A RI Lottery Player Says App Declared Him a “Loser” When He Was a Winner
Monday, April 08, 2024
A Rhode Island lottery player says that a scan of a winning scratch-off ticket on the state's lottery app declared him a loser — and a few hours later, it showed he was in fact a winner.
Nick Williams, who lives in East Providence, said he picked up a few scratch tickets at the 7-11 on Post Road in North Kingstown last week, and went online to confirm his winnings on two games — only to first be alerted it they were not winning tickets.
“I was confused,” said Williams, of scanning the tickets on the app. “I checked the tickets several more times only to receive the same message from the app — ‘Ticket #xxxxx has been scanned. SORRY. NOT A WINNER. GOOD LUCK NEXT TIME.'”
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“So I brought the tickets into the store and the clerk told me that he cannot check it until 5 AM because the lottery machine was off,” said Williams. “It was around midnight when I had tried.”
So Williams said he scanned the tickets on the app again the next morning at around 4 AM — which he said showed he was “not a winner” — and then, shortly after checking at 5 AM, the app showed that he was.
Screengrabs provided by Williams show that two identical tickets appear to show two different results when scanned on the state’s app, depending on when they were scanned.
GoLocal inquired about the issue with the Rhode Island Lottery on Thursday, who then referred the inquiry to the state's Department of Revenue.
On Friday, a spokesperson for the Department of Revenue said they were still looking into the matter.
Lottery in Focus
In Fiscal Year 2023, the Rhode Island Lottery transferred $434.7 million in net income to state’s general fund, as compared to $388.6 million in Fiscal Year 2022 — an increase of nearly 12% year over year.
The Rhode Island Lottery launched its iLottery app in May of 2020; the app allows Rhode Islanders to gamble online — as well as scan barcodes for tickets purchased at retailers.
Williams raised the question of how the iLottery app alerts players to their winnings — or, as he said, could be misleading.
“I wonder how many people have used this ticket scanner after hours only to throw away an actual winning ticket? Wasn't there an unclaimed million dollar Powerball winner not too long ago? Considering how late the Powerball is announced, it seems plausible that the player with that ticket checked it after midnight and was told that million dollar ticket was a loser,” said Williams.
“On the instant tickets, some of them are difficult to tell if you won or not. For example, on the crossword puzzles, one missed letter can be the difference between a loser and a jackpot winner,” said Williams “That's why a lot of people check them on their phones.”
On Friday, GoLocal purchased several lottery tickets — including jackpot drawing and scratch tickets — and found that a winning scratch ticket showed an “error” message when scanning both bar codes on the back of the ticket.
“If the scanner does not work during off hours, it should absolutely give the player a message that says ‘Sorry, tickets can only be scanned between 5 AM and 11 PM” or whatever the ‘regular wagering hours’ are,” said Williams. “They should never be told that a winning ticket is a loser.”
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