I'd sue -- Sweeepstakes winners are really the losers [View All]

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Sweepstakes Winners Lose Out in Newspaper Typo
1 hour, 30 minutes ago Oddly Enough - Reuters


NEW YORK (Reuters) - A glitch in a newspaper contest turned apparent $100,000 winners into losers and led hundreds of angry game-players to protest outside New York's Daily News on Monday.

The "Scratch n' Match" contest page in the newspaper's Saturday edition included the number 13 in error in a series of 10 numbers, instead of the number 12 as intended.

The "wrong" number triggered a rash of winning scratch card tickets in a contest that is set up to pay out $222,500 a week in prizes, ranging from $25 to $100,000.

People who thought they had won, but hadn't, lined up outside the newspaper's Manhattan offices on Monday demanding their money.

The paper published an apology on Sunday and again on Monday, blaming the company that runs the contest for the daily, D.L. Blair, Inc. of Garden City, N.Y., one of the largest U.S. sweepstakes companies.

"We are outraged at D.L. Blair. We are outraged on behalf of our readers," Daily News president Les Goodstein said. "We are going to fight to make sure that everyone gets a fair shake."

Goodstein said contest players using the number 13 on cards they had thought were winners were eligible to enter a lottery-type contest to divide the available prize money, as spelled out in contest rules in the event of errors.

In an apology printed in the News, D.L. Blair said it "profoundly apologizes for and regrets any inconvenience" from the printing error.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050322/od_nm/life_sweepstakes_dc_1