Just wondering.....Is This How It Usually Works?

In a moment of madness I spotted a sports betting opportunity on Hollywood and decided to open an account.

I studiously filled in all of the required fields on the 'desktop' section and even went to the trouble of doing all of the required FICA nonsense.

(I would hardly regard a betting site as the best way to launder money as most of what you put in never comes back! Lol ).

My application was quickly acknowledged and my account was credited with R25; which sort of compensates me for the time and resources spent on making the application.

That is as good as it ever got.

When I attempted to upload the FICA documents using the self service option my pc flagged a warning that I was sending this sensitive information to a site listed as 'not secure'. I'm not crazy about distributing this info to every scamster currently trawling the web so I scrapped that option and sent an email to their FICA department with the requirements attached.

To test my shiny new account I deposited a tiny amount of R200 to determine how long it takes for my account to be credited.

Nothing happened so I called the Helpline (sic) and was advised as follows :

1.) It takes up to 4 days (!!!!) to credit one's account. Wow! I normally bet with Interbet (no plug intended) and if my account is not credited INSTANTANEOUSLY I have a complete thrombie.

2.) I was also cautioned 'that it is a Sunday'. .........and your point is? Those little creatures galloping around on my TV must, therefore, be 'Sunday horses' which are completely different to Monday - Saturday horses ?

3.) So what about a credit card deposit? Surely that must be immediate? No sir - that's up to 4 hours.

Thank you, Hollywood, for ending my relationship with you even before it began. The experience was a triumph of advertising the speed and efficiency of digitisation. Not.

Hi Garrick,

Please can you PM me your account details. I can only apologise for the incorrect information you have been given. You are correct, credit deposits should be instant. I would like to rectify this for you, and contact the agent that you spoke with so that he/she does not make the same error going forward.

Kind regards,
Simon

Garrick ,I use the I-Pay portal and your account is credited immediately. Just refresh the button near the account balance icon.

Hi Garrick, someone or something is wrong there. I deposited from my cheque account this am and as usual it was credited within 2mins at the most.

Garrick I can confirm that deposits (ETF or Credit Card) are available in minutes and seconds respectively. Also, I don't know about other bookmakers (I use that term loosely in regards to SA bookies) but with Hollywoodbets if I request a withdrawal say for instance 08h00 in the morning... the money is in my bank account within a few hours, cleared and accessible.

I can now confirm that I was contacted by Hollywood and my issues were sorted to my complete satisfaction.

I guess the point here that Garrick was making is how quickly badly informed/trained personnel can chase away customers. We know the reality of deposits being quickly credited, but all you needed was an unpleasant experience and you don’t even get to/ bother with the next step in the process.
Unfortunately, for all the convenience that I do get from using Hollywoodbets, and I do use them a lot, I have to agree that phoning in to try and rectify a problem or get help is normally an absolute nightmare.
People have taken up both sides of the coin here on the site previously, about why post and moan. The reality is if you do not do that, as illustrated by Garrick’s post, you don’t get much joy. The caliber of response from their helplines is not up to scratch.
So unless you have a direct mail to Simon et al that will do something, it becomes a mission. I am unfortunately one of those that too many times gives up than using much resources through time and airtime to try to get them to resolve issues via the customer care phone lines.

i agree with fludubai .

The service and personnel is poor at base level . If you don't have access to Simon or Kyle to resolve issues its tedious and time consuming .

The watsapp service is non existent i tried using it when oversees , to no avail .

like i said ground level service ( thats were new customers enter the platform ) needs work .