Don’t lose your lottery ticket
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The EuroMillions draw has produced another big winner, this time to the tune of £55 million. There was a period of more than a week between the draw and the winner claiming the prize, but thankfully someone eventually stepped forward.
Fortunately, despite the near 10-day wait between the draw and the claim, this wasn't another case of a major prize going unclaimed due to a lost lottery ticket.
There have been several instances of lost winning tickets in the United Kingdom and across the globe over the years. But such occurrences are relatively easy to avoid.
If purchasing a physical ticket, simply be mindful of where you place it after purchase and before wanting to check its numbers when the draw happens. By example, ensure the relocation of your ticket from jacket or trouser pocket to cupboard or desk draw happens sooner rather than later.
The last thing you want to happen is for that ticket to end up in the laundry. If it goes through a rinse cycle even once, it'll likely be damaged beyond recognition and repair. Useless, indeed.
A good practice is to put the ticket in an area of safekeeping, as you do with all your other important documents. This might be an actual safe, behind lock and key, at home, or a particular concertina folder in your filing cabinet at work.
An arguably stronger option, though, is to just enter online. In this digital age it’s possible to bet on the lottery online. Your entry is saved digitally and there is no physical way of losing this.
With online lottery operator Lottoland, for instance, you are emailed and get a phone call from them if you win. You never have to be concerned about missing that winning ticket in any way, shape or form.
This email and phone call will happen no matter what level you win at. Interestingly, another reason prizes go unclaimed is not just because the ticket might be lost, but because the winner hasn't bothered to check minor prizes. If they didn't match all the winning numbers, they might not think to look to the lower tiers for, say, four, three or two numbers guessed correctly. These, of course, don't tab up to the amounts won at jackpot level, but certainly weigh in with decent chunks of change, regardless.
In the first week of July, there were still two National Lottery tickets worth £1 million each which had not been claimed as of January, with the deadline fast approaching on July 20. One ticket was purchased in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, whilst the other was purchased in the Hinckley and Bosworth district of Leicestershire.
Whether these tickets are eventually claimed or not, they reiterate the importance of not misplacing physical tickets and give and show the value of entering draws online.
Whether you are of the old school and prefer, for example, vinyl over Spotify, or are new school and all for digital, betting on the lottery online rather than in person can really be the way to go from here on in.
