Lottery chaos as town network fails (From Western Telegraph)

Lottery chaos as town network fails

HAVERFORDWESTS National Lottery network tumbled into chaos at the weekend due to a failure of the disused terminal in the former Leos store. The unusual glitch meant punters had to find alternative ticket sources for their weekly flutter when all 15 Camelot outlets in the town went out of action.

The network was still closed down on Monday as Camelot tried to track down a key-holder for the premises through Cardiff-based estate agents King Sturge, to enable an engineer to deal with the problem.

According to Camelot, the network went down at 3.20 pm on Friday and remained unserviceable throughout Saturday - the busiest day of the week for ticket sales.

Its a very unusual problem, with 15 retailers in the town affected by the failure of the distribution node in the shop, which is closed and on the market, said a Camelot spokesperson on Monday. We are trying to get an engineer into the store as quickly as possible.

Tesco store manager, Andrew Wolfenden, said a large percentage of the Haverfordwest stores 26,000 customers a week buy lottery tickets, so the network breakdown, which had nothing to do with Tesco, meant a lot of customers having to get their tickets elsewhere on Saturday.

Its a customer service rather than a revenue producer, so we didnt lose much in financial terms, but had quite a few disappointed customers. I understand it was due to a satellite failure which affected outlets throughout the Haverfordwest area, he added.

The glitch meant that the Snax 24 service station at Johnston was inundated with lottery customers on Saturday once the word got round that they were still on-line.

It was bedlam, said manager Susan Whisby. The network went down on Friday and from 10 am to 7.30 pm on Saturday we had a 300% rise in lottery ticket sales. The two staff on duty had to work like mad to clear the queues, with over 1,000 extra customers during the day. It was good for business, but very hard work keeping pace.

The terminal in Milford Havens Tesco store was unaffected but an anticipated boost in sales did not materialise.

Mr Gareth Williams, of King Sturge, said on Monday that Camelot had not so far been in touch, but with a 24-hour security guard on the premises, they should encounter no problem finding a key-holder.