My jurisdiction of Ontario allows gambling not only via lottery tickets but with casinos. Largely the province has bet that this will produce extra money in its coffers. Perhaps it can do more good than the bad that gambling can produce.
Because there are problem gamblers, so much money has been set aside to help these people. I encountered that spending in a bus advertisement yesterday. The ad largely promoted a website, safeorsorry.ca . To coerce people to visit the site, it offered up chances at prizes for those that visited the site and took the quiz.
I couldn’t decide whether this tack was stupid or brilliant. Offering up chances of prizes for your time of learning what responsible gambling was like seemed counter productive. But the lure would almost certainly work on the problem gamblers it was trying to bait.
So I went to the site and I took the quiz.
Firstly I didn’t know how to use the site. I clicked repeatedly on the answer to the first question but nothing happened. I then looked more carefully at the instructions. Of course, you were supposed to “scratch” off the answer like with a scratch and win ticket. I then proceeded through the set of about five questions.
I was then dismayed that after getting all the questions right, the quiz told me I was not eligible for the prizes because I didn’t do this during one of the time windows. Unable to gamble I was of course angry. I had put in the time, shouldn’t I have a chance at the prizes? I looked at the windows. One went until March 16th. It was only then that I realized it said March 16th, 2013.
Curse you Grand River Transit for posting a year old ad! I’ve been conned. There’s nothing for it now. All those wonderful casinos are out of town. I’ll have to buy a lottery ticket for my gambling fix. Wait, now that I’m a “cyber scratcher” perhaps I should buy some scratch and wins. I feel lucky.
