Reason for posting today is the announcement that Betfair and Paddy Power are to merge, this following hot on the heals of Coral and Ladbrokes tieing the knot. I have nothing against Betfair, they practically invented the betting exchange, and made me a tidy side income in the process, but in my opinion they've lost their way. The point of a betting exchange is to provide value to customers by getting closer to the true price of an outcome.
Betfair's addition of casino games was bad, adding the sportsbook with it's awful prices just shocking, and teaming up with one of the few bookmakers who offers worse prices just leaves me cold.
Paddypower have rubbish odds. The odd decent bonus, but they are quick to gub and limit accounts and aren't interested in taking customers on, only converting them to accumulators and casinos. From that point of view Betfair and Paddy are a match made in heaven, neither are interested in value for customers, only from squeezing money out of them.
About a year ago I moved to smarkets.com who have much lower commission (2% instead of 5%), and decent customer service. More than that, they actually want to give value to customers, not keep it for themselves. I will not be going back to Betfair any time soon, nor should you.