Miles behind the competitors
I recently signed up to Star Spreads, looking for an alternative spread provider to some more well known competitors, Spreadex etc.
Upon sign up, I deposited and tried to place my first bet, and to my delight, they were the first company that doesn't allow you to go beyond your account balance. Other sites had caught me out like that in the past. I was a little frustrated that card payments were not available and had to give this company access to my bank account through Open Banking.
However, to my dismay I placed the max bet (max for my balance, which was low at maybe £50) and bizarrely was directed immediately to a trader. The trader said 'I'll place the bet but will have to suspend the account until you send in your documents. I'll email you now.' Fair enough I thought, this is becoming standard practice.
Easy enough process, sent in two docs and was verified quickly.
After this, I was stunned to find out that all further bets were manual as well. Even bets for pennies have to be checked and approved by a trader. This normally takes less than 30 seconds, but can take up to 5 minutes in busy periods. Not ideal when looking to get on just before an event starting.
Because of this manual trading, there is also the limitation of no overnight trades. The trades close at 10pm and don't reopen to 8am the following morning. So as you can imagine there isn't any opportunity to bet on US sports.
The selection of sports and markets is also miles behind their competitors. Theres only about 8-10 sports at any one time, and the events within these sports are also very limited, as are the markets within each event. Some big European football games don't even have corner betting!
Finally, withdrawals. I checked out the withdrawal times and it said up to 6 working hours. I requested withdrawal at 7pm, and was not processed until next morning. Taking their 8am-10pm working hours, withdrawal was processed in little over 4 hours. Its a good timeframe, but some competitors automate withdrawals under a set amount. The upside was that once processed, it was immediately in my bank because of the earlier used Open Banking.
All in all, the provider is a very small fish in this industry. If they want to make any impact in the market, they need to look very quickly at the following:
* automated betting - up to a certain amount should be automated then over a certain value should need traders involved.
* 24 hour betting - probably would require automated betting first, but overnight betting for things like NBA, NFL is a must.
* lack of sports/events - many major sports are missing from the site, as are many events within that sport. many major football leagues still not being offered. selection of markets is tiny in comparison to competitors.