Lottery Shop Owner Wins RM194,000 After Customer Rejects Ticket He Printed Wrongly
One man's trash is another man's treasure.
By Yap Wan Xiang — 15 May 2023, 05:36 PM
A lottery ticket store owner won a grand prize of 300,00 yuan (RM194,000) after keeping a misprinted lottery ticket that a regular customer rejected
The lucky man, surnamed Zhu (transliteration), runs a lottery ticket store in Zigong City, Sichuan, China, reported local news portal news.hnr.cn.
On 4 May, the regular customer, who is in her 40s, visited his store to buy a lottery ticket, but instead of writing the numbers she wanted to buy on a piece of paper, she verbally communicated it to Zhu at the counter instead.
He recounted that the female customer was taking a long time to ponder about what numbers to buy in front of a display screen before walking to the counter.
"I'm usually busy. I ask them to write it (the lottery numbers customers want to buy) down for me, so as not to make a mistake," he told reporters.
"She might have been in a hurry that day, so she just read it to me," he added.
He heard the numbers wrongly, causing the customer to reject the lottery ticket he mistakenly keyed in.
"At that time, I persuaded her, 'Why don't you pick up this lottery ticket? What if you really win?!'" Zhu shared, but the customer insisted on the number she set out to buy
Zhu was initially upset by the customer's rejection as it caused him to fork out 18 yuan (about RM11.65) for his blunder.
Little did he know that the mistake would end up winning him RM194,000.
Zhu said that it is common for lottery ticket stores to print the wrong tickets for customers. He estimated that he spends about 100 yuan (RM64.70) monthly on human errors.
He said most of the time, customers would reject the mistakenly printed lottery numbers and insist on getting the numbers they set out to buy.
"Sometimes, I manage to sell a few (mistakenly printed lottery) tickets, but the costs for most of them have to be borne by myself," he said.
However, it was not a totally disheartening story for the female customer, as she went on to win 3,120 yuan (RM2,018) with the numbers she bought
The customer called Zhu to confirm whether the mistakenly printed lottery numbers were the grand prize numbers of the night.
After checking with his staff, he was elated about the windfall.
"To be honest, if she had written the numbers by hand that night, she wouldn't have (known about) this 'bad luck' and I wouldn't have had the luck to win the 300,000 yuan prize," Zhu said.
After the tax deduction, he brought home 240,000 yuan (RM155,000). He plans to spend the money on his son's wedding in the future.
