Winning the lottery and collecting your prize is something most of us have dreamt of at some point. We think about how we would celebrate, what we would buy first and whom we would help with our new found fortune. Rarely do we consider what might stand in our way to collecting that big lottery win.There is no doubt that Lady Luck has a leading role in every jackpot win and most winners will view her timing as perfect. Occasionally though, she leaves before the prize can be collected and this is when it pays to buy lotto tickets online with a reliable lottery service such as theLotter.
Here are the top 5 reasons players fail to collect lottery wins:
1. Forgot had played or didn’t check the results
Of the $40 billion worth of lottery prize money won in the US in 2011, $800 million went unclaimed. According to the Texas Lottery Commission, more than $10 million worth of prizes were unclaimed from January – March 2013 alone. Annual figures for the last three years show that $52.3 million (2012), $53.7 million (2011) and $86.8 million (2010) of lottery winnings reverted to the lottery-loving American state, Texas, the number one reason being that winners simply forget to check their results and forget to cash in their prize after finding out they’ve won.
Play online with theLotter and forgetting to play or to check lottery results will not stop you collecting your win:
- Receive result alerts to your registered email!
- Receive small wins automatically into your theLotter account!
- Receive instructions from customer support for big wins!
2. Weren’t aware that secondary prizes aren’t so secondary after all
Speaking after the $588 million US Powerball numbers were published on 28th November 2012, Multi—State Lottery Association Executive Director Chuck Strutt said:
“There are a significant number of people buying tickets who don’t know there are secondary prizes. And when we get a big prize like $550 million, many people buy tickets who haven’t bought before.”
Admittedly, such a huge jackpot and its winners deserve attention but most world lotteries have between 5 and 13 prize categories that should not be ignored!
The US Powerball second prize is a fixed $1 million, double when winners chose the Power Play option on purchasing their tickets. EuroMillions, Europe’s premier lottery, has a second place prize that varies anywhere from a few hundred thousand euros up to a record €4,576,070.50 (worth more than $6.5 million). This figure was won by each of six players when EuroMillions results were published from the €185 million jackpot draw on 8th July 2011!
When theLotter publishes lottery results we list the Payout per Winner for each prize division and our lottery information pages show the Winning Odds for the entire prize breakdown. We love big jackpots but also report on secondary and raffle draw prizes!
3. Lost or laundered the lottery ticket
When a once in a lifetime lottery win comes knocking, it’s amazing how mundane things, like a load of laundry, can get in on the action. In July 2011, a New Zealand lottery player found a lotto NZ ticket worth NZ$ 250,000 in a jeans pocket after they had been through the wash! Having himself survived a deadly Christchurch earthquake a few months earlier, he was ‘glad [the ticket] survived the washing machine’.
Two years later, a French couple who had won a €15 million EuroMillions jackpot on 28th June 2013 also left their ticket in the laundry, although this time, the laissez-faire Clermont-Ferrant lottery winners had intended to do so. Not wanting to miss a pre-booked vacation or to risk losing the multi-million euro piece of paper, they ended up hiding the winning ticket in a sewing box which they then hid at the bottom of their dirty laundry basket!
Back in 2001, Martyn and Kay Tott weren’t so lucky or careful when they saw a £3 million jackpot winner search for a lottery ticket they had bought in the UK. Without the ticket and proof of purchase, the UK National Lottery was prevented from awarding the multi-million pound prize.
Buy lottery tickets online with theLotter and we scan a copy of your unique ticket to your account as part of our See-Your-Ticket-Service. Your purchase history is also available in your account, another way to avoid problems when claiming your prize. Further, we make sure that all lottery tickets are kept in a safe and dry location, far away from any laundry that needs to be washed!
4. Won the lottery and ‘died the next day’
He won the lottery and died the next day”
Earlier this year, a 25-year old labourer from Kerala, India, passed away shortly after winning the lottery. He had even deposited the ticket for safekeeping in a local bank but seemingly his luck ran out when he suffered an epileptic episode while watering vegetables, slipping into an irrigation pond and drowning. Lottery authorities were prepared to give the money to the legal heirs, who needed to show proper documents.
In May 2013, a multi-million dollar US lottery ticket was an unexpected comfort for a grieving Illinoisian father whose daughter passed away 9 months earlier. On the verge of facing eviction, Ricardo Cerezo was clearing out his daughter Savannah’s room and found a cookie jar full of lotto tickets, one of which was worth $4,850,000. After expressing his regret that his youngest was not able to enjoy the prize, he explained that the ‘incredible gift’ his daughter unwittingly left the family was a source of peace and comfort.
When playing the lotto it often helps to have a guardian angel of some sort. Buy lottery tickets online at theLotter and you will always have someone on your side, helping you to claim your prize for your winning tickets.
5. Didn’t play in the first place
All the winners and non-winners above had some kind of gap in their luck but each of them understood the importance of the UK National Lottery slogan ‘you’ve got to be in it to win it’. Lottery organisations know that the odds of winning some jackpots are low, which is why they offer and pay fantastic amounts for the top prize and have a variety of excellent non-jackpot combinations and prizes!
Earlier this month, we spoke once again with B.U., theLotter’s $1 million US Powerball second prize winner from April 2012. A laid-back Londoner, B.U.’s philosophy on winning the lottery is pretty straightforward. When we asked B.U. what advice he had for jackpot cynics he responded:
“Simple. Think again. They have to think again. At the end of the day, whatever way you look at it, the jackpot is there to be won and anyone who plays is in with a chance. Perhaps it goes to people who are lucky, but someone must win it and you never know…”
theLotter gives you secure online access to 45+ world lottery draws and publishes results for more than 70 popular lotteries and raffles. With our subscription and multi-draw packages we do all the hard work for you!
No comments:
Post a Comment