A Spar retailer has reported falling sales and frustrated customers following ongoing issues with a newly installed National Lottery terminal.
Ian Lewis of Spar Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire, took his frustration to LinkedIn after the recent installation of Allwyn’s new Wave terminal had led to payment issues, frozen transactions and customer complaints for over two weeks, with no resolution in sight.
While Ian acknowledged that technical issues can happen, he described the response time and lack of resolution from Allwyn as “not good enough”.
On LinkedIn, he said: “We had a new National Lottery terminal installed recently and, on the face of it, the first week went well.
“Ahead of installation, a fibre connection was put in place. However, it wasn’t connected at the time the terminal went live (It was running off a mobile phone attena!) — and since then we’ve been unable to have any faith in paying out any prizes.
“A call was logged two weeks ago, yet the issue remains in “processing stage” with no sign of an engineer visit.
“Even worse, we’ve had instances where winning tickets have been processed, the terminal has frozen, and customers have then taken their ticket elsewhere — only to be told the prize has already been paid out. That’s embarrassing for us and incredibly frustrating for the customer.
“This is having a real impact. Customers are understandably avoiding us, and at a critical time of year this means lost footfall and lost sales.
“We fully appreciate that issues happen, but the response time and lack of resolution here from Allwyn UK isn’t good enough.”
When the issue was raised by Convenience Store to Allwyn, the National Lottery operator confirmed it is arranging a priority engineer to visit the store today (18 December).
National Lottery’s biggest technical upgrade
At the start of August, the National Lottery underwent its “biggest technology upgrade” since launching in 1994. Services went offline from 11pm on 2 August until late morning on 4 August.
When services returned, around 8,000 National Lottery retailers switched to the new Wave terminals. However, many retailers were still awaiting their new terminals and had to use their old terminals with the upgraded system.
In the days that followed, Allwyn’s update had prompted responses from some retailers who had not received the new terminal, describing it as slow and reminiscent of 1990s software.
After a somewhat shaky start, in October, Allwyn said it had reached its halfway milestone with more than 22,000 of its new terminals now installed across UK retail locations.
No comments yet