It has been a while since a company has demonstrated behaviours that have left me both gobsmacked and fuming. Ladbrokes has just demonstrated itself as one of those companies that we should highlight at every conference on data privacy, and I sure will from now on.
So I opened a Ladbrokes account at some point with a plan to lose some money on the Grand National. It will not surprise anyone to know that I did not read any of the terms and conditions, lets face who does? In the past that has never bothered me until now.
So first thing that happens is that Ladbrokes email me to say that my account has been inactive and they are going to charge me for the fact I am not betting but it is still open. The email goes like this:
‘We recently wrote to you about an Administrative Fee which would be applied to your Ladbrokes account.
The Fee has now been taken from your account and was calculated as either £2 (or currency equivalent) or 5% of the balance on the date at which your account became inactive, whichever is greater. When calculating the charge, we have included balances from all wallets (including poker, casino etc). The Fee itself has been taken from the Sportsbook wallet and this may result in a negative balance if funds were held elsewhere.
If your account retains a total positive balance a further Fee will become due on the 1st day of every subsequent month.’
The first thing is the account is at zero and they still took the fee, so that is breaking their terms and conditions. Of course the obvious reaction is annoyance about the fact they are charging me for not using the account, but let’s say they have costs to maintain the infrastructure and we accept that. So I decide that I would like to close the account, that after all is what they are pressing me to do right?
I write to their support services and ask to close my account. The response is as follows:
???? What? Now I feel totally violated. I can’t delete my details, I can’t remove myself from your database? I am totally shocked by this, in this climate of data invasion the idea that a major company is refusing to delete my details seems totally incongruous, even NSA is having to be more open and transparent about what data it collects and keeps. To me this is totally unacceptable and is what gives the data and online industry a bad name and has to be stopped. We hear all the time about how gambling advertisers have a less than above board to approach how and where they target consumers, but clearly it does not stop there.
Bertozzi's Bytesize 
Hehe. In danger of showing my age it reminds me of the lyrics from the Eagles, Hotel California: “You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’ “