account??

Because if you look at the bigger picture here this is very concerning , how many times is this happening? Possibly without even being detected from account holders?

 

 

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1 hour ago, Lowdown said:

I've got a question for SneakyTrader, and a warning for all TAB acc holders.

Last week a friends TAB account had a sum of money subtracted for a 'Fixed Odds Bet'...the thing is this bet was never placed!! It claimed to be on 'thoroughbreds' and it also claimed that the start time of the event was long gone when the bet was 'placed'. In account history under description: it says 'unsettled'.

As of now it still says 'unsettled' 5 days later.

This was the TAB just subtracting money when there was no bet placed!!

Now I know what you're thinking, but I insisted my friend ring and demand an explanation and sure enough the lady at help desk said straight away "yep I can see this is an error, you didnt place this bet" she then said she would email someone and get it sorted.

And we are still waiting for a reimbursle 5 days later!!

So my question to SneakyTrader and infact all account holders is have you heard of, or had this happen to your own account??

Because if you look at the bigger picture here this is very concerning , how many times is this happening? Possibly without even being detected from account holders?

Keeping in mind that I have limited experience in terms of the technical in's and out's behind the scenes when it comes what the bookies use but 'unsettled' points to a bet that was placed, resulted and the bookies have realised that they've resulted it incorrectly so they've had to reverse the pay out. This unsettling process (the correction) should occur on the same day (within minutes of the result being recognised as being incorrectly done) that the bet has been finalised but if it has been days after the event when they unsettled it then IMHO I'd put a complaint through. Regarding the other matters raised, I haven't had it occur on my own account so I can't really comment.

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4 hours ago, SneakyTrader said:

Disclaimer: I work at the TAB (I won't say where other than in the capacity of a customer facing role) but I'd prefer to remain anonymous for the sake of job security.

I'll put some points out there and let people take from it what they will:

1) When calling up the help desk or phone bet - remember, the staff that answer the phones didn't make the choice to change the system, yelling and screaming at them along with a barrage of swearing won't magically bring back the old site or get the operator to fix something that they themselves cannot fix.

2) The OpenBet platform is a good platform (at the core of it) but the problem is that they tried to retrofit it with the old jetbet system for backwards compatibility with the retail sites and touchtone betting along with integration with the legacy parts of the system. What they should have done was to stand back and take a big picture analysis as to the direction the betting industry is taking and develop a system that didn't require the mess of compromises. The result of what you see today and the money spent is the result of so much work being spent trying to get the new system to integrate with the old processes.

3) With the moving of the data over to the new system they did some really stupid decisions for the sake of 'simplicity' - the new system only allows one card per account thus you cannot use the same card on more than one account which is fair enough from a fraud prevention point of view.  The problem is that when they migrated the data across it resulted in all the old accounts with the same card being used across multiple accounts also migrated across with the net result of deposits failing. Why did they do it? apparently for the sake of convenience but what is more inconvenient - spending 2 minutes to re-enter the credit card number on the account or waiting 30 minutes on hold to then having the operator trying to locate the other accounts where the credit/debit card is used? Same can be said for the race tracker - why not just get the customer to enter it again where as they're now going to spend thousands of dollars more to try and retrieve the information off the old database with no guarantee that it can be migrated - why not just start with a clean slate and get the customers to choose them again rather than promise something only to find that the end result is iffy reliability?

4) The payment processor, IP Payments/Bambora, has always been a mess even before the change over with the constant breakdowns; the problem made worse by the fact that the system works by doing pre-authorisation, security check but the problem comes when the security check fails because what is meant to happen is a 'message' is sent back to IP Payments/Bambora to release the pre-authorisation but it doesn't resulting in people seeing money being deducted multiple times - it should drop off after 5-10 days but for the average person who needs the money for other things then the current system is unacceptable.

5) The website itself is one of those things that one can chalk up as "sounds great in theory" but in reality it becomes "if you try to be everything to everyone the end result is no one is happy". The website is meant to scale and adapt to screen sizes hence the mobile app looks the same as the website on a mobile phone web browser when being run on the same device (I wonder whether the app itself is nothing more than a Progressive Web Application (PWA)) but when you make such a choice you end up making compromises - buttons have to be bigger because you're not only catering for mouse input but also touch screen thus the target has to be big enough for a customer to easily press. The net result is that it isn't information dense enough resulting in the inability to display the full field of runners when trying to place a racing bet resulting in time spent scrolling up and down the page. I was thinking to myself, "maybe it is great for sport but bad for racing' but even for sports it is a mess.

6) With the attempt to be 'everything to everyone' the result is also lousy performance - it took 20-30 seconds to load up the results page for the EPL - and this is on a high end computer on a 100mbps fibre connection so it is hardly a situation where I lack the 'grunt'.

7) One thing to keep in mind that the programmers are working on the issues but keep in mind that the original scope of the project was laid down by the TAB/NZRB - it was ultimately TAB/NZRB that chose to to do what they did.

8) The one theme I am hearing 'on the streets' is about John Allen going on television saying, "everything is great, everything is awesome" and I can't help but be reminded of 'Baghdad Bob' with a side of 'Nero playing the fiddle as Rome burns' - the least he could have done was gone out and said, "we are aware of some teething issues and the transition wasn't as smooth as expected but we are working on addressing the sore points that our customers have provided feedback regarding..." - at least then he would win bit of a kudos for having a degree of humility but the fact that he keeps claiming everything is ok demonstrates just how out of touch he is with the day to day operations - that some how he can 'Donald Trump' his way to success by boasting benefits and ignoring the legitimate issues the customer base does have.

Who within the senior management actually oversaw this whole transition. Seems pretty clear John Allen isn't a wagering/IT expert, he is a corporate/bureaucratic manager, who in NZRB actually did the work on this? I would have thought we would know their name by now as they would be centre stage taking all the credit for the marvellous platform..

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35 minutes ago, horseboy said:

Who within the senior management actually oversaw this whole transition. Seems pretty clear John Allen isn't a wagering/IT expert, he is a corporate/bureaucratic manager, who in NZRB actually did the work on this? I would have thought we would know their name by now as they would be centre stage taking all the credit for the marvellous platform..

Unfortunately I wouldn't know who they are - IIRC there was the manager from the web team on the Des Coppins radio show (I heard from a customer at a store) but I'm unsure was to what degree of decision making he has vs. moving the deck chairs around on the titanic. I've met some of the programmers and shoot the breeze/venting but I've never met any of the people who have the final say in it all this but I assume that the board outlined what they wanted, a contractor came back with a plan and then the board signed off on it so ultimately it is the board who is responsible because it is almost a certainty that the board would have been given all the in's and out's of what they wanted to achieve with all the downsides noted but decided to go ahead anyway. Then again this reminds of the Kiwibank fiasco - they could have kept with Ultracs, upgraded to version 5.0, and given that Bendigo uses the exact software and has no scaling issues (the reason put out as to why they were migrating off Ultracs) along with migrating to MasterCard for Debit and Credit then use that leverage to get a better deal then talk to Apple and Google to get phone based payment up and running etc. but unfortunately the management at Kiwibank insisted on having a bespoke solution sitting on top of SAP as a giant vanity project to prove how much of a 'serious bank' Kiwibank is because they use a piece of software that has a notorious reputation for cost overruns (Commonwealth Bank/ASB use it because they make so much money that eventually if you drown a project in so much money that it'll eventually work out in the long run - Kiwibank doesn't have such a luxury). As an underlying in organisations it is always funny to watch how things crash and burn with those making the decisions living up to the peter principle.

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Don't do sports betting Sneakytrader but it would appear this new system has been basically been brought in for that side of the business. That may be fine but they have made a mess of the racing side (don't forget why the TAB was established in the first place when started up in 1950 - for the benefit of racing clubs).

Who in their right mind decided not to show Fixed Odds Option numbers and Futures Option Numbers. Crass stupidity.  

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Excellent post Sneaky. You have hit on a number of problems. However who said the OpenBet was a good platform. Reading some of the internet reviews portrays another picture. OpenBet is a 1990's system. Jetbet a 1980's system. So the genuises at NZRB trying to integrate 1980's system with a 1990's system. Sure there has been changes to OpenBet but so have there been to Jetbet.

Reading some of the employee reviews at OpenBet many have left because they were working with antiquated software tools of no value in the job market. There seems a policy at OpenBet that they expect the client to fund all the research and development. So they have obviously played NZRB like bunnies. They couldn't care a hoot about NZ. Their goal is the wider US, European and Asian markets.

How pathetic can developers be expecting punters to scroll up and down to see the full field. Scrolling also up and down to PLACE or ACCEPT the bet therefore losing sight of whats going on. I honestly haven't a clue what the bet is that I am approving. I threatened legal action against the TAB 10 years ago for having a confusing website so they undertook several changes like having the bet amount clearly displayed in large font as well as self imposed controls on maximum bet amount.

So the payment processing system has always been "mess". WHAT !!!! after dozens of highly paid salary earner recruited from banks. Seems IT was never within their knowledge sphere.

Trying to have one website for both mobile and desktop obviously a nightmare. It takes one with minimum intelligence to figure its probably easier to have two web sites. I can see problems becoming murkier.  Even Paddy Power are looking at ditching OpenBet but hey John Allen has achieved one thing he's replaced a 1980's system with a 1990's system.

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From reading these posts from ST I'd say a plan B contingency should be thought about by NZTR ,  as a very  extreme emergency measure to keep racing going in case it comes off rails . You wouldn't want an Italian shutdown like a few years back as cash flow stalled and horses went the way horses sometimes go in Italy unfortunately.Might need a temporary cut of costs . Maybe a drastic fixture shake up for temporary time , racing longer cards but less meetings, saving travel and support costs , cutting top end stakes to prop up other levels etc, cash flow looks very flaky in industry .

If wheels come off the coalition there will be no safety net, allied with this new issue at TAB I don't think  banks would loan a cent . NZTR and the other two codes  would need to keep the horses /dogs ticking over and therefore the stakeholders in pay. 

Fail to plan, plan to fail.

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21 minutes ago, rdytdy said:

Don't do sports betting Sneakytrader but it would appear this new system has been basically been brought in for that side of the business. That may be fine but they have made a mess of the racing side (don't forget why the TAB was established in the first place when started up in 1950 - for the benefit of racing clubs).

Who in their right mind decided not to show Fixed Odds Option numbers and Futures Option Numbers. Crass stupidity.  

Here is the funny thing - in OpenBet itself there are numbers that are still used as references so it isn't as though the numbers are no longer used in the actual system itself. Sure, the numbers used in the OpenBet system are longer than 3 or 4 numbers but they certainly exist in the system with the racing being generated each day then exported to the JetBet system so that it can be accessed from the terminals in the store. The self service terminals software could have been at least upgraded to talk directly to OpenBet and the store terminals replaced with NCR touch screens (the kind used in fast-food outlets) where both the self service and manned terminals could share a basic interface with slight differences based on what device it is running on (the presence of an EFTPOS machine on a manned terminal vs. a self service terminal that redeems/creates vouchers/tickets and accepts cash being fed into it).

20 minutes ago, slam dunk said:

Excellent post Sneaky. You have hit on a number of problems. However who said the OpenBet was a good platform. Reading some of the internet reviews portrays another picture. OpenBet is a 1990's system. Jetbet a 1980's system. So the genuises at NZRB trying to integrate 1980's system with a 1990's system. Sure there has been changes to OpenBet but so have there been to Jetbet.

Reading some of the employee reviews at OpenBet many have left because they were working with antiquated software tools of no value in the job market. There seems a policy at OpenBet that they expect the client to fund all the research and development. So they have obviously played NZRB like bunnies. They couldn't care a hoot about NZ. Their goal is the wider US, European and Asian markets.

How pathetic can developers be expecting punters to scroll up and down to see the full field. Scrolling also up and down to PLACE or ACCEPT the bet therefore losing sight of whats going on. I honestly haven't a clue what the bet is that I am approving. I threatened legal action against the TAB 10 years ago for having a confusing website so they undertook several changes like having the bet amount clearly displayed in large font as well as self imposed controls on maximum bet amount.

So the payment processing system has always been "mess". WHAT !!!! after dozens of highly paid salary earner recruited from banks. Seems IT was never within their knowledge sphere.

Trying to have one website for both mobile and desktop obviously a nightmare. It takes one with minimum intelligence to figure its probably easier to have two web sites. I can see problems becoming murkier.  Even Paddy Power are looking at ditching OpenBet but hey John Allen has achieved one thing he's replaced a 1980's system with a 1990's system.

In the case of OpenBet I can understand the reasoning for going with them given that some of the biggest bookmakers use the platform so for those making the decision it sounded like a 'obvious thing to do', a bit like the old saying 'no one ever got fired for buying IBM'. What I'm shocked about is why TAB insist on using a rinky-dinky datacenter outfit up in Auckland instead of just running OpenBet on the Google Cloud platform and pay for the extra capacity when needed (which would deal with the Cloudfare issue where customers located in New Zealand are blocked because CloudFlare believes their IP address is located outside of New Zealand) along with leveraging the distribution capabilities of YouTube for live video streaming which have more points of presence that would deal with the performance/reliability issues - heck, why not offer a TAB streaming application for Apple TV and charge $10 per month for those who have an internet connection but don't wan't a Sky subscription?

Yeah, it was a mess with the old system - same situation as before where the money is authorised then never credited to the account, the system freezing during payments etc. As I said to myself last night - how can Pizza Hutt, Dominos and Hell Pizza able to deliver a consistent online payment experience when ordering a pizza and yet TAB seem to struggle. I mean, those three companies would be doing thousands of transactions around in New Zealand so why do TAB insist on going with IP Payments/Bambora when there are more reliable online EFTPOS vendors out there?

16 minutes ago, Red Rum said:

From reading these posts from ST I'd say a plan B contingency should be thought about by NZTR ,  as a very  extreme emergency measure to keep racing going in case it comes off rails . You wouldn't want an Italian shutdown like a few years back as cash flow stalled and horses went the way horses sometimes go in Italy unfortunately.Might need a temporary cut of costs . Maybe a drastic fixture shake up for temporary time , racing longer cards but less meetings, saving travel and support costs , cutting top end stakes to prop up other levels etc, cash flow looks very flaky in industry .

If wheels come off the coalition there will be no safety net, allied with this new issue at TAB I don't think  banks would loan a cent . NZTR and the other two codes  would need to keep the horses /dogs ticking over and therefore the stakeholders in pay. 

Fail to plan, plan to fail.

I had a look at the TAB Australia website and I'm dumfounded as to why TAB NZ insisted on copying Paddy Power's design given how fast and responsive the TAB Australia website is like.

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5 hours ago, SneakyTrader said:

Disclaimer: I work at the TAB (I won't say where other than in the capacity of a customer facing role) but I'd prefer to remain anonymous for the sake of job security.

I'll put some points out there and let people take from it what they will:

1) When calling up the help desk or phone bet - remember, the staff that answer the phones didn't make the choice to change the system, yelling and screaming at them along with a barrage of swearing won't magically bring back the old site or get the operator to fix something that they themselves cannot fix.

2) The OpenBet platform is a good platform (at the core of it) but the problem is that they tried to retrofit it with the old jetbet system for backwards compatibility with the retail sites and touchtone betting along with integration with the legacy parts of the system. What they should have done was to stand back and take a big picture analysis as to the direction the betting industry is taking and develop a system that didn't require the mess of compromises. The result of what you see today and the money spent is the result of so much work being spent trying to get the new system to integrate with the old processes.

3) With the moving of the data over to the new system they did some really stupid decisions for the sake of 'simplicity' - the new system only allows one card per account thus you cannot use the same card on more than one account which is fair enough from a fraud prevention point of view.  The problem is that when they migrated the data across it resulted in all the old accounts with the same card being used across multiple accounts also migrated across with the net result of deposits failing. Why did they do it? apparently for the sake of convenience but what is more inconvenient - spending 2 minutes to re-enter the credit card number on the account or waiting 30 minutes on hold to then having the operator trying to locate the other accounts where the credit/debit card is used? Same can be said for the race tracker - why not just get the customer to enter it again where as they're now going to spend thousands of dollars more to try and retrieve the information off the old database with no guarantee that it can be migrated - why not just start with a clean slate and get the customers to choose them again rather than promise something only to find that the end result is iffy reliability?

4) The payment processor, IP Payments/Bambora, has always been a mess even before the change over with the constant breakdowns; the problem made worse by the fact that the system works by doing pre-authorisation, security check but the problem comes when the security check fails because what is meant to happen is a 'message' is sent back to IP Payments/Bambora to release the pre-authorisation but it doesn't resulting in people seeing money being deducted multiple times - it should drop off after 5-10 days but for the average person who needs the money for other things then the current system is unacceptable.

5) The website itself is one of those things that one can chalk up as "sounds great in theory" but in reality it becomes "if you try to be everything to everyone the end result is no one is happy". The website is meant to scale and adapt to screen sizes hence the mobile app looks the same as the website on a mobile phone web browser when being run on the same device (I wonder whether the app itself is nothing more than a Progressive Web Application (PWA)) but when you make such a choice you end up making compromises - buttons have to be bigger because you're not only catering for mouse input but also touch screen thus the target has to be big enough for a customer to easily press. The net result is that it isn't information dense enough resulting in the inability to display the full field of runners when trying to place a racing bet resulting in time spent scrolling up and down the page. I was thinking to myself, "maybe it is great for sport but bad for racing' but even for sports it is a mess.

6) With the attempt to be 'everything to everyone' the result is also lousy performance - it took 20-30 seconds to load up the results page for the EPL - and this is on a high end computer on a 100mbps fibre connection so it is hardly a situation where I lack the 'grunt'.

7) One thing to keep in mind that the programmers are working on the issues but keep in mind that the original scope of the project was laid down by the TAB/NZRB - it was ultimately TAB/NZRB that chose to to do what they did.

8) The one theme I am hearing 'on the streets' is about John Allen going on television saying, "everything is great, everything is awesome" and I can't help but be reminded of 'Baghdad Bob' with a side of 'Nero playing the fiddle as Rome burns' - the least he could have done was gone out and said, "we are aware of some teething issues and the transition wasn't as smooth as expected but we are working on addressing the sore points that our customers have provided feedback regarding..." - at least then he would win bit of a kudos for having a degree of humility but the fact that he keeps claiming everything is ok demonstrates just how out of touch he is with the day to day operations - that some how he can 'Donald Trump' his way to success by boasting benefits and ignoring the legitimate issues the customer base does have.

Good post,  ST...but I can't even access the helpline,  to swear or  not to swear....!

I wouldn't do that -  but in a week of trying,   cannot raise anyone on the phone, and since implementation,  only ONE email - which took three days - and the information given on that email was a nonsense.  I followed instruction to the letter....

and I am still locked out,  requests to re-set password are denied,  and I can't even get existing funds out.

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