Lotto number checkers not working ..

Piliger

I just found out in my two local retailers that the machines they have on their counters, where you can auto check your lotto tickets .. are not working any more and wont be for some time.

I was advised to check with the machine behind the counter, which I did, carefully. But I kept my ticket !

I don't know if people are aware but over the years there have been several cases of shop assistants pocketing winning tickets while pretending they were not winners ? Some really stupid people are happy to rely on their word and just walk off.
One was in the Killiney area where I used to live, and I remember another in Tallaght a year later.

I always check them in three shops' machines at least.

Hollister11

Use your phone, enter your numbers at lottery.ie and it will tell you how much you have won

SpaceTime

They've changed the machines. I assume new ticket checker machines are on the way.

You should be able to just scan the ticket on an app on your phone at this stage.

tricky D

It's the new barcode system which is taking time to roll out.

As for assistants pocketing, I believe they are supposed to hand over the reader receipt/statement with the original ticket back to the customer, whether it is a winner or not.

Piliger

Hollister11 wrote: »

Use your phone, enter your numbers at lottery.ie and it will tell you how much you have won

Doesn't really deal with the issue. A lot of people buy tickets for syndicates and mine this week had five rows .... I don't want to have to enter all of the numbers.

Piliger

tricky D wrote: »

It's the new barcode system which is taking time to roll out.

As for assistants pocketing, I believe they are supposed to hand over the reader receipt/statement with the original ticket back to the customer, whether it is a winner or not.

yes. I agree. But they don't.

When I am sitting having coffee in my local Spar, I see elderly ladies and gents particularly come in on a regular basis and I have watched as the shop assistants tell them they are not a winner and I see them drop the tickets into their bin .... but I would not spot if they were to take them back out again.

Hollister11

Piliger wrote: »

Doesn't really deal with the issue. A lot of people buy tickets for syndicates and mine this week had five rows .... I don't want to have to enter all of the numbers.

It literally takes a minute 😷

frag420

If you win something the machine will print out a receipt automatically that the shop needs to recoup anything they pay out. If no receipt then you didnt win..............

Piliger

frag420 wrote: »

If you win something the machine will print out a receipt automatically that the shop needs to recoup anything they pay out. If no receipt then you didn't win..............

I'm not sure you're right. I won about 70 quid last year and when the guy checked my number behind the counter (after I had check on the auto machine), he asked did I want to cash it now ? I said yes, and then he pressed something else and the ticket came out and he gave me the money.

FloatingVoter

http://lottery.ie

In the time it takes to post on here you can check the ticket yourself. Only a moron would run the risk of publicly becoming a millionaire in his local shop.

Half the machines don't work, the staff aren't trained to operate the new ones in some instances, there'll be a bit of dishonesty (always anywhere) and checking the numbers yourself is 99% of the fun.

TheFullDuck

Piliger wrote: »

I'm not sure you're right. I won about 70 quid last year and when the guy checked my number behind the counter (after I had check on the auto machine), he asked did I want to cash it now ? I said yes, and then he pressed something else and the ticket came out and he gave me the money.

you are correct. on the machines there is an option to enquire and an option to payout. if you enquire, the machine tells you if the ticket is a winner or not but it still has value as the it hasn't been validated. if you validate it the machine then prints out a retailer copy and a customer copy of the total won and the ticket is now useless to anyone except the retailer as it has been validated.

also the reason the ticket checkers aren't working is, as mentioned a new company is now running the lotto and they have rolled out new machines to all lotto retailers. the new checkers just haven't been delivered and set up yet as far as I know. the old checkers are still there as the old lotto tickets are valid for three months and must be processed through the old machine, same with scratch cards

breffni bogballer

they arent working in cavan either

RGDATA!

Piliger wrote: »

I always check them in three shops' machines at least.

have you ever in all your time doing that got a different result in one shop than another?

January

This isn't a Dublin City issue so I am moving it to Consumer Issues.

Piliger

RGDATA! wrote: »

have you ever in all your time doing that got a different result in one shop than another?

Are you happy to risk it ? Are you convinced that the auto machines are updated accurately ? Is there any oversight ?

Hollister11

Piliger wrote: »

Are you happy to risk it ? Are you convinced that the auto machines are updated accurately ? Is there any oversight ?

Well, I use my Phone. It literally takes a minute. And you don't have to trust anyone else

angeldelight

Piliger wrote: »

Doesn't really deal with the issue. A lot of people buy tickets for syndicates and mine this week had five rows .... I don't want to have to enter all of the numbers.

But you're willing to go to 3 different shops...

ScouseMouse

Three different shops? As if that will change the result :rolleyes:

The ticket checkers in the shops are linked to the OLD lottery machines instore and they belong to the OLD lottery company.

The new tickets have a different style of barcode which cannot be read by the checkers instore, they can only be read by the new lottery machines. Thats why you get a message check with retailer.

If you are not happy with what the retailers tell you, do check it on lottery.ie

Will you accept them telling you if its not a winner?

SpaceTime

It's actually nothing to do with the old vs new companies. The new company owns both machines. It's a joint venture between An Post and the Canadian company that owns Camelot, the Lotto operator in the UK.

The new company took over on
27 February 2014.

They're just upgrading the systems as part of the requirements of their lease on the Irish National Lottery.

The new machines and systems behind them just mean that they can introduce new games, speed up ticket processing, increase security and remove reliance on old / rapidly becoming obsolete and expensive technology like ISDN lines.

AFAIK, they're also using cameras to scan the tickets reducing all the moving parts required by the scanners in the previous generation of machines that occasionally become jammed and require maintenance.

There's basically one French company called LotSys that produces most of the lotto machines in the world. I think you basically just upgrade your system with them as an entire package customised for your particular brand.

Nothing very mysterious about the upgrade at all. It's just moving to the latest generation of the same system they've always used.

They swapped the machines in the early 2000s too.

ScouseMouse

SpaceTime wrote: »

It's actually nothing to do with the old vs new companies. The new company owns both machines. It's a joint venture between An Post and the Canadian company that owns Camelot, the Lotto operator in the UK.

The new company took over on
27 February 2014.

They're just upgrading the systems as part of the requirements of their lease on the Irish National Lottery.

The new machines and systems behind them just mean that they can introduce new games, speed up ticket processing, increase security and remove reliance on old / rapidly becoming obsolete and expensive technology like ISDN lines.

AFAIK, they're also using cameras to scan the tickets reducing all the moving parts required by the scanners in the previous generation of machines that occasionally become jammed and require maintenance.

There's basically one French company called LotSys that produces most of the lotto machines in the world. I think you basically just upgrade your system with them as an entire package customised for your particular brand.

Nothing very mysterious about the upgrade at all. It's just moving to the latest generation of the same system they've always used.

They swapped the machines in the early 2000s too.

Well the engineer who came out to fix a fault told me the new machine uses a "3D" barcode and its incompatible with the old technology. The checker and media screens instore belong to the National Lottery company, and negotiations are going on for them to be bought/sold/transferred to the new Premier Lotteries Ireland.

Until the arrangement is sorted, they will not be able to read/upgrade the checker.

SpaceTime

ScouseMouse wrote: »

Well the engineer who came out to fix a fault told me the new machine uses a "3D" barcode and its incompatible with the old technology. The checker and media screens instore belong to the National Lottery company, and negotiations are going on for them to be bought/sold/transferred to the new Premier Lotteries Ireland.

Until the arrangement is sorted, they will not be able to read/upgrade the checker.

Nothing to do with that. Lots of rumours. It's just a technology upgrade.

The old readers can't read and never will be able to read QR codes / 3D barcodes. They've got to be replaced by more modern readers that use cameras.

I assume they're being rolled out this month. They've a load of new point of sale stuff coming on stream. I suspect it'll be a much fancier, more reliable ticket checker. The current ones often struggle to read tickets. 3D codes read very, very easily from any angle.

The new company already owns them. They'll be going to the bin after three months. The only reason they're keeping them is so they can validate and pay out the old tickets. The new machines can't read those and there's a new system behind it.

They'll run in parallel, then after that you'll have to collect yellow ticket prizes directly from the Lottery HQ rather than shops.

So if you've old tickets with prizes: collect now.

An Post owned the old company and still owns 50% of the new one. Not a whole lot of stuff has changed.

This is exactly what happened when the original Lotto machines got replaced by the second generation too. The original machines where the ones that used some kind of dot matrix printer. You'd hear loads of noise in new agents as they spewed out tickets. They were very much late 80s tech.

I don't think the currently being phased out machines would validate the original pink tickets either. They'd some kind of block pattern on them rather than a barcode.

L1011

SpaceTime wrote: »

There's basically one French company called LotSys that produces most of the lotto machines in the world. I think you basically just upgrade your system with them as an entire package customised for your particular brand.

The new machines are from the Greek Intralot I think

Umaro

I used to work in an Eason back in 2010. There was a good few times that a customer brought in a winning ticket, but the machine would say it wasn't a winner.

We'd have to go checking the numbers before paying out.

tldr: Don't trust the machines. Stop Skynet.

SpaceTime

Seems the old machines were gTech
New ones are Intralot.
I dont think gTech Ireland employees are too chuffed.

It's all about more high tech POS systems to generate more sales.

I know the shops aren't too keen on the Lottery proposal to push more towards online gaming too.

Seems the back office system is already switched over.

ScouseMouse

SpaceTime wrote: »

Seems the old machines were gTech
New ones are Intralot.
I dont think gTech Ireland employees are too chuffed.

It's all about more high tech POS systems to generate more sales.

I know the shops aren't too keen on the Lottery proposal to push more towards online gaming too.

Seems the back office system is already switched over.

The back office system is switched over but the machines are buggy as hell. You can scan a ticket for a prize and it beeps, but nothing happens. I was turning people away the other day. They could see me trying, but the machine would not work!

Hopefully things will improve with time.

SpaceTime

I think they're all fairly well-known systems. They'll probably have teething problems though.

That's another reason for not removing the old machines in a big rush. Worst case scenario they've got fallback.

jockeyboard

Piliger wrote: »

I always check them in three shops' machines at least.

Are you wearing a tinfoil hat during this process?

Piliger

jockeyboard wrote: »

Are you wearing a tinfoil hat during this process?

Bless your trusting nature.

jockeyboard

Piliger wrote: »

Bless your trusting nature.

Just kidding. I always use the machine checker. I am thinking of all my unclaimed winnings crumpled in the bin. No wonder i am still broke.

Kristopherus

Piliger wrote: »

Doesn't really deal with the issue. A lot of people buy tickets for syndicates and mine this week had five rows .... I don't want to have to enter all of the numbers.

Lazy ??????

Piliger

Kristopherus wrote: »

Lazy ??????

Maybe you are. Not me.