national-lottery.co.uk > Reviews (31)

The National Lottery Website seems to have received mixed reviews. I've found myself using it a lot recently (I have a gambling problem.... kidding) so I've decided to share my thoughts.
To make an account you'll need the usual details plus your debit/credit card details. This is to be expected as this is a gambling website after all and you'll be needing to make deposits. Once you're signed up, confirmed your email address etc it's go time.

There's a lot of lottery related things to do on the website. You can check the latest results, buy digital lottery tickets, play loads of instant win games and take a look at the tickets you've already bought. I'll tell you a little bit about how this all works in practice. I will add though that you can't actually log in to your account at certain times, possibly when draws are happening or it's really late or who knows. This is kind of annoying but I guess it saves you some money.

To purchase tickets/play instant win games you can't simply add one to a basket and then checkout like you would on a shopping site, no. Cleverly you must deposit funds into your account first and then use those funds to purchase whatever you desire on the website. This is where it gets cheeky. So you're going about your day and you think "ooo I fancy playing the lottery tonight, I'll login and buy a ticket" "I'll just put a pound in my account and job's a goodun". Dream on. The minimum deposit is £5 which means that to purchase one lottery ticket you have to waste 4 unnecessary pounds! Of course you can just leave them in there until next time or you can purchase tickets for weeks in advance but it's still rude in my opinion.

Anyway to actually purchase a ticket just search for the game you want, be it thunderball, lotto, euromillions, asiazillions, lightning cube. etc (there's far too many types of lottery) and choose your numbers. You can also select to lucky dip if you like which I always do but after not winning for so long I'm starting to suspect it's not a very 'lucky' dip at all. You can select for how many weeks and how many draws a week you want to take part in (guess that'll be 5 since I've deposited 5 pounds..... OK I'm over it now .... slightly). You'll automatically receive your winnings if you should be so lucky so you don't have to worry about checking the results after a draw.

The instant wins are as my Nan would describe a 'swizz', don't be tempted to play them. I have poured cash into these stupid online scratch cards to win measly amounts which are just lost on more scratch cards anyway. I really don't think anyone really wins on these. The banner at the top of the website will tell you that 'Debbie78658 has just won £100' she hasn't and they're are lying because I will never see 'PureDark has just won x amount'. OK I'm sure they're not a complete con but I can tell you first hand that I've never won anything on them and I've played them quite a lot. Damn you £5 minimum deposit (it always comes back to that).

Managing your tickets is easy, you simply select the 'My Tickets' section and you'll see a list of finished and current tickets.

From there you can see your numbers and what draws that ticket is entered for. As nice as it is not having to check the results, I always do because I'm a headcase and I'm convinced that the clever computer machine at the lottery has simply forgotten to check my ticket. This is never the case, it's always bang on.....

All in all it's a good website with good functionality. Any problems with the website are probably problems with the game itself (I never win). Oh and the minimum of a £5 Deposit.

I hope you enjoyed my review, any comments are appreciated. Stay cool.