While the total number of lottery ticket outlets increased from 2,500 to 3,300 since the Public Welfare Lottery was launched two weeks ago, TaipeiBank (台北銀行) decided to suspend retail sales on computerized lottery tickets at its 78 branches across the country. The bank will instead concentrate on providing services to lottery winners who want to cash their prizes at the bank.
"Since less than 80 outlets have stopped selling lottery tickets, it should not affect the willingness of the general public to buy the tickets. It should also not affect the value of the jackpot prize," said Richard Yang (楊瑞東), the bank's vice president and general manager of its lottery department.
Yang also reminded the public that any prize less than NT$2,000 can be cashed at any of 3,300 ticket retail stores across the country.
According to the TaipeiBank, the total number of lottery prize winners have reached 1.67 million.
To serve the winners who are lining up to cash their prizes, the bank has decided to stop selling tickets to the general public, so that it can concentrate its manpower on redeeming lottery prizes and on the wholesale selling and redemption of scratch-and-win lottery tickets.
All the prize-cashing transactions have to be confirmed by a computer system, according to regulations set down by the Ministry of Finance. The huge number of prize winners, combined with the time needed to confirm prize-cashing transactions, have forced bank workers to work overtime over the past two weeks. This was also the case at the Chang Hua Commercial Bank (彰化銀行) and Hua Nan Commercial Bank (華南銀行), which also provide prize-cashing services.
Complaints from the three banks' staff members have forced the TaipeiBank to reduce the workload of their workers. Whether Chang Hua and Hua Nan Bank would follow TaipeiBank's decision remains to be seen.
While a number of gas stations and convenience stores, like Chi-nese Petroleum Corp (中油) and Nikomart (福客多), have joined in selling computerized lottery tickets, President Chain Store Co (統一超商) will stay out of the frenzy, according to company president Hsu Chung-jen (徐重仁).
"The lottery retail stores are mostly run by the handicapped and low-income earners. If a strong retail chain like 7-Eleven joins the competition, it could devastate the business of many ticket retailers. In order to avoid complaints [in the future], the company will not consider joining in at present." Hsu said.
Hsu also warned that problems might occur when the lottery frenzy finally cooled down. He said that, when the public finally realized that the odds are only one in 5.24 million -- "whether you buy one or one hundred tickets at a time, your chances stay pretty low" -- people's curiosity would fade gradually and lottery retailers could suffer a significant drop in customers.
"This can in turn lead to new social problems," Hsu warned.
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