The Louisiana Lottery's new terminals went online today at 12noon central time. I run a couple of lottery pools and was relieved that multidraws would be reinstated, as they were suspended during the upgrade. Today's experience with the new system wasn't exactly pleasant.
At around 12:30PM, I went to my usual store to get the tickets for my pools and my personal tickets. They didn't have any new playslips available, the clerk said the $3 Lotto winner I had under the old system couldn't be cashed and of course the old playslips wouldn't work. He did manage to sell me a $1 Easy 5 quickpick though. The last time they changed the matrix, this store didn't have new playslips then either, so I went to another store down the street and not only did they not have new playslips, the machine was down so they couldn't cash my winning ticket or sell me new ones.
I had a grocery store trip to do, so on the way there, I hit another store and found no new playslips, and the machine down there too. I went into the supermarket, which was next to this store and they had new playslips! I was so relieved so I filled some out and went up to the customer service desk. After fighting with the new terminal, they were able to cash my $3 ticket, but couldn't scan my new playslips! I just took the money and left, got my groceries, then stopped at another convenience store on the way home and low and behold, their lottery terminal was down too. I went to one more store and their terminal was working, but the clerk didn't know how to scan the playslips! It was really frustrating.
I'm going to try again tomorrow after work and see what happens. Hopefully, I'll be able to get those slips scanned before the Wednesday drawings. I understand there can be problems with a new system, but I hope they get the bugs worked out of it soon. It was really frustrating today.
The new tickets are printed on thermal paper and are more elaborate than the old ones. There are a couple of videos on lalottery.com that explain the new system and the new tickets. Anyway, just hope others haven' t had any problems getting their tickets.