Can William Hill do this?

[selectabet]

I've tried to get a statement on my account at William Hill but it only goes back to mid Feb even though I've had the account for years.

I emailed them to see what was wrong. This is the response I got back...

"As our system only stores information for 12 weeks you will be unable to view the period in question.

You can however, send a cheque for £10.00 to cover admin costs and we will request this archived information for IT."

At first I thought they were having a laugh. £10?

Anyone know if they can legally charge you for access to this info?

[Beanie]

Fairly sure they can - I'm pretty certain some banks charge for historic statements. It'll probably fall under the same laws where companies are only allowed to charge a fee of the costs they actually incur for something, so if it costs them money to do so, they can pass the cost on.

[Merlin]

I'd tend to agree with Beanie - I do however think if it was challenged in a court , they would struggle to uphold it...but that's another subject...

One thing you could do, is to dispute your balance, if you think it's wrong -

If they come back to you and claim your current account balance is correct, ask them to prove it, coz you can't prove it because you havent got access to statements....

They will have to do something to show you the balance is correct....it's their obligation...

[selectabet]

Yeah, good shout Merlin.

I have an affiliate account for WH over at my blog and they pay any earnings straight into my account. They're not very quick at doing this but I've held off getting on their case to see if it sorted itself out. I now think I'm about £40 short - so I'm not going to pay a tenner to find out.

Maybe I should get a statement from the affiliate side rather than the sportsbook side.

Cheers, for the advice.

[selectabet]

BTW

Don't you think 12 weeks is quite a short period of time? I've been on longer holidays!

Also, I think banks are a wee bit different because they mostly send you a printed statement. If you lose it then fair enough they should charge you for another one. But given that the only way you can get a statement from you online account is actually online then it's a bit unfair that you need to pay for it beyond 12 weeks.

Can't decide whether its worth arguing the point or am I just likely to give myself grief?

[Wittmann 44]

This is pretty standard - I download my bookie records every 3 months as I had the same problem with Betfair when I started using them.

[Wittmann 44]

The 12 week retention excuse is an industry wide thing but I would imagine that 12 week storage problems is actually rubbish as an excuse for not doing it. For audit purposes information must be legally stored for 6 years. I would think that custmoer accounts with balances that form part of William Hills balance sheet at any point in time are an important part of this.

The real reason is I suspect is that the bookies fear that staff would be "swamped" with requests for old balances.

Like Merlin I think that what they are doing is highy suspect and would be found wanting in a court of law.

[ABWN]

The real reason is that they are worried people might realize how much money they spend with them and stop betting with them! All greedy bastards.