A warning when you buy your lottery tickets online - there's one thing you need to check
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Sad story - Lottery officials told Edwina Nylan she hadn't won £35 Million (US$45M). PHOTO: The Sun
She could have won £35 million. Edwina and David Nylan would be leading a different life now if they had bought their UK National Lottery ticket at a store.
Instead they lost a multi-million dollar fortune because they bought the winning numbers online.
They had the right numbers: 01 - 02 - 04 - 19 - 28 - 41... but the wrong numbers in their online balance. Their online balance showed it did not have sufficient funds when they bought the tickets.
So the grandmother-of-seven topped it up with more money and believed she had enough to complete the transaction.
Imagine her shock when the draw was announced and they realized the ticket transaction had never gone through.
The couple said because of their experience they would never play the lottery again.
Edwina told The Sun: "David has an app on his phone which he uses to generate random numbers.
"We scribbled them down, and they are stored on his phone."
"When the numbers came up, it looked like we had got all six and had won the jackpot but when I checked, there was nothing from Camelot."
"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 realised that hadn't registered either."
David and Edwina Nylan talk about their experience to presenter Joanna Goslin on The Victoria Derbyshire Show. PHOTO: BBC
Lottery organisation Camelot said when anyone successfully purchases a ticket on the Lottery website they will see a purchase confirmation screen.
They will receive an email confirming their purchase and be able to see the ticket in their National Lottery online account.
The online numbers that lost the Nylans a fortune. PHOTO: SWNS
The Camelot spokeswoman added: "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."
When asked whether they would continue to play, David gave a definitive “no”, while his wife added that they would let the online funds “run out now” and then they would “decide whether to carry on”.
Reflecting on the money slipping through their fingers, she said: “It’s like a dream, it’s like it never happened. It’s unbelievable.”
The moral of this sad tale? Make sure you have enough funds in your account, and buy with plenty of time to spare from the draw deadline so you can correct any problems.
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