ialottery blog

Already Sold Out? That Store Didn’t Have The Tickets I Wanted To Buy

A lottery player who wanted to buy tickets in a new scratch game said that when she couldn’t find tickets at her local store, she thought the game had been removed from sale because all the top prizes in it had already been claimed.

In reality, the store was just temporarily out of tickets in that particular game. It was popular and the location’s initial supply had sold out. The store was able to order more tickets and the game was available there again within a few days.

When a new scratch game is released, businesses that sell lottery tickets place orders for a supply of tickets to have available in the first days that the game is for sale. Stores do their best to estimate the number of tickets they’ll need, but sometimes a particular game may sell faster than expected.

Stores can and do place additional orders for more tickets, but it can take a few days for the next batch to arrive. When that happens, there can be temporary outages.

The customer was correct that when all of the top prizes in a particular scratch game have been claimed, the game is removed from sale here in Iowa.

In this particular instance, that wasn’t what had happened, and we hope that the next time she visits her local store, she’ll find the game available!

THIS Is How You Update Your Email Address In The VIP Club

We’ve added a step-by-step guide to our website to answer one of the questions we get the most about the VIP Club: How do I change my email address?

We get it. Over time, your email can change as you move, switch Internet providers, update your computer and mobile phone, etc. Some folks said they were having trouble finding the spot under their VIP Club profile to change the email address associated with their account.

We now have a page that maps out the process, including screenshots with the instructions.

To help you get started, I’ve included the initial steps of the process in the image you see here. You’ll first need to log in to your VIP Club account. Once you’ve done that, you’ll see the main links along the left side of the page. Click on the “Account Management” link at the top and that will take you to a page with several options.

The first one listed is “Change Email,” which walks you through the remaining steps you’ll follow. But the last link on the list – Update Profile – also will take you to the spot where you will key in your new address and then click the “Submit” button to save your changes.

It’s a quick and easy process with either link. And having the correct contact information in your account is important because if you win a prize in one of our VIP Club drawings, we’ll use the email and telephone number you’ve provided to contact you!

Player Mail: Why Did You Leave That Number Out?

A blog reader just asked a great question about one of our scratch games that you may have wondered about as well.

He asked: “On the $5 ‘Cash Spectacular’ game, there is no number 10. Why is that?”

I checked with the folks here at the lottery who plan out our scratch games, and as it turns out, the number 10 is left out on purpose. Here’s why:

Three of the prize levels you can win in the Cash Spectacular game are $5, $10 and $25. Because of that, you won’t find the numerals 5, 10, 15 or 25 used as one of the “Winning Numbers” or one of “Your Numbers” in the game. The prize amount that you can win by matching numbers in the game is shown directly below the number to which it corresponds and we didn’t want there to be any confusion if one of the playing numbers was the same as one of the prize amounts.

The numeral 15 also is omitted from the numbers available to play in the game to avoid confusion with the 5X symbol that automatically multiplies the prize won.

We still use a large batch of numbers in the playing area on each ticket to keep the game fun, but we’re doing our best to make things clear for those who play it.

 

We’re Now On Instagram & Pinterest!

We know you like to connect with us in the places you already go, so now there are two new ways you can do that: The Iowa Lottery has joined Instagram and Pinterest.

We’ve been involved in social media for eight years, proving that time really does fly! We jumped in when we started producing our own videos back in 2007 – and that counts as a couple millennia ago in the fast-changing world of social media!

But through it all, we’ve continued to gain new likes, followers and contacts, so we think (we hope) that means you like what we’re doing.

So now, in addition to our blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube pages, you can find us on Instagram and Pinterest. We’re iowalottery (lowercase) on Instagram and IowaLottery (uppercase) on Pinterest.

Look for some changes coming in our monthly social media contests that we think will allow even more people to get in on the fun by entering them.

Two more ways we can say: See you there!