Jeanette Dodd, 45 was over the moon when she checked her Lucky Dip ticket for Saturday's drawing and discovered that she had match the five numbers; 2, 12, 22, 28, 30 and the bonus ball, 39. But then her husband Andrew double checked the ticket and delivered the bad news.

Jeannette's winning ticket wasn't for the Saturday drawing but for the following Wednesday's drawing. He told the stunned housewife: "They've given you a ticket for Wednesday's draw."

Jeanette of Eastham, Merseyside, said yesterday: "It's like a cruel joke. One minute I thought I'd won a fortune - and the next it had gone." She bought her ticket at 5:45pm in Asda in closely Bromborough on Saturday. She said: "As we left the store Andrew said he was going to get a Lotto ticket but I said I would get it because I had just found a penny on the floor.

"You know the expression: 'See a penny, pick it up and all the day you'll have good luck'. I normally do the Lotto online but I went to the counter with a blank play slip to ask the bloke what I did. He put the slip straight through the machine and when it registered nothing he asked me what I wanted.

"I told him three lucky dips for that night but as I said it he was talking to someone through a perspex screen next to him. That's the only reason I can think of for the mistake. All I can say is I now know what it feels like to win an awful lot of money... and it's a fantastic feeling.

"Unfortunately I know what it is like to have it taken away." Jeanette has appealed since her winning ticket was supposed to have been for Saturday's drawing and not Wednesday's.

She said: "I have tried to speak to Camelot and Asda. I have pointed out that it was 5:45pm on a Saturday night - my store receipts prove it - and I was buying Lotto tickets. Why on earth would I be entering the Wednesday draw? You don't think to check the day and date."

A spokeswoman for Camelot said: "While we understand the customer's disappointment, all lottery tickets clearly state that it's the customer's responsibility to check the details. If a mistake had been picked up by the customer at the time, we would of course have re-issued fresh tickets for the Saturday draw."



- 2008-07-14