A Happily Ever After Becomes a Seven-Year Battle with the Lottery
Joan Parker-Grennan, a 53-year-old bookkeeper, is suing Camelot, the firm that owns the National Lottery’s licence, in the High Court after the business refused to pay up her £1,000,000 ($1.31 million) scratchcard win.
Joan, who lives in Boston, Lincolnshire, with her husband Dave, 60, was taken aback when she learned she had won a scratchcard in Camelot’s £20Million Cash Spectacular online Instant Win Game in 2015.
Joan won a million dollars after matching two 15s for £10 ($13). When she called to claim her prize, she was told that there had been a “technical issue” and that she had only won a tenner. It has been seven years since then. The programme “acted erroneously” during Joan’s winning game, according to Camelot, and displayed the £1 million winning numbers in the wrong boxes.
Joan filed a court action against Camelot in 2021, after nearly seven years of battling with the corporation. She planned to take Camelot to the High Court. The bookkeeper said that Camelot had already given her GBP 700,000 ($917,798), GBP 800,000 ($1.05 million), or GBP 900,000 ($1.18 million) to settle the lawsuit. She went on to say that the company had taken the scratchcard game offline barely a day after she filed a claim, and that they had emailed her to say that there had been a fault in the game.
If the High Court rules in Joan’s favour, she and her husband plan to spend some of the money on a kitchen island and other investments, as well as helping others. Joan is seeking “monies payable under the provisions of a consumer contract between the parties and/or damages for violation of a consumer contract” in her GBP 1,000,000 ($1.31 million) claim.
According to Camelot, the incident included a limited number of players of the £20Million Online Spectacular game who encountered a difficulty with the game’s animation while playing. The business went on to say that the outcome of every National Lottery Instant Win Game play is predetermined, and that the animation is merely for fun.
Camelot’s Software Has Been Known to Fail in the Past
In another situation involving technical difficulties, 22,000 players purchased single tickets but received two and were charged for both. A hearing has been scheduled for June 2022, according to the National Lottery operator, but no trial date has been established yet. Camelot was fined £3.15 million ($4.13 million) by the UK Gambling Commission last month for technical issues with its mobile application.
Camelot also filed a civil case in the High Court against the gambling regulator when it chose Allwyn Entertainment, a Czech firm, to receive the National Lottery licence in 2024. Camelot’s chief executive officer, Nigel Railton, stated that the company filed the lawsuit because it believed the Gambling Commission had made a mistake.
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