That doesn't sound right at all.

In Florida, the clerk scans the ticket then types in the number and a screen facing the customer says how much was won.

There's nothing you can do about it now, so let it go.

No, you don't have to enter the amount that you win, the machine does all that for you.  The only people that are ripping the people off in Virginia lottery scratch games are the VIRGINIA LOTTERY OFFICIALS.

If you will check the web site on the Va. scratch tickets, you will find that the unclaimed prizes never change from week to week on the $20.00 tickets.  The only amounts that are won are a break even $20.00

if you are lucky enough to get $20.00 out of three or four $20.00 tickets.  They say that it is all random, but "give Me  break!"  These $20.00 tickets have been out here a long time.  Unclaimed prizes speak for

themselves.  They will start releasing a few more winning tickets if the customers demand more for their hard earned BUCKS!  The lottery gets richer, and the poor trying to make a few bucks, get poorer!

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they are taking us for idiots.  When some of the big tickets are released in Southwest Va. I will believe it is RANDOM!!!!  And they also say the money goes to the

help the schools; Is this why the school systems have to borrow millions of dollars from the government to consolidate the school systems?  Virginia lotery is not RANDOM, and I'm sure anyone who has spent

money day, after day, certainly realizes Va. lottery for what it is!

You should use the self scan machines to check the ticket, the same machines that you would use on the draw lotteries.   You just scratch off the 2 dimensional barcode and scan that.   It's a quick way to check your tickets without scratching the whole ticket but I wind up taking the ticket home to scratch for the fun of it even though I know it's a loser from the self check scan.   It's common for cashiers to underpay and then collect the actual prize themselves.   The lottery commision will investigate any retailer who's made a statistically unusual amount of claims for themselves and claims of larger prizes are routinely investigated.

Here in ohio and other states too, there are little letters on your  ticket, somewhere in or around play area.  for $20, here in Ohio you would see the letters T - W - N. $10 T - E - N,

 $5. F - I - V. It's away to double check your winning amount. T - W - Y

 or F - W - V are not winners.

The retailers scan the barcode on the back, and enter the security code which are the four numbers in the serial number on the front under the latex that are in boxes or parenthesis.    I don't know if they are also required to enter the dollar value of the prize but that may be the case as a security measure since that can only be revealed by scratching off the latex.    Once they've scanned the barcode on the back and entered the scratched off security codes, the ticket is inactivated so even if you got the ticket back, you wouldn't be able to use it to make a claim.   I think in the old days, they would inactivate all tickets that the retailer scanned regardless of prize so many retailers had a policy of refusing to use their machines to check the customer's pick 6 tickets in case it won more then they had in the till.   I think that these days, they require prizes above a certain value to be claimed at the claim centers instead of at retailers.

However, there's also a 2 dimensional barcode on the front under the latex, if you take this to a self scan machine (the ones where you scan your draw tickets on) and scan it there, it will tell you how much you've won.   It's a good pre-caution to use the self scan machine whenever possible, some people will only scratchoff the 2 dimensional barcode to scan rather than playing the game but that takes a lot of the fun out of it.

I do find it weird when the retailer asks if I know how much I've won, that's only happened a couple of times but there are valid reasons for them to do so.  It be that they forgot to scan the 2 dimensional code first to see what the prize is before scanning the barcode on the back and are just too lazy to look through the symbols and add up the prize.   It may also be that they want to verify whether or not they have enough money in the till to cash it in before they scan it because once the ticket is inactivated they are required to make the payout and the lottery commission will only pay the retailer who scanned it.   I had one $200 ticket that the retailer refused to cash in but the owner of the store was behind him and said he could do so, it looked like he used a special key to open up a time vault to get at the larger bills, I guess many of these gas stations slip the larger bills into a vault that can't be opened till the following day in order to limit their losses when inevitably held up over night.

There have been a couple of times where the prize I received would be slightly larger than the one I thought it was but this is understandable because they print the symbols such that a prize appears as if it were multiple prizes so that you have the illusion of having more than one chance per ticket.

Use the self-check machines before claiming your tickets from now on.

"Does anyone know if the "we have to enter the amount won" is true?"

No. This is garbage.

If you scratch off ALL of the foil on a ticket, you will find a string of numbers/letters (or sometimes a second bar code) away from the main play area. This code is what the machine scans and TELLS the clerk how much to pay. 

Scratch the ticket off COMPLETELY before you go in to cash it. Copying it is up to you.

Get a receipt.

A republic, Mr. Franklin? It looks like we couldn't keep it.
Al Gore deserves his Nobel like Milli Vanilli deserved their Grammy.

 Land of glasnost and perestroika.

 

 

Oh she got u!  Report her butt!, u proably won more than $20 bucks, She is not suppose to ASK U how

much do think u won, like someone mentioned the machine does all the WORK, next time that happens

tell her to give your ticket back, and check at another store, i always double check, because times r hard

and people GANK U whenever your not lookin, U just gave her a present for CHRISTMAS!

You got that right Charmed...yesterday I bought $12 worth of p3 tickets and the machine said I owed that & I paid it but then counted them and only had $11.50 worth, so I told the clerk and she said sorry that's what the machine said and I cleared it out before I ran them...well I just happened to look over at the machine and there was my extra ticket still at the top of the machine.

I told her now if that one had won you'd have gotten a win wouldn't you...just joking & laughed, but not really joking...the mgr. happened to walk up as I said...there it is still in the machine so sure enough that was my missing ticket I had paid for....this was at a store I don't usually go to...the machine that prints them out is right in front of me where I usually go and I can see what goes on.

Another time I bought some p3 tickets and a couple of lottery sheets and was charged a dollar over and I said...wow the tax must have gone up and then the man said...oh I charged you $5 for the tickets instead of $4....so you really have to know how much you owe for sure....don't trust any of them...a mistake could be innocent or not be.

that is how the Virginia Lottery Works. I enjoy driving to Virginia and only scratching off to see what letters there are. on the other hand North Carolina doesn't do this. I wish NC did though...

i have been charged in nc stores for a qp i didn't want i once asked for a qp told clerk 50/50 instead she did exact number came that day backwards man was i steaming mad

I used to see them on some of the scratch offs here in TX. I don't see them anymore on any of the tickets I purchase. Hope it returns though.

I hate to say this, but it does sound like you were short changed by the clerk and her coworker. If so, I hope karma does a payback times 1,000 on them. I look forward to hearing about a big win from you.

i don't have to worry about tickets from TN they are all loosers!!!

When a clerk asks you if it's a winning ticket or how much you won I consider that a red flag and won't go there anymore. It's not that I'm afraid of being ripped-off, just that it irks me to know they are checking to see if I can be.

If an unsophisticated player answers "I don't know if it's a winner" the clerk is then free to scan his own losing ticket and pocket the customer's to scan later. If the player says "Yes, I think it's a $10 winner" the clerk can then safely pocket anything over that.

I know that nobody here would likely fall prey to any of these potential scams but there are a lot of not-too-intelligent people who play the lottery too and they are the ones in the news being ripped-off big time. That is, if they even become aware that they've been ripped-off. The writing is on the wall as far as I'm concerned with all these convenience store owners and clerks constantly "winning" so many lottery prizes because they just happen to be "lucky".

Like Ike Clanton said to Doc Holliday: "What's that, twelve hands in a row Doc? Ain't nobody that lucky".

Ike was right.

It's only happen a couple of times to me at locations and with tellers that I had used in the past and they actually paid the prize level above the one I thought I had so I think that sometimes they would ask to see if it was a big win because if it was more than what was in their till but less than $600 then they would be in trouble as soon as it was scanned and the four digit security code entered.   When a retailer scans the ticket and enters the code, the ticket becomes inactivated, even if they gave you the ticket back, you wouldn't be able to claim it anywhere, the store clerk would have to somehow get the money to pay the prize.   If you remember back in the 80's and 90's, when people started asking store clerks to scan their lotto tickets to check the tickets instead of matching up the numbers themselves, many retailers adopted a policy of not scanning the tickets just to check the prize, referring the customers to a ledge where they posted the winning numbers for the various games.   That was because back then, even a large prize winning ticket scanned at the store would become inactive requiring the store to pay out of the till and they didn't want their till to empty out.   I know that because a storeowner told me this.

Yes, I would consider such a question "fishy" and I believe one should scan at the self scan station before redeeming the ticket but they may have a relatively innocent reason so I would not blackball them just because of the question, unless I had other reasons to suspect foul play.