- What would you do if you won a grand and the ticket got lost in the mail?
What’s your biggest dream? Would it be to win the lottery, even if it was the second chance lottery?
What if you won, but then you didn’t win? Because that’s what happened to this lady.
Well, not exactly. She actually won the second chance drawing on July 29th but when she sent the certified letter to Florida Lottery’s headquarters, it never arrived.
According to Sue Burgess, the officials in Tallahassee told her “no ticket, no prize.”
Second chance drawings only allow a limited time to turn in tickets and claim the prize. Options are for winners to put the ticket into a drop box at a local lottery ticket office, (which weren’t open due to COVID-19,) or mail them into the headquarters.
Burgess felt it would be safer to send the ticket via certified mail through the U.S. Postal Service. The tracking information states that the ticket arrived on August 12th, at 7:12 a.m., at the Tallahassee post office.
However, online tracking shows that the ticket never made it to the lottery. Burgess called and they told her that without a ticket, the prize would go to an alternate winner.
Because the second chance game includes previous winners, the lottery has a record of their names and contact information. Burgess has said that she was notified by a lottery official who originally called to give her the good news.
Lottery winners of more than $600 can submit winning tickets in person at their local lottery office, or via mail because of the offices being closed during the pandemic. Burgess said that she only had one week to submit the ticket but because she had missed an email about winning and having to send in her ticket, so by the time they contacted her by phone call, she only had two days to get it post-marked.
“That’s why you chose certified mail,” Burgess said. “With COVID, I understand the mail is a little bit slow. But for safety sake, certified mail usually has priority.”
Lottery officials still claim that the ticket never made it to headquarters. The claims department told her to contact the postal service to find out where the letter is but all they could tell her is that they are investigating what happened.
The postal service offered her an apology for any “inconvenience.”
If the letter does make it, lottery officials said they would bend the rules and pay Burgess the $1000 if it was postmarked by the original deadline.
“Ms. Burgess’ situation is an unusual circumstance and, to our knowledge, no other winner has experienced a similar issue,” the lottery said.