Things to Beware of with Online Bingo Depositing Bonuses

I did it!!! I hit a jackpot!! After 5 years of playing online bingo, I finally hit a jackpot for $5000.00!!! Oh no, I tried to withdraw my winnings to be informed that I could not withdraw them yet as I had not yet played enough of my money!! What are they talking about??? I deposited, I won, and yet I cannot take out my winnings??? Is that fair?

Does the above story sound too familiar? Have you felt cheated by an online bingo site? If so, then this article is for you. I will try to help weed through the glitches of some online bingo and casino sites.

You have decided that you would like to play some online bingo today. You log into the internet and type into your web browser search box, “online bingo”. Thousands of online bingo pages are showing so you start to sort through them. You are finding that many of the online bingo sites offer you upwards of 300% matching deposit bonus where as some are only offering 100% on your first time deposit. You start to think that you want more for your money but hold on a minute. There may be a catch. Watch out for this trap. The first thing to do is to read the fine print concerning promotional terms and conditions.

The most common term and condition for online bingo site deposit bonus is that when you deposit you will receive a deposit bonus but when you withdraw, you will lose the deposit bonus. In other words, let’s assume you deposit $100.00 and receive $300.00 in matching deposit bonuses. After spending $50.00 of your deposit, you win a prize of $200.00 and want to withdraw it. After all, you won it and it is more than what you deposited. You submit a claim for your withdrawal and notice that now your account balance reads $0.00 yet you would have still had your deposit bonus of $300.00 so you thought. That is not likely going to happen. Once you hit the withdrawal button, your entire deposit bonus is removed from your account.

Some online bingo sites however will allow you to keep SOME of your deposit bonus based on the amount of CASH you leave in your account. An example is as follows: The bingo sites terms and conditions read: If you submit a claim for a withdrawal, your bonus bucks balance will be reduced up to 50% of the cash left in your account. Example, if you have $200.00 cash in your account and $200.00 bonus bucks in your account and choose to withdraw $100.00 cash, you will leave $100.00 cash in your account which will reduce your bonus balance to $50.00(50% of the cash left in account).

Another common practice at online bingo sites is to limit the amount of bonus bucks you can receive based on your last deposits. Example, the promotional terms and conditions read: You will be allowed to receive up to 100% of your last deposit in bonus bucks. With this term and condition, if you were to deposit $100.00, you would only be allowed to receive $100.00 in bonus dollars, yet often times, if you withdraw any winnings, you will void your eligibility to receive any more bonus dollars.

Some online bingo sites have some varied withdrawal limitations. They offer upwards of 300% matching deposit bonus but if you win on their side games such as slots or video poker, you are only allowed to withdraw $250.00 of your winnings per week. What happens if you hit a jackpot on their side game say for $5000.00? Well, it will take you 20 weeks of withdrawing $250.00 per week to receive all your winnings.

Another downside to deposit bonus’s is the “minimum wager amounts” Some casino and online bingo sites will require you to wager x amount of times your deposit and your bonus before you are eligible to make a withdrawal. An example is one site states: You must wager 10x your deposit plus bonus before requesting a withdrawal. The site offers a 300% matching deposit bonus on your first deposit. This would mean if you deposit $100.00 and received $300.00 in bonus, you would need to wager $400.00 x 10 = $4000.00 prior to requesting a withdrawal.

Recently, I found another type of “catch” that really surprised me. Some online bingo sites will offer you a wonderful deposit bonus BUT you cannot make a withdrawal request for a specific period of time from the day you deposited. The bingo site that I found doing this recently stated that I could not submit a withdrawal request for 15 days from the date of my deposit!!!

I think, by far, the worst case scenario I have stumbled upon is that you will receive a 300% matching deposit bonus but if you win any prizes using your bonus dollars, you cannot cash them out, however, if you win again on the winnings derived from the deposit bonus, then that is yours to keep. In other words, if you deposit $100.00 and receive a 300% deposit bonus of $300.00 and the play bingo and win when your account balance is below your original $100.00 deposit, then you cannot withdraw your winnings, however, if you win again before you are spending your bonus bucks, only then can you withdraw. Sound confusing??? It is. Be very careful if you find an online bingo site offering this type of promotion. It is very hard to keep track of what monies you were using to win with.

In conclusion, I would like to point out that all online bingo and casino sites are there to make a profit. They are not open to take of loss of course and if they are offering huge deposit specials, be sure to read all the rules before you deposit. Understand how their terms and conditions will affect you. A good policy is one that states that you will receive a deposit bonus for your deposit and all winnings derived from any part of your balance, whether it is cash or bonus bucks, will be yours to withdraw at anytime. Yes, you may lose your bonus bucks for your deposit but as I stated above, they are not open to lose money. Good luck and May the Bingo Gods be with you.