Many people thought they struck it rich playing one of the California Lottery's Scratcher games. But they didn't, and lottery officials blame a misprint, an error, to explain why some folks got a free game ticket instead of thousands of dollars in cash.
The Luna family thought Christmas had come early.
"My understanding is I won it fair and square."
Lucy Luna was playing the $3 Scratcher Word Crossword. The ticket says scratch letters to reveal 10 words — win $20,000.
Lucy scratched and, to her delight, found 10 words. She jumped into her car and drove to Sacramento thinking she'd come home with a big check.
"The manager said it was a misprint and they'd give me a free ticket for my $20,000 winner," Luna said.
The way the game is supposed to work is with 18 letters on the top on the ticket, scratchers find a matching letter below. Then they scratch away to reveal the same letter.
But the printer somehow superimposed a scratch layer on the surface that didn't match the letters beneath it, throwing the game out of synch.
Lottery spokesman Rob McAndrews attributed the problem to human error. "The lottery deeply regrets this has happened. Human error does occur."
The lottery figures about 4,000 of the 11,000 flawed tickets were sold before they could pull them. In fact, when Lucy went to Sacramento, she met another $20,000 winner in the lottery office who was given the same, 'sorry we messed up' explanation, but no check.
Lucy's not sure she's going to handle this, but for Christmas she recommends the lottery get coal in its shoes.
"There's 11,000 tickets out there, there's probably going to be more claiming this one. I don't now what they're going to do."
Lucy bought her ticket at a Vallejo Safeway, which has removed all the flawed tickets from its machines.
As far as the 4,000 flawed tickets that were sold since November 30th, the lottery says they don't know how many of those might belong to disputed winners.
That is really disgraceful. They should honor the ticket if they made the mistake. But I guess when your dealing with *the lottery* you should expect sleeziness.
They should make them good, but remember it's THEIR game, so they make the rules .
It would be a good gesture, but since when does the lottery commission and good judgement get mentioned in the same sentence ?
Did she think of having a clerk check her ticket? Maybe she thought if she did that, the agent would say it's not a winner, with the clerk refusing to give the ticket back to her.
The California Lottery is very sorry that this error has occurred and will reimburse any player who purchased a misprinted ticket for the cost of the ticket. The Lottery will continue to pay the prize for any winning tickets.
This is posted on the Ca Lottery website. I wonder if this means they will pay all the winners even on the misprinted ones or just real winners?
Brian
This is disgusting and dispicable. Next thing you know, some poor sap in El Segundo will hit the Super Lotto for $19 million and the State will claim that it was a "printer error"...sorry, better luck next time. Here's a free lollipop for you, sucker.
Shame on them, scratchers are the best cash cows for the lottery, they should eat their mistakes just like the rest of us.
All lottery games need lots of losers to be profitable, if a mistake cause there to be lots of winners instead the game could be a financial disaster and no state is going to be a party to that. The facts are when a scratch-off game is designed the number of possible winners and losers are fixed, and if a winning ticket isn't on the roll of tickets from which you're buying you have not chance of winning. That's the reason I seldom buy one. Unlike the games with drawings, everybody have an equal chance to win up to the drawings. If there are more winners than expected there are rules to handle it which have been posted before the game.
If it was me I'd get a lawyer and sue.
Printing error is not my problem, that's what insurance is for and the state should have insurance for such situations.
Crap like this make you wonder about the Lotteries as a whole which is the bigger picture.
Bring back the local bookie, LOL (smile).
And the idiots in Washington want to stop on-line gambling, heck the internet gamers never pulled this crap as far as I know.
Mike
I know there are some shady online operators, but the "big boys" give very little trouble to the average gambler.
This whole situation regarding CA is downright reprehensible. I agree...anybody can come up with the old "printer error" situation...that shouldn't be our problem as players as if they go on sale to the public, then they should be good to go.
Every instant ticket, as well as the posted game rules and State law, state that the Lottery will not pay tickets printed in error. To pay those tickets would come right out of profits, which would hurt contributions to education. Unless of course you levied a hefty liquidated damage against the ticket printer - that might provide an incentive for them to do better quality control. Maybe call on them to make good on the tickets... (as GTECH once did when they had an online game problem in the UK)
There is no way that 11,000 misprinted tickets should have gotten through the vendor/lottery security review when they were printed. This was not a human error - it was a system error since no human can realistically hope to effectivley review million of tickets during the print process.
No doubt about it - replacing a misprint with a free ticket is bad. Tickets that go on sale should be "good to go" as stated by CPS10.
Another black eye brought to you by the brain trust at the CSL.
They're good and bad in all operators, that's really not the issue.
Vendors that have contracts with the state to print tickets should have some type of audit process to catch these type of glitches, and when they don't they are liable. Get a lawyer and sue, maybe not the state since they can get out of anything, that's just the way it is and what people are allowing the state to get away with. But the contractor should be liable for misprints and the financial burden they create.
The average Joe/Jane purchased a ticket in good faith, and it said it's a winner. They should be compensated pure plain and simple.
How would you like it if the treasury said oops we made a mistake in Twenty dollar bills, they are no longer legal tender. Think about it.
In order to retain their credibility CA needs to pay the winners then seek reimbursement from the vendor. Period. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the bettor to seek reimbursement from the CSL's vendor.
Mike
Thank you for your response. You are spot-on with this one. This is also why they ask you to sign the back of them, because like checks, lottery tickets ALSO are legal tender in that if it is not signed, anyone can turn it in.
They should be compensated far beyond a free ticket. And yes, the printer should be liable. If a handful get out, that is reasonable error rate, and those also should be compensated, but *gasp* FOUR THOUSAND of them? Inexcusable, and they should hang on the line for this mistake.
You also are right Drive...this certainly qualifies as one the biggest gaffs in lottery history, brought to you by your friends at the CSL. It's crazy how this happened. Terrible publicity and they are handling it completely the wrong way.
Agreed. It's not the bettor's problem. They went in thinking they were buying a legitimate lottery ticket. If you can't trust that your ticket is valid, then why even bother? It's bad judgment on the part of CSL to let this slip by with a free scratch off. Are you kidding me??!
Maybe when their paychecks come to them (lottery boards, etc), maybe the State should say, "Oh crap...these checks are no good...they were printed wrong. Sorry. But thanks for that month's worth of work you did."
I agree cps..
Oh no , there's a printing error on your paycheck- thanks for playing our game...see you next month, meantime here is a coupon for a free big mac for the time being.
Shame on you, California lottery !!
Da Govanuh needs to step in and squash this like a bug !!
DD
That's basically what they're saying...sorry, our fault, we'll try not to let it happen again! Bums in CA...
Good lord, what a bunch of whiny cry babies. It's too bad that some people drove to a claims office, and I think they should get something better than a simple replacement ticket, but it seems that most people here are missing a number of things, the most important of which is that those people didn't buy winning tickets. They didn't buy winning tickets that the lottery said were losers in order to avoid paying, they bought losing tickets that looked like winning tickets, because of the printing error. There's a huge difference. Yeah, it suks that they thought they had won and wound up disappointed, but life is full of disappointments. Anyone who doesn't like it is free to quit the game.
If any of them want to get a lawyer, they should feel free to waste their time, but the law is on the side of the lottery. The rules clearly say that they aren't responsible for misprints, and are only liable for the cost of the ticket.
As for misprinted paychecks, if the checks are really misprinted they'll be replaced with a correct check, which is exactly what was done with the lottery tickets. As employees they have a contract that spells out what they will be paid, and they're entitled to it, whether they get a check that was accidentally printed with a zero missing or a zero added. As a consumer your purchase constitutes a contract and you're also entitled to exactly what you paid for, which is this case is an error free ticket that gives you a specified chance to win something. Like it or not, those people all got what they paid for.
In this case the second biggest mistake would be to give the lottery the bad ticket. If any consumer action takes places where the people holding these tickets get anything more then a free ticket those who handed them in have nothing to prove they ever held one.
Besides it would be nice to have a winning ticket to frame even if it turned out to be bogus, nice collectable. BobP
Maybe someone on eBay will buy it!
I often do not agree KY Floyd, but he's absolutely correct. This has happened before, by the way. Sometimes tickets are printed incorrectly. So are winning numbers in the newspaper. Stuff happens!
Once I got $2,600 more in my paycheck and turned my check back to the payroll department. I was only clearing $800 every 2 weeks & they paid me what commission I would have earned for that period!! (should have taken the money and run!) Got to admit I had to think about it for a while.
Whiny cry babies? Nobodies whining or crying. Merely pointing out that CSL seems to be an extremely unprofessional operation. Im sorry but 11,000 misprinted tickets is WELL beyond any sort of reasonable printing error rate. Heck, they didn't even compensate the lady for her travel time or gas money to get to the claim center. Ya know why? Because all the lottery really cares about in the end is taking your stupid money.
PS Hope it dont happen to you, but ya never know.
Regardless of what the California lottery can legally do to cover their butts, what they seem not to realize in this case is:
1. Something like this convinces the public, the lottery players that the house rule is "Never give a sucker an even break"
and
2. What they're going to save but not honroing the misprinted tickets is very likelt going to cost them many times that in regard to the scratcher sales over the next few weeks.
People will thins why bother, when you think you've got a winner you don't even win, it's a rip off.
Let's say there was a network of poker machines with a progressive jackpot (this actually happened in Las Vegas - but not a casino, a group of bars) but these machines were programmed never to hit a royal flush.
Once word got out, guess how much play those machines are going to get.
What should happen is people should boycott the California lottery scratchers all together for awhile, but the lottery know that will never happen.
We've had discussions here on LP about how big would a matrix have to get for you not to play and peole have actually said they'd play no matter what. The lottery commissions know that all too well.
In the case of these crossword scratchers I think the CSL should give the people who bought them something, maybe $100, maybe more or less, but something. Even if they paid the top prize, in the grand scheme of things that's just chump change to the lottery.
"Well, we saved $$$$$$ by not paying those misprinted crossword tickets"
"Oh, you did? I think that's a bit off because we haven't sold a $3 scratcher since that happened, genius."
The above is "once upon a time", I know, but still....
Good response CT
At this point, it would be a good publicity move for them to take the total amount of top prizes, let's say there are 10 of them...get the $20,000 x 10 = $200,000 and divide it equally among all winning tickets, whether they be printed correctly or misprinted. That would certainly save face for them. It might not be a whole lot of money, but this way, the situation can resolve itself without the lottery losing too much money, and they can just discontinue the game. Something along those lines.
Good ideas CT and CPS.
Last time I checked this is a forum. Ideas will be thrown around that are good, bad, and sometimes ugly .
While those that side with the CA lottery certainly add flavor to the discussion, seems like it could be done without calling others whiners.
DD
Comment from Mrs. Coin Toss (and this is a good point)
"Ask all the people siding with the California lottery if they'd feel the same way if they had one of those tickets."
Thank you DD and yes, good point CT...if Floyd had one of those tix, no doubt he'd be up in arms.