As per a previous post where I aired my thoughts on this matter it all came back to me today whilst watching a couple of gallops races at Betfair Park, Sandown.
http://harnessingaliving.blogspot.com/2010/06/things-that-annoy-me-just-couple.html
Let me preface this by stipulating that I did not have a quaddie so there is no sour grapes from my point or talking through my pocket involved, it purely comes down to wanting us punters to not keep copping the short end of the stick whilst the corporate giant in TabCorp continues to try and maximise profit at the expense of their customers.
In leg 1 of the quaddie today, the topweight (Triumphant Choice) was a heavily backed $1.40 favourite so you would imagine that around 70% of quaddies were based around him. He was a late scratching at the gates and all monies therefore went onto the sub and with a pool of $406,000 that equates to nearly $300,000 worth of money on SuperTab alone (not including quaddies taken with NSW TAB, UNiTAB and Corps) so its a fair assumption that there was half a million dollars being anchored on this horse to win across Australia in the quaddie.
The double whammy with this today meant that all monies go onto the fav at the jump and it was a coin toss as to who was going to jump favourite between Gael Force and Merryweather so most punters wouldn't have known what they were on until at least halfway through the race at best. Plus, all their money went onto a 5/2 pop in the revised market which isn't fair either considering the initial bet was anchoring a 2/5 pop not a 5/2 pop!!!
Can you imagine if you had $1000 on Makybe Diva in the Melbourne Cup and she got scratched at the gate and then get told that your bet is going onto another runner, sounds ridiculous doesn't it. Simple answer to that is yes it is ridiculous yet its exactly the same principle. There is only reason TabCorp persist with this farce and it can be summed up in 8 simple letters T_U_R_N_O_V_E_R.
They certainly have the software capabilities to implement a refund or a special dividend for that matter but it all comes down to that $500,000 that was invested on the horse in the quaddie as with their percentage takeout in quaddies it would have cost them in excess of $100,000 in revenue to refund the money based on that money not being in the pool.
Think the majority of punters would prefer a special dividend if they managed to snare the other 3 legs instead of having their money put onto a runner they didn't pick and the special dividend actually becomes a win/win as punters are happy and the TAB doesn't lose their turnover. Seems a no brainer to me.
It also creates totally inflated or deflated dividends which is best described on Caulfield Cup day a couple of years back when Maldivian and Eskimo Queen were both scratched at the gate. In this instance, the winner (Master O'Reilly) was the favourite after the scratchings so ran the sub in Victoria and another runner ran favourite so was the sub in NSW and from memory the quaddie paid $9000 in Victoria that day and almost $100,000 in NSW purely because all the money from the scratchings went onto the sub. Maybe thats another reason the TAB refuse to budge on this issue, they can try and con mug punters into taking quaddies by advertising that it paid $100,000 last week.
Punters need to take a stand and if ever contacted by the TAB for survey purposes just highlight this farce that is akin to outright theft.
