GLO to act againt vendors reselling to middleman

“We will check sellers in Bangkok first to determine if they are our registered vendors,” Chalongrat Nakartit, director of the GLO, said yesterday. “We will then check vendors in all other provinces.”

Reselling to agents is prohibited because it is a major cause of price gouging.

The government has vowed to stamp out overcharging, ordering authorities to ensure that lottery tickets are sold at most at their face value of Bt80 a pair. 

However, they are still more often than not going for up to Bt100 a pair on the street. 

Some vendors complain the tickets cost them just Bt71.4 when bought directly from the GLO, but Bt77-Bt78 if they have to get them from a dealer. In that case, they often have to charge customers more to cover the higher expense. 

There are grounds to suspect that some registered vendors are selling lottery tickets under their quota to agents instead of consumers.

To boost the chances of lottery tickets going to actual retail vendors instead of wholesalers, the GLO recently devised new channels for people to register as lottery vendors. 

After registering, they can buy tickets via ATMs, bank counters and the Internet. 

The latest round of lottery-ticket sales for these vendors took place yesterday morning. For the February 16 draw, all 22.6 million tickets were booked within 21 minutes. For the March 1 draw, all 40 million tickets were gone in just 27 minutes. 

“The previous time, only 46,596 vendors got the tickets via such channels. But this time, up to 62,614 vendors got the tickets,” Chalongrat said. 

In Phitsanulok, Amporn Klinchui, 64, said she and her daughter had to sleep overnight in front of an ATM in the hope of securing a supply of lottery tickets directly from the GLO. 

She was not the only one resorting to such drastic stratagems. Some other vendors in the province also did the same thing, camping out at ATMs. In Roi Et, Boonsuan Bureerat from neighbouring Maha Sarakham said he came to this province to be the first in line to use a ATM when lottery-ticket reservations opened at 8.15am. “But I couldn’t do it with this ATM,” he said. 

At a bank branch near this ATM, nearly 30 vendors succeeded in snapping up tickets without problems. 

This bank started serving them at 8.30am but could handle transactions fast. “All lottery vendors who showed up could complete their transactions partly because other customers kindly agreed to let them go first,” said Boondarika Sompong, the branch manager.