Western Canada Lottery glitch causes ticket errors

Sep 22, 2013, 7:16 pm (7 comments)

Western Canada Lottery Corporation

The Western Canadian Lottery Corporation (WCLC) is advising customers to recheck their tickets following a system problem.

Officials said a delay in the draw results may mean that winning tickets weren't correctly identified.

"They weren't released to the system until 10:35 yesterday morning. When normally they would be available as the retailors were opening their stores," WCLC stakeholder relations director, Amanda Marantz, explained.

Something that Gilles Caron found out the hard way.

Caron told CTV News that he checked his tickets at a kiosk first thing Saturday and received a slip that read 'appears not to be a winner'.

"Normally I would have thrown those tickets away or leave them to the teller," he explained, but this time he held on to them.

"I was doubting that I didn't win anything not even a ticket- a free ticket. I've bought some of those in the past and most of the times I win something.

"I checked them again at the 7-11 on the south side and one was a $12 winner and the other was a $2 winner."

He said he was very disappointed in the WCLC as many customers check their tickets early the day after the draw.

"How many hundreds of dollars were not claimed because of this? How many tickets were thrown away?"

The delay affected Lotto Max, Western Max and the Extra draws and Marantz said they did their best to notify customers.

"We did have a message up on our website immediately. We did send a message out to the retailers right away to let them know that they wouldn't be able to validate those games."

Marantz said the WCLC always advised customers to keep their tickets.

"We tell people that when they check their ticket at a retailer to always get their ticket back and get the validation slip so that they can be sure that they are matching and that they understand what the results of that check was."

Those who think they may have tossed out a winning ticket have been told to call, 1-800-665-3313 or visit the WCLC website. (Or, as always, you can visit Lottery Post's Western Canada Lottery Results page.)

However, tracking tickets is a tricky job, Marantz cautioned.

"We really can only track down the tickets if you give us all the information about them. That would include where you bought the ticket and what time of day you bought the ticket and any other tickets you bought along with it because that allows us to find the particular transaction that you are talking about."

CTV

Comments

noise-gate

I guess hanging onto your "sorry not a winner" tickets is a course of wisdom, unless one feels that this only happens to our neighbors up North.

" Normally I would have thrown those tickets away or leave them to the teller," he explained, but this time he held on to them."

 

*** l LEAVE NUTTIN WITH THE TELLER- ESPECIALLY LOTTO TICKETS.

sully16's avatarsully16

I always double check, I wonder how many people tossed a winner.

mypiemaster's avatarmypiemaster

No matter how slice it, the customers usually get hosed. I always save my losing tickets.

dallascowboyfan's avatardallascowboyfan

Quote: Originally posted by sully16 on Sep 22, 2013

I always double check, I wonder how many people tossed a winner.

I Agree!

LottoGuyBC's avatarLottoGuyBC

I usually toss my non-winners right after I check the numbers online  Hit With Stick

 

I guess I should keep it for awhile before I toss them

Thinking of...

JoeBigLotto's avatarJoeBigLotto

Honestly i never use thoes sorry a.. machines to check my ticket they are actually more stupid than the retailers to check your tickets. there are so many lottery apps out there to give you your numbers face to face and i really do trust lottery post results have never had any problems with it. So my advice is to keep your lossing tickets for a week and download a free lottery result app for smart phones they rearly make mistakes.

jamella724

I agree it is better to double check to make sure whether the ticket matches any winning numbers. It's quite unfortunate if someone already thrown their ticket thinking that they didn't win at all. I hope the management will check this errors to prevent unclaimed prizes.

End of comments
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