William Hill Plus Card: How Does It Work, Is It Any Good?

Of all the cards we trialled this one was the biggest pain in the backside to set up.

Sorry William Hill.

It’s probably justifiable to have a bit of a go at the William Hill Plus card scheme given that 4 different members of instore staff couldn’t help us set it up in one go, and then live chat gave us conflicting information.

Our experience of using the card left us feeling as though it had been a bit forgotten, like that great squash racquet you bought and used for the 3 months you actually played squash, but that now lives with the umbrellas in the hall gathering dust.

We got the impression that William Hill launched it with best intentions, but now only do anything with it if they get a spare 5 minutes.

It does have its uses though, and for some people with certain betting patterns it will be just what they need despite its’ flaws.

They might even get it to work.

How the William Hill Plus Card Works

Oh boy…

If you go for one of these – and there are a few benefits that we will come on to – then to save you the same rigmarole we had to go through here is what you need to do:

1. Pop into your local William Hill and ask for the card. This bit is easy.
2. Head to a betting terminal and hold your card against the reader, then follow the onscreen instructions.
3. Register your card.
4. Link your card to your account using a code that will be texted to you.
5. Pray to the betting Gods that this has all worked and you don’t get error messages on their instore machines for the rest of eternity.

Ok that last one might be specific to us but we can only talk from our own experience right?

This is all just to get the thing set up, there is more to know if you want to actually use any of the features.

In order to withdraw cash you need to tell the app (mobile site, the app is gone now) how much you want to withdraw and it will then make that amount available as cash on your card next time you go into your local.

You’ll need ID but once the staff know you they will probably stop asking, they did for us.

In fairness this bit works pretty well.

What you cannot do, is just walk into the shop, flash your card, and withdraw cash from your account – you need to arrange it first.

If you want to create a betslip on your phone and then place the bet instore, and we can’t really think of many reasons why you would want to do this unless you were cash rich but had no money in your bank account, then you can.

You get a sort of watered down version of the site to create your betslip with but can only access footy markets from the next 7 days, so it’s only for football bettors.

We’d love to tell you whether the Plus Card can be used to play games in store, but we got error messages every time we tried.

The staff seemed to think it was possible, but had no idea why it wasn’t working, and after all of the time we had wasted trying to get the thing to work we threw in the towel and spun a few slots on our phones instead.

Benefits of the William Hill Plus Card

The main benefits are supposed to be convenience and rewards.

While the card does make it possible to get hold of winnings in cash in very little time, it’s anything but convenient to set up, and some of the features feel a bit pointless next to the website.

When it comes to rewards, we weren’t offered a single exclusive Plus card promotion in the 3 months we trialled it – although we did get a free brew in the shop, and a £5 free bet promotion came through after we stopped going in. Funny that, eh?

So the claims of extra rewards are exaggerated in our experience.

Here is what William Hill claim the card is good for and our experience of them:

In an ideal world you would use your Plus account to bring all of your betting together, but unless you are determined to bet in shop there is nothing about the system that would convince you not to just use the website.

To add an instore bet to your Plus card account you need to tap your card on the contactless reader and it will automatically appear. You can add it manually by inputting the betting receipt number, but at 18 characters it’s a right pain.

It would be brilliant if they could find a way to add online bets to your Plus card account as well, because then you would literally have all of your bets in one place. As it is, they just end up scattered between your online account, your Plus account, and in your pocket.

Lastly, we should mention that we could not get the instore terminals to recognise any funds in our account. We should have been able to use the card to bet using the terminals with our account funds, but although the terminal recognised the card it would not recognise that the account was funded.

Again, staff had no idea why this wasn’t working, and to be honest it doesn’t really matter why, because it’s not the customer’s problem, they will just go somewhere else or give up and use the website.