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Comment by dumbfounder | Hacker News Reader

What if there was another zero on there? How about 8 more zeroes? Still think they should need to honor the bet? They offered him $500 and tickets to a game, I think he is getting greedy.

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What if the situation were reversed, and I bought a wager only due to the fat fingering of my calculator, or I mistook one team for another or just had a brain fart.

Wouldn't it then be reasonable for them to give a refund?

Yes, and bookies do as long refund clients' mistakes as long as the price hasn't moved that much and it is before the event.

Both which were not true of this interaction.

A part to consider is whether the other party knew or should have known of a mistake.

It's not reasonable for FanDuel to assume a mistake there. However, if a customer purchased a bet on a game that had already happened it would be reasonable to assume a mistake had been made.

Mistakes happen and the law of contracts deals with them.

What if there were less zeroes? At what point can the company just decline to pay anything out at all because it’s up to their discretion whether a line was good or caused by a bug? Obviously in that case they would go out of business because people would be mad. But my point is that (in my opinion) it’s a very gray area legally.

It was less zeroes and they didn't pay and the guy has threatened to sue. Obviously it's a gray area, which is exactly why there are 2 sides to this argument. Their fine print will either stand up in court, or it won't. But you can't just assume they are going to pay out willingly every time they make a mistake. There is obviously a line where they have to say the risk in not paying out is worth the bad publicity and lawsuit potential. Then they learn from that mistake and move on. Then people use your business moving forward or they don't. That's why I like free markets, the checks and balances are already there to handle situations like this, we don't need legislation.

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