A student was left devastated after losing out on a £182million EuroMillions jackpot due to 'payment failure' on her winning ticket. Rachel Kennedy, 21, had the correct numbers for the huge cash prize but was informed that her payment for the £2.50 ticket hadn't gone through.
The University of Brighton student and her boyfriend, Liam McCrohan, had started planning their "dream" lives when Rachel got a notification to say that her seven lottery numbers were a "winning match" back in 2021. The couple, from Hertfordshire, had been playing the same numbers — 6, 12, 22, 29, 33, with stars 6 and 11 — for five weeks in a row.
The Mirror reports that the duo thought they were quids in when their numbers were drawn in the February 26, 2021, EuroMillions. But their dreams came crashing down when they were informed that Rachel didn't have enough funds in her account to cover the £2.50 charge.
Therefore, the winning ticket wasn't purchased automatically prior to the draw as usual. Despite this, Rachel thought she'd secured the massive jackpot because a glitch had sent her a notification to tell her she was a winner.
She told The Sun: “I called my boyfriend Liam and my mum into the room and they couldn’t believe it either so I was like, ‘oh my God I need to call them.' I called the number thinking that I had won £182million and they said ‘yeah you’ve got the right numbers but you didn’t have the funds in your account for the payment of the ticket so it didn’t actually go through’.
"I was on top of the world when I thought I had won but when I found out I hadn’t, Liam was actually more upset than I was.”
Liam says he had already been making big plans for their future prior to the devastating blow. He said: “(Rachel) was quite relaxed about it but I had kind of spent it in my head already. I was absolutely heartbroken - I was already picturing our dream house and the dream car, I think I was getting a bit carried away to be fair.”
Camelot, who have been the operators of the lottery since 1994, heard about Rachel's story and sent the couple a "good luck" message for future draws. A spokesman for the company said: "We're aware of Rachel's story and hope she gets in early to buy a ticket for the next big draw."
Rachel admits she has since stopped using the same numbers because she now believes they're actually unlucky. She said: “I actually have two sets of numbers that I use.
"One of them is birthdays of family members and stuff, but the ones that were the winner were just random numbers that I had clicked one day and had been using ever since. We’re absolutely not going to keep using those numbers now, I’ve already changed them."
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