A player reached out to us this month after noticing something unusual with the InstaPlay tickets she tried to buy, and her quick action made all the difference in our ability to help.
If you ever think that something went wrong with your lottery purchase, please contact us at the lottery as soon as you can. Quick action will provide the best chance for us to pinpoint the information involved and help figure out what happened.
The northwest Iowa woman contacted us last week after she tried to buy a couple InstaPlay tickets at a local store. She got blank pieces of paper rather than the tickets she was expecting.
The woman emailed us within an hour of that happening. She was able to provide the name and address of the store involved, the approximate time she tried to buy the tickets, name and price point of the game involved, and send photos of the front and back of the ticket paper involved.
As you can see, something definitely went wrong as her tickets were being printed.
The Right Details To Help
The details the woman provided allowed us to quickly contact the store involved, where it turns out someone had loaded the paper backwards in the lottery self-service kiosk. That was preventing ticket details from printing on the paper in the machine. Staffers at the store were able to load the paper correctly so the lottery kiosk could resume printing tickets.
We were able to pinpoint the plays the woman was trying to purchase and share those details with her. We also thanked her for helping to clear up a situation that would have affected other customers if it hadn’t been corrected.
In some instances, players have contacted us with questions about tickets they said they bought months or years earlier. After the passage of so much time, they weren’t sure about the dates or specific stores involved. And without those details, we can’t provide many answers to help.
Thank you to the player this time around! She did everything right and in the process, helped us pinpoint the answers she needed!
Hi, Theresa. I checked with our I.T. folks about the message that was displayed, and there are a number of scenarios that could have caused the "take to clerk" message to show. Essentially, anything that would have made it difficult for the scanner to read the barcode on the ticket could have caused the message to be displayed. It does not mean that the tickets were winners, it just means that machine was seeking for the ticket to be scanned on a different piece of equipment to hopefully achieve a clearer scan of it. If you still have the ticket and would like to send a picture of it to our Webmaster staff, they can share the details with our I.T. folks. Or, if you have details about the date and time and retail location involved, please share those with our Webmaster staff as well. From what you have written, it appears that you were using a self-checker at the store, but if that is not the case, please clarify. Our Webmaster folks can be reached at [email protected]
Posted by: Mary Neubauer | June 19, 2025 at 02:51 PM
I have a question, i went to a retailer last night and checked my Lucky 4Life tickets. Some came up Non winners, and a couple my tickets the message said “take to clerk”. When i did of course i was excited thinking i had winners, but they ran them and said non winners. Whyor how come some if my cash. 4 Life tickets did this and some not?
I want to know if they where still possible winners.
Posted by: Theresa aguiniga | June 17, 2025 at 06:05 PM