James Steven
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By James Stevens
A WiFi outage in several buildings in Chepstow caused some cashless payment facilities to crash on Saturday, leaving some bars and betting shops closed and the runway reluctantly forced to accept cash at the door.
The racetrack, like many, operates a cashless system, but was forced to temporarily turn around to prevent disappointed racegoers from arriving and being unable to purchase tickets due to the outage.
Elsewhere, the Tote kiosks in the restaurant, the Premier stand and some of the boxes were forced to close as they could not trade without internet access. The shutdown had a significant impact on turnover, with Saturday’s Placepot of £54,818, almost half the size of the pot available over the past two seasons.
Chepstow also offered free drinks at owners’ and coaches’ premises, with card payments not available. This led Alan King, winner of the opening race, to joke: “I think it’s great, we can have a drink without paying.”
Issues also impacted the weigh-in room – located below the owners and trainers bar – which meant that scale attendant Graham Ford had to call in the results over the phone, rather than using the process. typical online. RaceTech used a dongle to evade connection issues.
James Steven
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Chepstow believes the problem started at 5.30am on Saturday morning and, although a reason is unconfirmed, it is thought to be caused by either a power surge or an animal chewing on a cable. Attempts were made to remedy the problem for over three hours without success.
A crowd of more than 6,000 was on the South Wales track on Saturday for one of its biggest days of the year, but the issues weren’t seen as too damaging to turnover of the day.
Chepstow general manager Phil Bell said: “When people first arrived at the racecourse we found things weren’t working. I would say it was about a quarter of the racecourse which didn’t work and we tried for three hours to fix it via other routes but we couldn’t.
“One of the bars couldn’t accept card payments but they moved customers to three of the marquee bars which worked out well. We had extra facilities for today as we were expecting a big In the bar the owners and coaches offered us free drinks as we appreciate their support.
“In truth, it hasn’t been too bad. When I first found out about it, I thought it would be a larger issue. People worked around it and we got through it. essential is that the race went smoothly.. We will fix that as soon as possible.
On whether it would cause a financial hit, Bell replied: “For the bars in particular, it hasn’t cost too much as we’ve moved them to other areas, but the Tote yes, definitely. C It’s one of our biggest days of the year, we have 6,000 here and 850 in hospitality and the Tote isn’t working in half of those areas.”
Chepstow’s next race is scheduled for November 18.
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