Many of us will have indulged in daydreams about what we'd do if we won the lottery, from round-the-world trips to that gorgeous house with the indoor pool on Rightmove. Sadly, for the vast majority of people, such dreams will remain just that, floating about harmlessly enough in some imagined future.
It must be far more painful however to find out you've won a life-changing sum, only to have the money snatched right back due to the strict rules of the game.
One couple has now learned this the hard way, with their initial joy over winning £82,000 ($100,000) on a scratch card having quickly turned to dismay after they realised the card had expired five days before.
As previously reported by the Prince George Citizen, Dan and Cerise Lewis, who live in Prince George, in the Canadian province of British Columbia, had been tidying up their bedroom when they came across a box of 'odds and ends' left over from Christmas.
Amid the hand warmers and other such bits, the couple found a two-player Clue scratch game. Cerise suggested they give it a go, never imagining they'd end up winning a huge amount.
Dan told the publication: "We went through the game and there are 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 says 'I got all three of those symbols' and I was like 'What? No way'."
To his initial delight, Dan checked the ticket over and discovered Cerise had indeed scratched all three symbols, which meant they'd just won an £82,000 ($100,000) prize. Unfortunately, their excitement didn't last long.
After grabbing her phone to check the ticket via the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) app, Cerise realised that it had expired just five days before.
Remaining hopeful, the pair rang up BCLC to enquire as to whether there was any chance of a grace period, explaining the situation and the sizeable amount at stake.
After being briefly placed on hold, the operator informed Dan and Cerise that 'if the ticket was expired, it was expired', with no apparent leeway.
The couple even tried checking the ticket at a shop despite what the operator had told them, but it just came up as expired once again.
Dan was surprised that a scratch card they received at Christmas in the space of just two months, and sadly isn't holding out much hope that BCLC will forgive the five-day discrepancy.
He continued: "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."
Going forward, Dan is now urging others not to wait to check their tickets so as to avoid any similarly crushing disappointments.
Do you have a lottery-related story to share? Email us at julia.banim@reachplc.com
