Lottosheli Exposed — How About Winning Shekels?
Lottosheli Review
Shekels or dollars don’t make any difference in winning, but you’d better be an Israeli citizen if you’re playing online lotteries at Lottosheli. It’s an online lottery service provider for four lotteries played in Israel. Surfing through their website the terms and conditions leave out more than they include with vague references to possible fees and commissions that may or may not apply. The big thing though is the fact you must be an Israeli citizen and have an Israeli bank account and an Israeli credit card. I wonder if that still means someone who meets all these criteria and is living in France can still play. Let’s look.
Is it safe to play lotteries on GiantLottos in Israel?
Games at Lottosheli
Lottosheli offers four games operated by Israel’s Miphal Hapayis. Lotto is a standard lottery game with players choosing 6 numbers of out 37 and a ‘strong’ ball (what others call a bonus ball. It is played twice a week, Tuesday and Saturday. Chance, 777, and 123 are played daily with the times of the draw changing for Shabbat (Friday and Saturday). For more info on these games, you can read about them at Mifal Hapayis Exposed.
Playing their Games
One of the cute little things about this site is when players purchase their tickets, the amount of the face value for buying the lottery tickets and the service fee are identified separately. There is no minimum amount of tickets that have to be purchased, and they do offer subscriptions (buying tickets for multiple draws). Lottosheli also says that, though subscriptions are charged monthly, they will refund any non-drawn tickets if a player wants to opt-out.
Lotto Sheli and Winning
Winnings under NIS 49,920 (about US$ 12,340) are tax-exempt, and Lottosheli will collect this on your behalf and place it in your account. If your win is over this amount, players need to go to Lottosheli and complete a form for collection. What is weird on their site is this threshold is listed as NIS 50,000 in their terms and conditions. It’s not a big difference, but I don’t like it when they don’t get the numbers correct. There is also no information on whether they charge fees or service charges on winnings.
Who Can Play?
To play at Lottosheli.co.il, you must be an Israeli citizen over the age of 18 with a bank account and credit card in Israel and an active email account. It doesn’t say you have to be in Israel, though if you did win one of their jackpots, you’d have to get back pretty quickly to personally collect the lottery ticket. The big question is where you would do this.
Who is Lottosheli?
Lottosheli is operated by Lottosend Ltd., but there is nothing on their site that provides any information other than the name of the company. There is no snail mail or office address, and it didn’t seem to matter how hard we dug, we couldn’t find out where they were! Their site is available in English and Hebrew (drop the /en).
Lottosheli’s Customer Service
The customer service is open Sunday through Thursday 9:00 to 22:00 with slightly longer hours on Tuesday and only 9:00 to 14:00 on Friday. Saturday they open at the end of Shabbat until 22:30. There is an online form players can use, email address, and phone number. I still think it’s weird that there is nowhere on their site that explains where their office is with the fact winners over NIS 49,920 has to go there to process their win.
Why You Should Register with Lottosheli
Pros:
Clear on Fee Charged for Tickets
No Minimum Ticket Purchase
Good for Israelis
Why You Shouldn’t Register with Lottosheli
Cons:
Not Clear on the Fees/Commission on Winning
Where are They?
Only for Israelis
Is Lottosheli Legit?
If you are Israeli, this could be a more natural way to buy your Miphal Hapayis lottery tickets versus walking down to the corner store. If you are living in France or Australia and are an Israeli citizen with a bank account there, it makes sense. Then again, there is the question of where exactly these folks are and where you’d collect your jackpot!
Lottosheli.co.il gets a thumbs down for Israeli citizens, and a thumbs down for the rest of the world. There is just too much information not available in their terms and conditions, and too many questions are left unanswered.
Oleg
I DO NOT recommend this site.
In my experience, it’s either full of bugs, or is actually a scam.
I used their site it to send 2 lottery tickets for 2 different lottery games (123 and 777).
The first one I filled automatically. Only afterwards I discovered, that the lottery results can include same digits (for example, 2,5,2), but lottosheli site does not allow to send lottery tickets with same digits! Thus decreasing your chances to win significantly.
On second occasion the problem was even worse. My second lottery ticket which I filled through their site, ended up with totally different numbers than the ones I chose. I know this, because they sent me a scanned copy.
Of course I sent emails to their support, but never got an adequate answer.
Bottom line: DO NOT use this site.
Dmytro
Great service and they didn’t charge any fee from your winnings.
Naomi Shiltz
The fact this is only for Israelis didn’t put me off especially as the site is in their language (though there is a turn it to English button). I did wonder about the lack of an address as winnings over a certain level, players have to go collect the ticket – but where! Then I looked at winnings and the lack of info on commission. If I was Israeli, I’d rather walk down the street and get my ticket.