BE WARNED - You cannot withdraw your money

WITHOUT PREJUDICE Please be warned that you CANNOT WITHDRAW your funds from this company. I made the mistake of thinking that a company that sponsors the Dolphin’s Cricket and now the Sharks team would be an upstanding organization. Now I think back to Kings Park and the Gupta sponsorship under the Sahara name. I deposited my money with Hollywood Bets without thinking twice about reading the reviews here on Hello Peter or any of the other sites for that matter. Had I done that I would definitely not have done so. I used them for the first-time last year and decided that the little bit of money that I had won, I would leave in the account to use this year at the Durban July as I had decided to attend the race day. I was unsure of what the queues would be like to get so decided to deposit my funds with them to make sure that I was able to place my bets. However, as it turned out I missed my first couple of bets trying to figure out how to use their site on my phone which was different to accessing it on my laptop. I ended up placing a few of my bets on course instead and by the time I did figure out the site on my phone, load shedding kicked in and the last 3 races were cancelled even though we had been assured that there would be no load shedding. And so the nightmare begins. I then went online the next day and tried to withdraw my funds only to find out that it is impossible. Every time I clicked on withdraw it would show me a zero balance and issue a reference number as if the withdrawal was successful and then a couple of hours later the funds showed up as a credit in my account again. No matter how many times I performed this the result was always the same. So I then decided to open the chat function on their website and to cut a long story short the agent, Siyanda Mhlongo, informed me that I cannot withdrawer all my funds as their T&C’s clearly state that you have to bet with 55% of what you deposit and you are only allowed to withdraw 45% plus your winnings. I have the screen shots of the conversation as proof. So I tried to withdraw my 45%, plus last year’s winnings with the same result. You just cannot withdraw your money. I will be taking the matter up with the gambling board and will also report the matter to the consumer council but my personal advice is STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS.