Betfair account closed, suspended or restricted?
Opening a Betfair betting exchange account offers a significant advantage: your account won’t be closed if you are a consistent winner. As a long-term winner myself, I can confidently say that Betfair welcomes success—what a relief!
However, there are legitimate reasons why your account might be restricted. Unfortunately, most Betfair help desk staff might not fully understand these issues or discuss them thoroughly on live chat. That’s why I’ve documented them for anyone who might be affected.
If you ever find yourself locked out of your Betfair account, this article is here to help.
Additionally, our forum is a fantastic resource where experienced users can provide immediate advice. If you’re worried about your account being restricted or closed, the following advice will reassure you and help you navigate these concerns. But also check out these threads on the forum to learn how other people have used this information to get their accounts open again.
https://www.betangel.com/forum/
Before you visit the forum or the Betfair helpdesk, let’s look into the reasons your account may be restricted and explore what you can do to avoid it, or how to get your account re-opened or reinstated.
Keep reading to safeguard your Betfair account!
How do I know my account is closed or suspended?
The first sign that your Betfair account has been suspended or closed might be an email notification or an unsuccessful login attempt. When you try to log in with your username and password, you could be informed that there’s an issue with your account, it’s closed or to contact the helpdesk.
Your initial step will likely be to contact Betfair customer service. While they can resolve some account suspension issues, they won’t be able to many of them of them and they use generic account information. So it’s quite possible they may be of no help at all!
If your account suspension falls under less common reasons, the standard support representative may only provide a generic message without a solution, leaving you stuck.
To help you navigate these challenges, we’ve compiled a list of the most common reasons for account suspensions and the steps you can take to resolve them, especially when Betfair customer service isn’t able to help.
Read on to understand why your account may be suspended and discover the best strategies to remedy the situation, ensuring you can continue enjoying your Betfair experience without unnecessary interruptions.
Betfair account issues – Easy to solve
Account pending password change
If you get this message when you try to log into your Betfair account via some API software, this means that your account has been locked because of a failed login. This is easily resolved by attempting to log into your account directly on the Betfair web site.
If you try this and it fails, a password recovery process will start. This will use the information you have previously supplied in your account. If that fails, you would then need to contact Betfair customer services to re-validate.
Self exclusion
In some cases, you may have chosen to have a period of temporary or permanent self-exclusion. For the temporary self-exclusion, it is possible to have the account reactivated by contacting Betfair customer service providers. However, if it is a permanent self-exclusion, it is not possible to have the account reactivated. This is permanent and will not be reversed under any circumstances.
If one gambling company merges with another, then it’s not impossible they will combine operations. If you have excluded yourself from a connected company, you may find the database matches your exclusion as well and your account defaults to exclusion.
This is madatory as set out by the gambling commission, so you can’t appeal this decision. Don’t exclude yourself anywhere to avoid this.
Self exclusion
In some cases, you may have chosen to have a period of temporary or permanent self-exclusion. For the temporary self-exclusion, it is possible to have the account reactivated by contacting Betfair customer service providers. However, if it is a permanent self-exclusion, it is not possible to have the account reactivated. This is permanent and will not be reversed under any circumstances.
If one gambling company merges with another, then it’s not impossible they will combine operations. If you have excluded yourself from a connected company, you may find the database matches your exclusion as well and your account defaults to exclusion.
This is madatory as set out by the gambling commission, so you can’t appeal this decision. Don’t exclude yourself anywhere to avoid this.
Account verification
One of the reasons why a Betfair account may be shut down temporarily is that there might be some issues verifying the account. There is an entire section on the Betfair account page when you log in which tells you exactly how to verify your account and what is required to do so. If you are stuck, the Betfair help desk can get involved to nudge the process along.
If you fail to verify your account you will be unable to withdraw any funds and your account is likely to be suspended without notice. So make sure you make the effort to get verified. It’s a pretty simple process and should be the first thing you do when you sign up.
Have your recently changed ANY account details?
This is an issue that has happened to me. In a tidy up process, I went updated details on the one of my accounts. Betfair immediately matched this with another account and closed my account.
This is an automated process designed to stop you have more than one account. Obviously, thanks to running Bet Angel, by default I’ve always had more than one account. Yes, it’s true Betfair closed the entire Bet Angel business in a split second for this reason. If could be your telephone number, email address, postal address, anything. If it matches, it’s an automated closure.
Thankfully I was able to contact them about the error, which they reversed. You will know if you have changed details recently and if you have, you should contact Betfair to resolve this type of issue.
Betfair account suspension – Complex issues
When we talk about more complex issues, these are issues where a quick chat to Betfair customer support is unlikely to resolve your problems and you will end up talking to Betfair at a much more elevated level.
Some are a bit more complex than others, but there is often a clear and obvious process to get the account reviewed.
The account owner and user are different
This is linked to the ‘account verification’ process. If there is a situation where there is ‘reasonable’ suspicion that the owner of the account is not the same as the person running or using the account. Betfair will suspend the account and start an investigation.
There are many reasons why this is clamped down on, one will follow this paragraph. But this is incorporated in their terms and conditions so be aware that you could be in technical breach of terms if this is what you are doing.
Premium Charge Avoidance
This is linked to the previous reason. You may think that a ‘neat’ way to avoid the Betfair premium charge is to simply trade on somebody else’s account. This is what some people ‘claim’ to do. But from personal experience, I can tell you that if you are a moderately sized trader then Betfair with obviously see your profits drop dramatically, only for some random person to suddenly become a brilliant trader. It’s a bit of a dead giveaway that you are using somebody else’s account to avoid paying premium charges.
Your account will be suspended pending an investigation and you will likely forfeit your balance to make up any unpaid premium charge. You have been warned, read the thread on the forum if you want to see this happen in real life.
There is no process to appeal this and you will contacted, probably by the pricing team, at Betfair.
Suspected Money Laundering
Betfair and other betting companies are legally obliged by the governemnt and regulators to be red hot on money laundering.
Most bookmakers have very advanced fraud preventions systems which are also geared to spot unusual activity. So if you are thinking of swapping money between accounts by taking advantage of thin markets, watch out! It doesn’t mean you will definitely see your account shut, but it will almost certainly get flagged in a few milliseconds.
You may also send up a flag if you deposit and withdraw money too many times in a short while and other such similar activities. Account reviews in these sorts of circumstances can be long-winded and tough to prove, but if you are innocent then that will shine through.
However it can take a lot of effort to prove exactly what you were doing, so it’s better to avoid any sort of activity that could fall into that trap. But all genuine cases get resolved in my experience.
Account closed due to a commerical profile usage
This issue requires a more in-depth explanation as it can occur due to overuse of practice mode. Why will be explained towards the end of this section. But let us explain what a ‘commerical usage profile’ is.
Betfair considers it’s data and your bets, propertiety information owned by them and they want to protect this. Betfair doesn’t want to share its (your) pricing of its markets to any competitors, as this may confer a business advantage. After all, betting exchange markets are more efficient and often better priced than a traditional bookmaker.
In days gone by, bookmakers would price their own markets. But in order to not get caught by people arbing, or just a gamble in general. All prices in the industry tend to converge and betting exchanges are a key part of that mix. You can bet more on an exchange, so it tends to lead the price action.
Betfair charges commercial organisations large fees to access its data. Therefore if you create an account and just read data from markets and never place a bet, it will look suspiciously like you are just harvesting or relaying data. Therefore your account will be limited so that it fails to function correctly.
This can happen if you use Bet Angel in a practice mode and never place a bet. Betfair has no idea you are in practice mode, so as far as they are concerned you are probably harvesting data. Restricted data or refreshing also occurs if you have no funds in your account.
It’s easy to avoid falling into this trap, as all you need to do is fund your account so you are positively indentified and then make sure you place real bets or Betfair trades on a regular basis.
If your account is restricted in this manner check out this forum thread for how to appeal a restriction – https://forum.betangel.com/viewtopic.php?t=15692
Betfair Account closed on business grounds
This problem is very similar to the previous issue but is slightly more nuanced as it’s more based around your activity against the amount it can generate for Betfair.
Like all businesses, Betfair is, err… a business and if you hammer the exchange, like refreshing it frequently and placing few bets there is little incentive for Betfair to service your account. If they allowed people to hammer the exchange without any revenue, losses would soon rack up and they would go out of business. Nobody wants that!
Before you panic, Betfair don’t close accounts like this lightly, they are only looking at real outliers.
For example, we were recently following a case of a user who accidentally racked up millions of refreshes on top of their usual activity and had his account suspended. But on review, it was fairly obvious what had happened and all was well and good again.
Using streaming on Bet Angel will significantly minimise any chance of this happening. Also using the many features within Bet Angel’s Guardian tool will help you manage your activity and market searching in a carefully controlled manner. Curiously, the Betfair website is much less efficient and more likely, when used with software, to generate a lot of activity while not immediately generating any revenue for Betfair.
The appeal process to this is the same as listed here.
Affordability review
Thanks to a very high regulatory pressure, Betting companies must assess a customer’s ability to afford their betting to ensure responsible gambling practices and prevent financial harm.
By evaluating affordability, these companies can identify individuals who may be at risk of gambling beyond their means, thus protecting vulnerable customers from potential financial distress and addiction. This assessment helps maintain the integrity of the betting industry, supports sustainable gambling habits, and aligns with regulatory requirements aimed at promoting a safer gambling environment.
In recent years massive fines from the regulator for relatively minor infringements, have caused betting companies compliance departments to go into overdrive in this area.
The best way to avoid this is to not deposit too much money, too frequently.
Most strategies for coping with this is to use their deposit limit to build up a betting bank that reflects there requirements, rather than those that the compliance team enforce on you. Also be careful not to withdraw money that you may need to put back into your account.
Summary
Betting exchanges are the only place in the betting world where you account will not be closed if you are a consistent winner. I opened my account 24 years ago, have been very succesful and still enjoy the many advantages of betting exchanges.
However, there are a number of regulatory hurdles that all betting companies have to adhere to so make sure you are aware of this and fullfil your obligation to be compliant.
Betfair is also a business, and while they can be a bit heavy-handed and clumsy at times, our experience is if you have your account accidentally closed or limited, then it’s very likely this will be reversed. Our discussions with them indicate the number of accounts affected is very small in comparison to the total user base and truly errant closures are often reversed.
But to achieve that, you may need to go beyond the helpdesk as they will not be aware or have the authority to look any deeper.