On Saturday at about 4:40 p.m., the Vermont Lottery System went down for around 40 retailers throughout the state.
Those convenience stores, gas stations and grocers could not sell lottery tickets during the weekend, and people who believed they had winning numbers had to take extra steps to find out if they were right.
Outages like these happen once or twice a year, said Brian McLaughlin, director of security at Vermont Lottery, but almost never on such a large scale.
“When we do have outages, it can be anywhere from one to 20 or so retailers losing service, but nothing like this,” McLaughlin said.
A total of 590 retailers sell lottery tickets in Vermont. The system shutdown exclusively involved retailers dependent on a DSL connection through Consolidated Communications. McLaughlin said DSL connections are typically used in regions with limited cellphone coverage.
The state discovered the widespread outage after hearing from a number of retailers. “If retailers don’t have a network connection, they can’t sell or cash tickets, so it affects sales,” he said, “but players are most impacted because they just want their money. Stores that don’t have a network connection can’t cash tickets.”
Charlotte Moriarty, a cashier at Jericho Country Store, where the lottery system was down for about 17 hours, said she couldn’t sell any printed lottery tickets on Saturday night while she was working.
“We had some regulars who always come in for lottery tickets who were a little disappointed,” Moriarty said. “A few people said they would come back the next day, but some people we just couldn’t sell to.”
However, by 10 a.m. on Sunday, Jericho Country Store was able to get the system running again by restarting its modem.
“Some places were able to restore service yesterday, depending on the location,” McLaughlin said.
On Monday the rest of the state followed suit. McLaughlin reported that all retailers had restored their connection as of 2:05 p.m.
“It was a Consolidated Communications issue,” he said. “It was their problem and they fixed it.”