Imagine winning a lottery ticket worth 11 million pounds (approximately Rs 118 crore), only to realise the win was a misunderstanding on your part. A British man was heartbroken after being told he misread the lottery app. Mark Fletcher thought his life had changed after he got the numbers right but misunderstood the way the Lotto app worked.
However, when he called the app customer support to inform them about his win, the representative told him the winner was someone who bought the lottery ticket. Simply selecting a number on the app was not enough.
Recalling the disappointing phone call with customer support, Mark Fletcher told The Metro, “When I rang them up to check, I was on the phone for 45 minutes, and the woman was adamant I wasn’t a winner. Then I asked why it was telling me I’d won and if there was a fault with the app, and they denied that also. I felt as if I were being put under a lie detector. She kept saying, “You haven’t bought that ticket, have you, Mark?”
He said the customer support was not empathetic towards him and said, “They’ve not shown any empathy towards me. It has impacted me; I’m left thinking about all the ‘what ifs’.” The 49-year-old now feels disillusioned with the whole lottery system.
Allwyn, a multi-national lottery operator, explained that while using the Lotto app, the lottery hopefuls can save a set of numbers in their app. Presuming, the selected numbers are the numbers mentioned in their real lottery ticket. By saving these numbers, the buyers can easily check if their lottery ticket has won. However, simply selecting the number from the app, without buying the ticket, does not amount to a ticket purchase.
A spokesperson for Lotto operators told The Metro, “Players can select any set of “my numbers”, save these in their app account and then go into the app and check them against any previous draw.”
He added, “It has nothing to do with whether a player actually played the numbers or not – and, in this case, the player did not play this set of six numbers via his online account for the draw on June 29, or indeed in any draws prior to the draw on June 29 taking place.”
Comments
0 comment