Hey, I’m Having Trouble Getting A Clerk To Scan The Electronic Play Slip On My Phone

A player contacted us this week to ask about a difficulty he’s had while trying to buy lottery tickets, and it caused us to wonder if others have experienced the same thing. The situation involves the scanners on Iowa Lottery terminals that read the barcodes on tickets and play slips.

This particular player said that he enjoys using the lottery’s mobile app, but has had trouble getting store clerks to scan the electronic play slips he’s stored on it. The man said the clerks won’t touch his phone, citing company policy. He wondered if there is an easier way for his electronic play slips to be scanned than by handing his phone to a clerk. The good news is there IS an easier way, and the lottery’s barcode scanners were designed for just that purpose.

The barcode readers at our lottery terminals are mounted on the end of the ticket printer. But they’re not permanently built in. They’re wireless and can be taken off the printer and used as a handheld device. They were designed that way because we wanted retailers to be able to use them without having them tethered to the lottery terminal.

If a customer has an electronic play slip stored on their mobile phone or device, a store clerk can pick up the barcode scanner and hold it over the customer’s screen, easily reading the play slip without needing to touch or handle the customer’s device.

We understand why stores would have policies against handling a customer’s mobile device – issues of data protection and germ mitigation come to mind along with the liability of dropping or damaging the device.

But the customer’s question this week was a good reminder that not everyone is as familiar as we are with the way lottery equipment works. And by going over the details about the scanners again for ourselves, we were able to create this quick how-to recap to help.

Comments

[Kay]

I don’t have any misconceptions about the app, Mary. The totally USELESS app only does one play per Eslip. If you want to do five plays, for example, you have to fumble your phone back and forth five times as you search for each play slip then have the clerk scan it. The app only has ONE play on each Eslip—which makes it useless.

[Mary Neubauer]

Hi, Dan. You are correct that InstaPlay games have features from both lotto and scratch tickets. In the case of when a jackpot-winning ticket hits in an InstaPlay game, think of InstaPlay tickets just like scratch tickets, but left in electronic form rather than being printed in advance in hard copy. Our lottery terminals are all networked in real time to one central statewide gaming system. So, when an InstaPlay ticket is requested by a player at a particular store, the lottery terminal there receives the next available electronic play. Just like in our scratch games, winning tickets (including jackpot winners) are randomly distributed throughout the supply of tickets in an InstaPlay game. Not even we at the lottery know when or where the next winning ticket will hit. There's not a trigger involved per se, it is simply the random distribution of winning tickets in the game.

[dan king]

this question involves insta tickits. what triggers a jackpot on an insta play ticket? scracth tickets are all printed in advance i asume so no one knows where or when they will come up. insta play tickets arn't. so what triggers a winner?

[Mary Neubauer]

Hi, Kay. I'm sorry you don't care for the app, but I do want to clear up some incorrect information you have about it. You can choose to play a game like Powerball for multiple drawings at one time utilizing the app, just like you can using a paper playslip. And once you've created an ePlayslip on the app, you can save it so that you can quickly scroll through your saved playslips to purchase your plays. It's a pretty easy process, and as we've outlined in this blog entry, you definitely don't have to hand your phone to a clerk to scan it.

[Kay]

This is a joke. The phone app only handles 1play at a time. Who wants to switch to the app, let the clerk scan the code, take the phone back, go through the process of creating a new play, show it to the clerk, take it back, go through the process of creating a new play, take it back, create a new play, show it to the clerk—all while people are standing in line behind you, ad nauseam? Why even mention it?