The odds of buying lottery tickets in Georgia

 Given the recent record lottery jackpots, who hasn't wondered "what if"?  Or secretly imagined themselves a winner, if for a brief second?  Even those of us who fully appreciate the cruel reality of incredibly small odds of winning have entertained the thought.  And as we know, you can't win if you don't play.

Which was exactly what I set out to do, among millions of others seduced by the massive jackpots.  Except I kept forgetting to stop by a gas station or a convenience store to buy one.  To my rescue, the state of Georgia released a brand-new mobile app where one could not only check their numbers, but even purchase lottery tickets from their mobile device.  No more trips to the gas station, no more missed opportunities!

Conveniently, the app offered me several options to fund my lottery account, Paypal among them:  


The app connected to my Paypal account almost instantly, but when I attempted to add funds from it, the transaction suddenly failed with a cryptic error "... international regulations ...":


Less suck

Lottery and other types of gambling, of course, are heavily regulated, and are subject to a variety of state restrictions, including, for example, banning the use of credit cards to purchase lottery tickets.  But the "international" error looked totally out of place: it seemed extremely unlikely that funding lottery ticket purchases would be subject to any international regulations. 

I figured that something must have gone sideways in Paypal, and it simply triggered the wrong error message.  So, my first step was to reach out to Paypal, via live chat.  Obviously, I was hoping to hear the specific reason for the failure - so I could correct whatever I might have done wrong, or get Paypal to fix it if it were their issue.  Instead I got what sounded like a generic response that didn't quite make sense: 


How could this transaction be prohibited by government regulations?  The state of Georgia specifically suggested Paypal as a funding option - it must have been acceptable per the state law.  The Paypal support associate kept repeating the same answer, and it became clear I wasn't going to get any further.

Then I reached out to the GA Lottery team via their support email.  After a couple of messages went unanswered, I didn't hold out much hope to get in touch with them.  My call, surprisingly, got answered, and I discovered that GA had a set of specific requirements for using Paypal as a funding source: Paypal needed to have an available balance, and a linked checking account.  Bingo.  I only wish I knew that when selecting Paypal, it would have made things much simpler.  And faster.

It also turned out this was covered in the FAQ on the GA Lottery website.  Duh.  That was on me.  Looking at the language in the FAQ, however, the exact requirements are still not entirely clear: is it an "and" or an "or", 'cause there is a big difference between the two:


Product manager's thoughts & More Awesome:

I applaud GA Lottery for publishing the requirements via a FAQ - not every state service does that.  I suppose I should have looked for it...  but is that something every customer would be expected to do? Instead of putting it in the FAQ which, let's be honest, few customers will reference, and only after they run into an issue, why not make this known upfront?  Here's what GA Lottery could have done better to prevent this issue from happening entirely: simply display these requirements when the Paypal option is selected (my quick & dirty version, using their verbiage:


Paypal was not exactly a shining example of a great customer experience either.  They could have done a better job with their error messages.  Paypal's error message did not make sense, and instead of helping me figure out the issue, only confused it further.  Their customer support was also no help.  Either more specific and relevant messaging, or more attentive customer support could have pointed me - or any other customer in the same situation - in the right direction.

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