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back to article Online bookie can't scoop £50k losses made by 5-year-old

A man who blamed his girlfriend's five-year-old son for making loss-making trades in expensive natural resources through his online betting account is not bound by a term he agreed to on the bookmaker's website, the High Court has ruled. The term stated that an accountholder is deemed to have authorised all trading made under …

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  1. Duffaboy
    Joke

    he was working Part time..

    And in his spare time the little chap was Mr Brown's Fiscal adviser...

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  2. raving angry loony

    So that's 50k quid worth of advertising on how easy their interface is to use. It's so easy a 5 year old can do it!

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  3. Blue eyed boy
    Happy

    I suppose the question needs to be asked

    Suppose the price of coffee in Brazil or whatever had moved the other way and this budding e-billionaire had made a £50K PROFIT in a couple of clicks. What would we be thining then? Would they be so anxious to find a loophole then? Certainly the taxman would be interested in him.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Boy genius

    What seems to have been omitted so far is the slight detail that Spreadex forces a logout on all users at 4am every day...so for three days that sprog was also managing to log in to the account...navigate to the commodities section only (ignoring Forex and Indices and Shares and so forth) and then made multiple commodity trades on three popular and volatile products.

    Boy genius. He'll go far in the City.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Boy genius

      Alternatively, he made the whole loss in the first few hours and it was not until the account owner returned three days later and checked his account that he discovered what had happened.

      A guess - I haven't seen any details online but would be interested if there is a fuller description somewhere.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    Dodgy small print

    Interesting. Might have to look into this aspect of the law myself:

    I've just received an email from Interactive Investor, telling me they're introducing a quarterly fee on their shares ISA accounts.

    On the FAQs on their website, they state that if you don't accept this and want to transfer your shares out, "The standard transfer charges will apply". The puzzled account holder wondering where charges for transferring out shares have suddenly come from, can find out on the following FAQ:

    I didn't agree to any transfer out charges

    When we moved your account from our previous supplier, you agreed to the terms and conditions of the service. The charges for the service are part of the terms and conditions and are clearly stated on our website.

    Sounds like an equally dishonest bit of contract-based wool-pulling-over of eyes to me.

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    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Dodgy small print

      You ought to have a pretty good chance of winning that. Unless they flagged up that there was a material change to their policies, and allowed you to back out. And that means telling you specifically about the clauses in the new Ts&Cs that disadvantage you, not burying them on page 23.

      Also, unless the charges are more than £3k (or has it gone up to £5k now?), you can use small claims court, which means no lawyers, no costs, and only a £10 fee.

      I'm not a lawyer. And who knows what an individual magistrate will rule. But liability is limited to the court fee, which you lose automatically. And if they're changing your contract terms to something not in your favour, you're supposed to be able to get out of it penalty-free. Which ought to have applied to the previous change of terms, as well as this one. With clear warnings of what you were signing up for.

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  6. Mako

    Apropos the name of the company...

    ...every single instance of "Spreadex" that I have seen in this article and its comments has been interpreted by my poor, tired brain as "Spandex".

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You can't put anything you want in a contract get someone to sign it and it becomes binding unless you are living in some libertarian hellhole.

    I worked for a company once that put in its contract we are in no way liable for anything if we screw up in anyway, strangely enough this company did screw up cost a clients lots of money tried to use the contract to defend itself and the judge basically ripped it up

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  8. Just Thinking

    Same thing happened to me years ago

    This isn't just an online thing.

    Many years ago my girlfriends 5 year old got hold of my bank account number, went down to the local branch and took out a loan for £50K. Walked out of the bank with a big bag of cash, straight into the bookies next door and blew the lot on a greyhound because it was named after a cartoon character. Lost it all.

    Apparently I was liable because the kid new my mother's maiden name.

    Seriously, in the analogue world, is there any conceivable way a 5 year old could lose £50K of somebody else's money? If a company has a system which allows that to happen online, it is entirely their own fault imho.

    To those of you who are expressing doubt that it was really the kid, Spreadex shot themselves in the foot somewhat by essentially trying to say the guy was liable anyway. Nobody was denying it was the kid (whether it actually was or not) so the court had no reason to question it, and in part the verdict was based on the undisputed fact that it was the kid. Serves them right.

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  9. Tom 13

    Two idiots both blaming financial losses on the other idiot. Here's my fix:

    Punter with the losses only has to pay half to the bookie. The other half goes to the government.

    Punter offering the services only has to right of half the losses, but has to pay an equal amount to the government.

    Problem sorted.

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