This may be one of the worst tough luck gambling stories of 2015. An elderly couple in the UK claim that they missed out on a lottery jackpot worth £35 million just before Christmas due to a faulty app.
The elderly couple David and Edwina Nylan had an account on Camelot lottery online, and from that account they have been purchasing their lottery tickets for many years, utilizing the online app called Lottomobile.
Edwina, 55, said to the Daily Mail newspaper that they attempted to buy the tickets online just like they used to for the giant December 23 draw; however, their online lottery account showed that they did not have sufficient funds to allow them to purchase.
They then replenished their account with the necessary funds and bought an online lottery ticket bearing the numbers 01 - 02 - 04 - 19 - 28 - 41, which actually turned out to be golden winning numbers. They saw that the Lottomobile app verified the purchase of the said ticket.
They were in for the shock of their lives when they called Camelot in order to claim their humongous prize, as they were told that the ticket they bought online failed to go through.
On December 24, Edwina stated, "I rang customer services at Camelot and the person I spoke to said they could see from their records that we had intended to buy those numbers but they said the purchase did not go through because we only had 60p in our account. We had tried to top up the account, and hadn't realized that it hadn't registered either. You get an email to confirm your purchase, but I didn't remember to check because it was just before Christmas and I was so busy. Camelot has now told me they are looking into it with their IT department."
Camelot has also been approached for an interview about the matter, and they confirmed that the couple did actually make multiple tries to purchase a ticket. A Camelot spokeswoman said that after her call on December 24, one of their customer service agents had spoken twice to Mrs. Nylan.
The Camelot spokeswoman stated, "The player did attempt to purchase an online Lotto ticket multiple times on December 23 from 7pm onwards (the cut-off to buy tickets is 7.30pm), however there were insufficient funds in the player's account - so the attempted purchases were not successful. The player would have received an error message on every occasion confirming this. We do not have any record of the player attempting to add funds to their account, nor would anyone from our customer services team have any visibility of the numbers that the player attempted to purchase because that level of detail wouldn't be shown on the screen in front of them.
When anyone successfully purchases a ticket on the Lottery website they will see a purchase confirmation screen, receive an email confirming their purchase and be able to see the ticket in their National Lottery online account. Only tickets that have been successfully purchased can be entered into the draw. So it is up to players to ensure that they have adequate funds in their account to complete a ticket purchase."
The tough luck gambling story of this elderly UK couple can be just as analogous to the situation experienced by Miss Colombia during the controversial 2015 Miss Universe pageant - just when you thought you've won "the prize beyond your wildest dreams", thanks to an unbelievable blunder, it is snatched away from you in mere seconds.
source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12077499/Couple-miss-out-on-35m-Lotto-jackpot-after-web-blunder.html
