Tesco will pay £7,000 Lottery win

Anne Pooley and daughter Bethan before Tesco offered to step in

A woman who feared losing a £7,000 Lottery win after problems with printing the ticket has been promised the cash by supermarket giant Tesco.

The firm says it will pay Anne Pooley if the Hotpicks ticket she bought in Merthyr was not entered into the draw.

Mrs Pooley, 44, of Rhydyfelin, Pontypridd, said: "I'm too scared to relax until the cheque is in my bag."

Lotto firm Camelot says it cannot pay if the ticket is invalid, but Tesco says it will ensure she gets £7,000.

Camelot has been examining the ticket which Mrs Pooley bought last Saturday.

I still can't say 'I'm a lottery winner' but I have got my receipts saying I bought the tickets at Tesco Anne Pooley

Mrs Pooley, who has been off work since September following an operation, is one of thousands of people who lost money through the collapse of the Farepak Christmas savings scheme.

She thought her luck had changed after checking the Hotpicks numbers late that evening. She and her lorry driver partner Adrian Staples were "elated".

She said: "I kept checking the numbers again and again. We talked until about 4am and had already spent the money in our minds."

'Nightmare'

Their plans included a laptop for daughter Bethan. But problems emerged when she visited Tesco in Upper Boat, near Pontypridd, the next morning.

She said: "I didn't imagine anything would be wrong, but when staff scanned the ticket they said it was not a winner.

"In Merthyr, when I bought the ticket, the lottery machine was playing up and my original tickets would not print, so they gave me new tickets."

"When you go into Tesco with a winning lottery ticket, walking on air, and are then told you haven't won, you feel absolutely deflated and sick in your stomach.

She welcomed Tesco's statement that, if Camelot was unable to pay out her apparent winnings, it would step in with an equivalent sum.

She told the BBC News website: "It's still a nightmare until it's solved. It's unbelievable.

"I still can't say 'I'm a lottery winner' but I have got my receipts saying I bought the tickets at Tesco."

A Tesco spokesman said: "We are sorry for any distress caused and are very sympathetic to the case.

"The investigation is still ongoing. If the customer's ticket is valid Camelot will pay out in the normal way.

"If not, due to the exceptional circumstances of this case, we will ensure she receives the equivalent to the prize."

Camelot said: "A player has sent in a ticket for validation and we will be looking into it."