Postcode Lottery blunder sees Dudley residents named as £30,000 winners
Residents on a street in the Black Country had seemingly hit the jackpot after their postcode was named a £30,000 winner – until the tweet was deleted.
People's Postcode Lottery made the gaffe on Saturday after initially posting a message saying the £30k street prize had landed in an area of Port Talbot.
But an image accompanying the win instead stated as "DY5 4RT" – the postcode for residents of The Plantation, off the main High Street in Pensnett.
The tweet, on the official People's Postcode Lottery twitter page, was later deleted but the gaffe was spotted and captured by an eagle-eyed person.
The actual winning postcode was for addresses in Port Talbot, Wales.
A statement from the People's Postcode Lottery said: "SA12 7AU was revealed as the winning postcode for our £30,000 Street Prize today (September 17).
"We deleted a tweet earlier today once we noticed an error where the winning postcode announcement was posted with an image showing a different postcode from today’s Street Prize winner.
"We made this change as soon as we noticed the error and would like to apologise for any confusion caused."
Twitter user and Black Country resident Andrew Morris said he was initially excited to see a local postcode had scooped the prize, but sadly it was swiftly deleted. He said: "Mistakes happen, just a shame for the players in that street that it wasn't for real."
The lottery sees people play with their chosen postcode – costing £10 a month to play – and they are automatically entered into all the draws.
A minimum of 32 per cent of ticket sales goes directly to charities and players of People’s Postcode Lottery have helped raise over £700 million to date for thousands of good causes across Britain and internationally.
