Tipster abuse – anyone who has paid for tips will know this story well: A tipster claims to make lots of money (no losing months, 100+ points profit a month). Marketer claims the Tipster will make you lots of money. All you need to do is pay a small amount each month. You buy into the hype and start placing your bets.
In the ideal world, you make steady profits. What often happens is these tipsters will hit a losing run and before you know it a hate mob starts to build.
A whole range of abuse will start flowing at the tipster. Everything from questioning his ability, the odd expletive, all the way to personal threats.
The tipster then gets all defensive, claiming all the people who are complaining are idiots and don’t understand betting.
The question is..
Do Tipsters deserve abuse when they hit a bad run?
Let’s think of it another way. A restaurant has great reviews and you decide to go one night. For one reason or another you end up getting bad service and overcooked food. Obviously the restaurant did not live up to the hype. Do you say “thank you for the awful service and product” or “do you complain”. Obviously you complain, but the level of complaint will depend on the person.
The second aspect is what would you expect from the person providing the service. “If they called you morons who don’t know about food” it will likely make things a lot worse. “If they were very apologetic, explained that it was an anomaly, and offered some sort of compensation” you’d probably be a lot happier.
I think a tipster should be no different. The tipsters are providing a service. People pay money to access this service. If they are providing a bad service than you have to expect that people are not going to be happy. Fighting fire with fire is only going to make things a lot worse.
In summary, if you are charging for a service which is targeted at uneducated betters, you have to expect abuse when you hit a bad run. Obviously I don’t condone threats of violence, or personal attacks, but a little bit of frustrations has to be expected.
And before you ask, I sit on both sides. I pay for tips and provide tips. When things go bad I have to expect the inevitable abuse.