As I’m sure you’re aware, you can play the National Lottery online. You can set up an account, deposit some money and then buy virtual tickets for the big draw on a Saturday or Wednesday night.
This weekend I did this, and I woke up on Sunday morning to a ping from my inbox. I had an email. From THE LOTTERY PEOPLE.
Whenever I get such a communication I get nervously excited, assuming that I am now a mulit-millionaire with the world at my feet. I’m already spending my winnings in my head and working out which of my friends is worthy of a couple of grand & a share of my jet-set lifestyle. But then I compose myself. Perhaps it’s just some spam? Yeah. It’s probably something about them investing some lottery cash in a local hostel or something. Maybe they’re doing something with Sebastian Coe ahead of the Olympics. Nah, I probably haven’t won. And then I read the top line of the email…
NEWS ABOUT YOUR TICKET! WE HAVE SOME NEWS ABOUT THE TICKET YOU BOUGHT FOR THE SATURDAY 22 OCTOBER DRAW.
Shitting hell! I AM a millionaire! I hurriedly log onto the National Lottery website, my heart beating ten to the dozen. I tap in my username and password and then look at my account balance…
Four quid. I’ve won four fucking quid. Which means that I have made a loss for the weekend, becasue I invested a fiver in my little lottery gamble.
Great. Great, great news. So here’s some advice lottery people. Can you please have various types of subject titles to your emails, depending on how much we’ve won? If it’s less than a tenner perhaps it should be ‘QUITE good news about your lottery ticket’? For anything over a hundred how about ‘good news about your lottery ticket – it’s steak tonight’? And for the big winners how about ‘it’s time to quit your job, fucking awesome news about your ticket?’.
And a commiserations email when we lose wouldn’t go a miss either…
HACKED OFF DAILY 