WINCHESTER BAY, Ore. — David Lane thought he'd won $1,000 with an Oregon Lottery Cash Flurries Scratch-it ticket.
He filled out his claim form and mailed the ticket off to Lottery headquarters in Salem.
Then the call came from a Lottery employee: Lane had incorrectly filled out the form.
"When I got David on the phone, I told him he had put the wrong dollar amount on his claim form," said Brandon Grover, a Lottery Security Specialist.
That disappointed Lane, who said he had a friend look over the ticket to confirm it was a $1,000 winner before sending the ticket to the Lottery.
"When the Lottery called me and told me I had put the wrong dollar amount on the form, I thought 'oh no,' " he said.
When Lane's ticket and claim form arrived in Salem, lottery staff noticed Lane had scratched 24 of the game's 25 snowflake symbols.
He had won $1,000.
But if you scratched the 25th snowflake — well, that's why Grover called.
"The phone went silent for a few seconds before he came back on and thanked me for calling," Grover with the Lottery said.
"They told me I that I had really won $100,000, not $1,000!" Lane said. "I couldn't believe it!"
His new advice for Scratch-It ticket players: "Scratch everything on the ticket."
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Thanks to tony869 for the tip.
Congratulation Mr. Lane
Awesome story Congrats Mr,David Lane
Always good idea to mail tickets in
Congrats Mr.Lane!
Now that's a mistake that didn't cost a fortune!
That guy was double lucky.
First, he won $100,000.
And second, he was dumb enough to trust the post office not to steal or lose the ticket and they didn't!
Now that's what you call good luck!
Those symbol tickets can be annoying and i bet a bunch are thrown out.
He should read the book on instant tickets for Dummies?
Congrats to Mr. Lane
Nice job Mr. Lane, Congrats
$100K
Im serious. I'd never ever mail a winning lottery ticket. It it has to be claimed at headquarters I'll kindly go pick it up myself thank you very much
Ya gotta be some kinda goof to mail in a valuable ticket.
Post Office employees lose even more mail than they steal.
I doubly agree.
If it was me the news would say stupid player thought he scratched a $1,000, really won $1.
"Lane had scratched 24 of the game's 25 snowflake symbols."
He and that woman from South Carolina should get together and raise a whole crop of bad ticket scratchers.
Sent a m/0 for tags DMV supposedly never got my m/o so I had to pay 3x thamoun. Of the m/0 I sent btw my recipet to the m/o was no where To be found. DMV or post office is scandalous. Had no choice but to pay. It's not like I'm a ride a round with expired tags
There are people who actually trust the Post Office with getting their winning tickets to Lottery Headquarters.
I wonder what the odds are of a winning ticket actually getting there as opposed to lost or stolen by a Post Office employee?
They do that here in Michigan, if your late sending your payment in the tack on 10 bucks, really??? late for your birthday.
I just pay mine online much faster
Years ago my mother in law won over 1K on Fantasy 5. She and my then fiance asked me to claim it because I was single with 2 kids. I would pay less taxes was their rationale. While thinking they had lost their darn minds I politely declined. She then proceeded to mail it to Florida Lottery Headquarters. Amazingly, she got a check back in the mail weeks later. She managed a convinence store and said she couldn't get away to claim it (or was just using that as an excuse) It was only a 2 hour drive to the lottery headquarters. Some people!
You think she should have spent 4 hours and $100 in travel costs to claim $1000?
I'm sure that ridge's friend in Kentucky has arranged for his mail to receive special treatment, but based on my experience I figure that the chance of regular mail being lost is well under 1 in 1000. I once had a check for my credit card payment take a week too long to arrive, but I don't know of anything I've mailed failing to get where it was going.
Still, if you're worried, you can insure and send it registered mail for a small fraction of what it would cost to claim it in person.
I've lived all over the country and unless you're just lucky, problems with the mail are a fact of life. I've had credit card payments never get there at all. I've had important bills and documents delivered to neighbors and luckily gotten them back sometimes from honest neighbors. I have frequently received neighbors' mail and delivered it to them. A couple of times I have gotten mail addressed to people miles away and taken it to them.
I've long since learned not to complain to government payrollers because they don't really care and they more often than not take criticism as a personal affront and get all offended and you wind up with even worse service and more stuff missing from your mail. It's like sending back food that's not done just right at some dumpy cafe somewhere with some young illegal alien in the kitchen - you know he's going to spit in it, so you don't send it back, you just deal with it.
I'd gladly drive the distance rather than trust the post office with a high dollar ticket. I like going for drives with the little woman and a couple of the dogs anyway. We usually stop at the drive-thru at the leading hamburger joint somewhere and get each dog a plain double hamburger. They love 'em. But after pulling away from the drive-thru we open up the burgers for the dogs and about half of the time they have everything on them instead of being plain like we ordered them.
So we go back around and return them for what we ordered and we know there's a chance the new ones will have spit on 'em but the dogs don't seem to mind.
Our DMV charges a fee to pay online, around $3 IIRC. Well worth it to know it's paid, and on time.
I used to have the same experience with mail as RR. No exaggeration, I'd get someone else's mail at least a couple times a month, and a handful of times per year I'd get my mail that someone else wrote "delivered to wrong address." Who knows how many pieces weren't written on and just dumped back into the outgoing mail. Thank goodness we got a new carrier that never makes mistakes. We've had him for about 10 years now, and I hope we can keep him till he retires.
I agree we refinanced our mortgage and they are sending us an escrow check in the mail. It was issued a week ago yesterday...still nothing. I'm paranoid it got lost already. If I were one of those people who still got their income tax check in the mail I would be beside myself for weeks. Thank god for direct deposit!
How cool!!!! Enjoy the $100K
"His new advice for Scratch-It ticket players: "Scratch everything on the ticket.""
-You'll never know what lies ahead. Always think postive. Congratulations your 1000 dollars was added to 99,000 more. You should always expect the unexpected.