A BETTING man was left stunned and stumped for cash when a successful flutter was not honoured by a high street bookmakers.

On the morning of November 12 Dom Rumsey, of Ash Copse, Reading, placed £20 on England to beat South Africa at 11/1 odds.

Several hours and a resounding England victory later Mr Rumsey went back to Coral on Friar Street ready to have his pockets lined.

Rather than picking up the £240 he was expecting however, the business development director was told his bet was invalid and was offered a £20 free bet and £4 pay out instead.

After a little investigation Mr Rumsey discovered that bookies reserve the right to cancel bets with overly favourable odds. Coral later claimed that the 11/1 received represented such odds and were entered mistakenly.

“I think it's a bit ridiculous to be honest,” Mr Rumsey said.

“Speaking to people in the pub 99 per cent say 'if it is in black and white then it should be honoured'.

“If I had got my facts a little bit wrong and made a bet with a friend, I would pay them because it was my fault. If that is your business you want to make sure you are checking your odds and getting everything right.”

While Coral recognised that a mistake had been made by one of their bookmakers, they stood by their decision to deny Mr Rumsey his winnings.

Simon Clare, a spokesperson for Coral, said: “Whilst I sympathise with the customer if he genuinely believed his bet would be settled at such generous erroneous odds, an England win was in reality a long odds-on eventuality and we have settled the bet in line with our rules, as all bookmakers would, at the correct price on offer at the time the bet was struck.

“Betting is a high volume, fast moving environment where betting transactions involve hand written instructions by customers on betting slips, alongside which prices are sometimes requested by the customer to be written by the betting shop staff.

“Whilst every effort is made to ensure that the prices attributed to a bet are correct, mistakes will unfortunately happen from time to time given this is an imperfect process that involves hand writing and a manual effort to match up the bet to the price.”