A Prince George couple thought they lost out on the chance to take home $100,000 dollars after discovering their winning scratch ticket had been expired for five days.
However, BCLC has confirmed that what the couple thought was a winning ticket that had expired just days before was in fact not a winner after all.
“This weekend my wife was doing a little bit of cleaning up in our bedroom and found a box full of odds and ends that were left over from Christmas, hand warmers and that sort of thing, and in that box was a scratch ticket,” explained Dan Lewis.
It was a two-player Clue scratch game, and so Lewis’ wife, Cerise asked him if he wanted to play it.
“We went through the game and there’s icons that tell you the weapon, the room and the suspect just like the board game. We get to the end of the game, and it reveals who the murder was and she’s says ‘I got all three of those symbols’ and I was like ‘What? no way’.”
Lewis said he looked at the ticket and saw she had all three symbols and then checked the rules on the back that clarified if you have the three symbols you win a $100,000 prize.
However, the couple’s joy was short lived as Cerise quickly got out her phone to check the ticket on the BCLC app only to discovered it had expired.
The app didn’t say if the ticket had been a winner or not, just that it had expired.
“We turned the ticket over and looked at the expiry date and it was five days before we had scratched the ticket.”
Lewis said they called BCLC to see if there was a grace period where they might still be able to cash in the ticket.
He said they explained the situation and that the ticket was worth $100,000 and was put on hold briefly before being told that “if the ticket was expired, it was expired.”
Lewis said they were told to try checking the ticket at a store anyways, and so he quickly ran to the store to see if it might work there, but it also rang up as expired.
Lewis said he is not quite sure how a ticket they received at Christmas would expire just two months later, and was hoping BCLC would forgive the five day discrepancy but doesn’t think that’s going to happen.
“When we first saw that we won $100,000 we thought wow this is going to take care of all of our problems! We will be out of debt, this and that, and then of course a couple minutes later we were devastated to find out that we won absolutely nothing.”
However, BCLC has confirmed that the even if the couple had tried to validate the ticket prior to its expiry date, that it would not have been a winning ticket for any prize value.
BCLC said the single top prize of $100,000 from the Clue Scratch & Win product was already won in August 2021 by a player from Chase, B.C.
Lewis says his advice going forward is to check your tickets as soon as you get them.
“A lot of people have shown us support during this whole ordeal, and we really appreciate everyone's concern,” noted Lewis.
This story has been updated to add comments/clarifications from BCLC.
