buying lottery tickets

If I play a number and retailer make i like to know what ticket they are cancelling.  It happened to me three times, First time they gave the wrong number and I won $40.  Second time the girl cancel the number and I ask her what number she cancel and told me I brought it back for 50cents box and the number came out straight.  the third time the retailer play the number straight and I told I wanted only box and the number came out straight.

Yes.  Idaho only has games that can't be cancelled AFAIK and I don't want to hear on the news that someone bought the ticket I turned down.

In fact, I just bought one yesterday.  Last week I handed the cashier playslips with quick picks.  He told me he preferred I just ask for a quick pick, I didn't need to fill out a playslip.  I told him I often get the wrong games if I just ask.

So yesterday I have the same cashier.  I tell him I'd like 5 Powerballs and 1 Hot Lotto, please.  What do I get?  5 Powerballs and 1 Powerball on a separate ticket.  Sigh.  I just bought it and left, now I have to get back to the c-store if I want to play HL for this drawing.

It also happened recently to me. For last weeks Powerball drawing, I filled out my Powerball playslip and I had chosen 5 Powerball lines and NO powerplay, well the machine wasn't working or something and it read my slip as 5 Powerball lines w/ Powerplay. The cashier was like that is ten dollars and I say um, it should only be five because I didn't PP it. We both look at my slip and it isn't marked and she says sorry but the machine is acting up. she tells me I can fill out a new sheet and she will do it again, but that she will have to try and sell the other ones to someone else.

Needless to say, I didn't want anyone else playing my lines so I ended up spending more money then I had planned to buy my own numbers and it kind of upset me. If the machine had been doing this to people all day it should of been closed until fixed.

So glad you reminded me of this. That happened to me 6 times in the past 10 years, and in all 6 times, the one ticket I handed back for each of those 6 times won the JP. 3 of those tickets were over 30 million. Damn, I hate when that happens. From now on I'll keep the mistake.

Just think, I could have won the JP 6 times.

Yes and no.

There is a clerk at the store where I usually buy my ticket that I guess relieves the regular clerks when they are on break or helps when there is a long line. Last week I handed her 10 play slips that should had 10 tickets but she handed me 11 tickets. I assumed she printed one of the tickets twice so instead of sorting through the tickets trying to figure out which one, I gave her the $11. She said I probably had marked the one of the tickets wrong, but I had used the same tickets in the same store the night before and the night after without any problems. When I checked the tickets at home, one of them was a quick pick that won nothing.

She was behind the counter again on Monday when I was getting my tickets so I told her about the 11th ticket, the QP and she had no idea why. When she put in the first play slip that night, 8 tickets were printed and she had to call the regular clerk because the total from the one play slip was $96 when it should have been $1. The 8 tickets were QPs for the next 12 drawings and again she had no idea how it happened. The regular clerk knew it was her mistake and told her she was lucky it wasn't Mega Millions tickets that can't be canceled and suggested that I go to another store because she had to cancel those tickets and it would take a while.

I went to another store, used the same 10 play slips and got the 10 tickets I wanted. So the problem wasn't my play slips and since the 4 or 5 other clerks in that store have never given me extra tickets, it can't be the machine. I'm not going to pay $96 because the clerk doesn't know what she is doing and I've had enough "bad luck" when she is working so there is no reason to assume she could accidentally sell me the "lucky" winner.

"she says sorry but the machine is acting up."

Translation: I don't know how to run this simple machine so I'll blame it on a malfunction and hope this customer buys my mistake or I can sell it to other players.

We have a game Ten-Oh where we have to fill out one play slip for each ticket so most players have multiple play slips. It's a piece of cake for the good clerks that know not to put the next play slip into the machine before it reads the first one, but some clerks haven't figured that out. I'll bet the farm your clerk never cleared the machine after the player before you asked for the powerplay option.

You're probably right. She might have just said that the machine is acting up to cover up for her mistake. I didn't think of that.

Yes there are cases of these situations happening, but they are not as frequent as people winnning when nothing goes wrong at all.

plus im on a strict purchasing schedule so i wouldnt steer away from it. 

When I worked the store, I would buy my mistakes I made on others' tickets.

I buy the mistakes others make on sellinig me my tickets.

I voted yes.  Who knows that mistake can change your life.