Market Square Lottery Booth Caught Up in Company Collapse

Trivia: “True or false: Tiger Woods was nicknamed after his dad, a soldier who fought in Vietnam?” Answer below.

I've had a few short nights lately, and it will clearly catch up to me eventually. But I am managing to maintain my effectiveness, and have some fun, and keep up with the important but non-urgent tasks also. Examples include workouts, writing, business strategizing, etc.

Tonight my youngest son will attend swimming lessons, while his brother toils away at his hockey practice. It will be busy, and wonderful.

In the office today I hope to meet with local golf historian Bill Herron. We'll explore ways we can work together. He owns an incredible collection of golf history.

And we were saddened to see the lottery kiosk here at Market Square closed. Bernie and Marie, the Market Square staff, have been impacted by the difficulties faced by the local lottery kiosk operator. You can find a Waterloo Region Record article here, and also included below. The article included the photo of Bernie Seymour, found herein.

We hope to see the kind husband wife team back on the job soon, but we're not sure that will happen. They were more than willing to make our Parmasters KW literature available on the side of their booth. Literature that I have had to since retrieve.

Lottery kiosks in local malls close as bankruptcy looms

January 27, 2009
Brian Caldwell
RECORD STAFf

WATERLOO REGION

Five lottery kiosks in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge have closed along with about 175 others across the country after the company that owns them filed for bankruptcy yesterday.

Infoplace Ticket Centres Ltd. employed about 800 people, mostly at locations in shopping malls in Ontario, and had been in business for more than 30 years.

"The company's operating costs exceeded the revenue they generated from the sale of tickets, so they ran out of money," said Hassan Jaffer, the bankruptcy trustee for Grant Thornton Ltd. in Toronto.

Affected locally are kiosks at Market Square and Fairview Park malls in Kitchener, Conestoga Mall in Waterloo, and in Wal-Mart stores at Fairview Park and the Smart Centre big-box development on Pinebush Road in Cambridge.

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., which had a contract with the independent retailer to sell tickets, removed or disabled its terminals after learning Friday that Toronto-based Infoplace was in the process of declaring bankruptcy.

"We regret any inconvenience it is causing for lottery customers," said corporation spokesperson Don Pister. "We encourage them to go to another retailer."

Pister said the closed Infoplace locations make up less than one per cent of the 10,000 retailers selling lottery tickets in the province.

The closures came as a shock to Marie Seymour, 50, who earned $10.50 an hour after working full time at the Market Square kiosk in downtown Kitchener for seven years.

"It was unbelievable," she said. "You know how you feel your job is secure and then it's not?" Also out of work is her husband, Bernie, and another part-time employee at the kiosk. "They just shut us down without any warning," Seymour said. "We're all jobless, don't know what to do with ourselves."

Customers approaching the kiosk yesterday were met with signs telling them it was "temporarily closed." One of them, Elpidio Masutti, 74, had gone there for 20 years. Staff knew his favourite numbers by heart.

"He's here every day like clockwork," said Bernie Seymour, 55. "We know a lot of our customers personally."

Infoplace has associated companies in the United States and the United Kingdom. Kiosks in the U.K. have also recently closed after the chain there ran into financial problems.

Jaffner said it is too early to tell if there is a connection between the two collapses.

The first priority, he said, is securing the Canadian company's assets -- primarily unsold lottery tickets -- gathering information on creditors and getting a list of employees who are still owed pay for their last week of work.

The principals of Infoplace, Ken Clark and Glen Strike, could not be reached for comment yesterday. But Linda Clark, an assistant regional manager, blamed the bankruptcy on factors including the scandal over retailers fraudulently redeeming winning tickets and a decision by the lottery corporation to double the price of popular Lotto 6/49 tickets from $1 to $2 a few years ago.

Clark said Infoplace recently appealed to the lottery corporation for an increase in commissions after more than 30 years at the same rate but was turned down.

Local kiosks also sold about $100,000 a month worth of bus tickets and passes for Grand River Transit.

Eric Gillespie, the transit director, said they were "an important part of our sales network," but stores in the malls where they were located also sell tickets and passes.

A full list of retailers for the transit service is available online at http://www.grt.ca/ or by calling 519-585-7555.

bcaldwell@therecord.com


And the answer: “False. Born Eldrick Woods, the golf champ was actually given the name ‘Tiger’ after his father’s army friend who went by the same nickname.”