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Taiwan Lotto promises to smooth out lotto problems

Following a rash of complaints over the chaos during the lottery sales on Monday, Taiwan Lottery Co (台灣彩券公司) yesterday vowed to address the problem as soon as possible and provide consumers with a stable and working computer system within two weeks.

"Based on past experience, it should take 10 to 15 days for the system to get on track. We'll do our best to solve our distributors' problems," said Chang Ruu-tian (張汝恬), Taiwan Lottery's president, during a press conference yesterday.

Taiwan Lottery, a subsidiary of Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金控), took over from Taipei Fubon Bank (台北富邦銀行) as the nation's exclusive Public Welfare Lottery issuer and started lotto operations on Monday.

However, its first day of sales was greeted by a wide variety of problems, with many ticket-selling agencies reporting computer crashes, failed Internet connections, insufficient stocks of lottery papers and poorly designed computer programs -- all of which led to long queues of buyers waiting to try their luck in the new year.

Chang attributed the system failure that occurred between 9am and 10am on Monday to the bigger-than-expected transaction volume, but said that it has improved after changes were made to the computer program.

The situation was better yesterday although some distributors still complained about lengthy computer downtime.

Chang said sales of computerized and instant lotto tickets on Monday reached NT$170 million (US$5.2 million) and NT$180 million, respectively. Sales remained brisk yesterday, totaling NT$214.4 million and NT$127.9 million, respectively, she added.

Of the 4,701 distributors who have inked contracts with Taiwan Lottery, 4,100 stores opened for business yesterday, higher than Monday's 3,700 to 3,800 agencies, she said. The remaining 600 outlets are still in the preparatory stage.

Despite Chang's assurance that there was no problem with its computer system, which was established by Athens-based Intralot SA, the world's third-biggest gaming technology and services company, Monday's crash has raised concern whether Taiwan Lottery can handle huge transactions of up to billions of NT dollars.

Tsai Ching-nain (蔡慶年), director general of the National Treasury Agency which oversees lotto operations, said he had expressed his dissatisfaction with Taiwan Lottery's poor crisis management and would continue to demand that the firm improve all the flaws within two weeks.
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