Curt Sprang WGNO News

7:05 p.m. CST, January 30, 2012
NEW ORLEANS—
Cinnamon Reeves-Davis likes to play the same game that a lot of people do. The ol' What Would I Do If I Won The Lottery game.

"Well, I have a large family, so the first thing I would do is buy everyone a house," she says.

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But Reeves-Davis was miffed after her last trip to buy Powerball tickets.

"I was hoppin' mad. I came home and said, 'Lemme just sit down and write a letter'," she said.

We responded.

She told us that she recently tried to buy Powerball tickets from a store on Elysian Fields. During the transaction, she said that she noticed the clerk pull her tickets out of a drawer -- not the lottery machine. She told the clerk that she wanted fresh ticket, and an argument followed. Eventually, Reeves-Davis left the store with no tickets.

Sounds like a pretty aggravating situation. After all, when it comes to buying lottery tickets, there are a lot of other factors. You know, things like vibe, hunch, and intuition can come into play. So taking tickets from a drawer rather than directly from the machine just might throw off their mojo.

State lottery workers say that a store can sell any valid ticket no matter when it was printed -- just so long as it's not for a previous drawing. But they add that the buyers have the right to refuse any ticket that they don't want.

Reeves-Davis says she knows another person who had a similar argument at different store. " And in that instance, the police were called."

We stopped by one of the stores, and found out the problem stems from the recent increase in the price of a Powerball ticket. In mid-January, the price doubled to $2. But many customers are still unaware of the change. Some order more tickets than they have money to purchase. Others are confused by the higher price and feel they're being sold the wrong tickets, so they back out of the sale. Either way, it leaves extra, unsold tickets at the counter that stores try to sell to other buyers.

Lottery workers say they anticipated the issue and tried to instruct stores on how to educate buyers and avoid the conflict. Some store workers told us that the are now collecting money for lottery tickets before printing them.