General Chat

Just received a letter and email from the Lottery - they are doubling the stake from October. I used to think my £2 a week was a legitimate little hobby - but this has turned into £30 a month - I pay by direct debit ( ever since I had a long session in hospital without renewing it - didn't dare to check!)

Did it tell you the change in prizes? Apparently they have altered as well.

I run a syndicate for the company I used to work for and we pay £3.00 a week for 19 lines on a Wednesday and 38 on a Saturday. Any winnings are saved til the end of the year and the most we ever get is around £30.00 each on average !

Wished I had put my £3.00 a week in a jar would have been squids in now ! :-D

They said the £10 for 3 was going up to £25, other things as well, didn't take them in

I think a lot of people will stop!!

Yet again greed rules :-|

maggiewinchester,

I think I will drop out of our syndicate unless they decide to fewer lines.

Probably win the jackpot then ! :-D :-D

I spent 15 minutes on the phone yesterday to their call centre to change the amount of lines I do.

We used to do 5 per week (around £20.00 per month)

This would have gone up to £50.00 per month,

You cannot change your lines or delete them yourself online you have to go throug the call centre, and beware it is not here in the UK, And they have the most stringent security I have ever come across..... Far better than when I call my bank!!!

So we now are only doing 2 lines per week.

It is a bit of a hassle to alter, but your pocket will thank you... :-D ;-)

£30 a month!! And I have seen instances of mothers without much money spending £50 a week and more on the lotteries and scratch cards.

My OH has spent £2 a week since it began. Part of shopping bill. I have never liked the Lottery myself as it was a hidden tax. However, it seemed a reasonable idea originally to collect money for worthy causes like local hospices and medical research and have a bit of fun at same time.

So my OH has spent at least £104 a year (more if roll-overs etc) and I remember her winning £84 once and several £10 wins - but less than £300 in total over all those years. :-( :-(

But at least an ethnic group for bio-diversity in Kent has gained a large grant from what she has spent ;-) :-(

2 lines a month is about my limit and I doubt if that will change.

Chatting to the kiosk lady, she said that she was surprised at the amount some people spend. From their appearance possibly those who could ill afford it. More gets taken in to the tills than gets paid out. They are authorised to pay out up to £500.

There have been some big winners locally - a small pub syndicate won 2 lines (they'd duplicted them in error) shortly after it started and a neighbour must have had a fair amount. All of a sudden there was a new sports car, a nearly new Estate car and the house was proffessionallly decorated through out with new carpets. Their children let slip about the 'win'.

Those of us who do buy the occassional line can but live in hope, but not at the expense of other obligations.

Hi Elizabeth,
I opened an account with the lottery on there internet site four years ago and all you do is top it up when your funds run low if you desire. I didn't want a direct debit with them as I wanted to control my own funds.
What I like about it is that they email you if you win and put your winnings into your account which you can then transfer into your bank account.

GP

Many people mistakenly believe that more lines increase the chance of winning.

Yes that is true but not to the extent that they might think. I once remember a chap at work (who was not stupid when it came to mathematics) arguing that two lines halved the odds, ten lines it went down ten fold, one hundred lines it went down by a hundred times.

Wrong.

In reality there are 13,983,816 ways of winning the jackpot, just short of 14 million.

If you have two lines, the odds reduce by one to 13,983,815, ten lines to 13,983,807, and so on.

So even with 10,000 lines the your chances of winning are still little more than a colossal 13,973,800 or in other words, still almost 14 million to one!

On the other hand, the chance of winning a tenner is just over 50 to one, so with more lines you will increase the chances of an occasional small prize, but when it comes to the big one, you are really no better of than someone with a single line.

As far as the stake increase is concerned, I suppose after almost 20 years it is inevitable. i.e.

In 2012, £1.00 from 1994 is worth:

£1.68 using the retail price index

£1.90 using average earnings

Have tried to follow your maths logic, IGP, but am sure there is a flaw there somewhere.

As I understand it, you are saying that if you buy a ticket for lottery, you have a 1 in 14m chance of winning jackpot.

If you buy a second ticket, it is true you are betting against your first ticket, so you have a 1 in 13,999,999 chance of either ticket winning. But you must double your chance to all effect.

Please put my mind at rest before I go and get 6 lucky dips (or whatever they are called) tomorrow and spend £12. I think I have got approximately a 6 times better chance of winning than someone with only one £2 ticket :-S :-S

John, the tickets still only cost £1 at the moment, there's a few weeks to go before the increase.

If you buy six lucky dips there is the danger that the machine will give you six identical sets of numbers. In that case you wouldn't improve your chances of winning but you would get six shares of the prize money.

:-)

Have you won already ??

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23634011

Gwyn

Gwyn :-D :-D It would be nice to be the missing millionaire from Rhondda Cynon Taff. What silly sausage does not yet realise they have won from this county? A million pounds would more or less buy the whole county lock, stock and barrel :-) ;-)

Hi Dazed, why dont you just ring your bank and ask them to cancel your direct debit straight away and then no more monies will be taken from your account.Dont waste time and money hanging on the tel to the call centre.

I havent heard about the increase, so can someone just update me on how much a single line on the lottery will cost?
Thanks
Florence
In the hebrides

It will be £2 per line on Lotto.

The increase was announced several months ago. I had been thinking about getting an extra line per draw at that time, so didn't bother.

Florence - you have misread my post

I spent 15 minutes on the phone and have changed my numbers.

I was explaining that if you do your lottery online this is the only way you can change them.

The call centre does not keep you hanging for ages, it is just the language barrier that can be a problem. Not for me, but more often than not for call centres as they have big problems with my South London accent.

Dazes/confused really sorry, yes i did misread your post. I think its because i was reading them quickly and someone mentioned direct debit and hey presto i had a "senior moment lol."

But hey £2.00 per line!!! crikey i normally get 2 lucky dips(lottery) and 2 lucky dips(thunderball) but with this increase i will reduce by half. Just cant afford it.

Does this mean higher jackpots/?More money going to good causes?

how can they not understand you southern accent? I was born in sussex and anyone from around these areas are really quite plain spoken i think. Guess the problem lies with them and not us!

Florence
In the hebrides :-S :-)

I have done the same three lines for many a year, one line was my Mum's choice, get me these each week when you pick up my pension, she said. Six weeks later she died and I haven't dared stop doing the numbers as it would be sure to be the week they came up that I stopped. I have wone £84 once from those numbers and £70 once on my own numbers, plus several tenners and other smaller amounts on the Euromillions. I feel many people will stop doing the lottery with the higher charges so the amount of the total winnings will be even less. Can you remember when a Saturday night would be about £18 million? Now it's about a third of that and midweek is even lower.

I think Camelot are shooting themselves in the foot by changing things.

Will still try to have my little dream every week.

Lizx

Someone mentioned that a woman in her supermarket commented that some of those who buy the lottery tickets looked like they could not afford it.

Well as someone who worked on the Post Office counters for many years I can assure you that appearances can be very deceptive.

We had one lady who came in and looked and dressed like a poverty stricken old lady. Firstly she was a lot younger than you would have thought and secondly was extremely well off. She owned her own house and had savings all over the place.

Yes some cannot afford to play and continue to do so. But we are always told you should never judge a book by its cover.....