My Gambling Problem

How did I manage to make a simple task incredibly complicated?

Yesterday evening I decided to buy a last-minute ticket for the national lottery Euromillions draw - my son said we had 30 minutes to get to the shop - but I didn't fancy the two minute drive so in a flash of inspiration I decided it must be possible (and presumably straightforward) to buy it online. I went to their website, filled in my details and decided for simplicity to pay using my recently created PayPal account.

Except, apparently, I didn't.

First, PayPal wouldn't let me log in (I should have taken this as a sign and given up) so I had to reset my password, which was slightly more complicated than it should have been. As time was ticking away and I was clicking boxes to show I could identify traffic lights, my husband tried to video-call me. Needing to focus on my task (which I was using my phone for), I dismissed his call. He persisted and I kept ignoring his calls, prompting my eldest daughter to get annoyed and call him back on hers. As she started complaining to him about how rude I was, the dog seized the opportunity to try and steal leftovers from the kitchen counter. Despite the distraction and time pressure I somehow managed to unlock my PayPal account and made the payment. I was told I'd receive an email confirmation and when I checked, sure enough there it was. The problem was that the email confirmed I'd signed up to twice-weekly tickets and also agreed to join a syndicate, so would be charged £2.50 and £3.50 respectively per draw (£12 per week) going forward. Not too keen on this, I went back to the lottery website and tried to log in. Several times! Each time it told me I'd got the wrong details but it did offer me a 'chat' service. I sent a message and someone named Max responded. He asked for my login details, name and password, then abruptly disappeared. The chat box was replaced with a customer satisfaction survey which I used to share my frustration. Not quite ready to give in, I went back to my confirmation email and re-read it. There, in the body of the text, was a standard sentence about the right to change your mind, with an instruction to 'click here' to log in to my account. I clicked the link and found myself on the home page of a lottery/gambling site which was definitely not the National one and, unsurprisingly, my login details worked. When I checked my account information, not only had I signed up to a third-party lottery ticket reseller and agreed to the previously mentioned subscriptions, I'd bought a ticket for the Euromillions draw next week instead of last night. I still can't work out how I managed to get in such a muddle but I've now cancelled the subscriptions and written the website name and password down so I can claim my millions if I win next week. As I sat down with a cup of peppermint tea (kindly made by my middle daughter), the dog alternating between trying to drink my tea, eat the firewood and steal a toy from the coffee table, I had to look on the bright side - no-one else won last night’s lottery so next week is a rollover!

#nationallotteryfail