Bingo Site Review – Sky Bingo
Sky Bingo belongs to a relatively large family of gambling sites that also comprises Sky Bet, Sky Poker and Sky Vegas. Established several years ago, Sky Bingo was effectively relaunched on the 6th October 2009 with an all new design and service. As perhaps might be expected of a newly relaunched site, especially one of its size and scope, the revised Sky Bingo features a much heavier reliance on flashy graphics and animation. However, this is not to suggest that the new look Sky Bingo is overly shallow or cosmetic – in fact, the Sky Bingo redesign is lively in a refreshingly simple way.
Furthermore, the site has become more user-friendly in so far as its simple navigation buttons have been enlarged slightly and the registration and user login areas are placed conveniently across the top of the page, just underneath the Sky Bingo logo. Additionally, the site features a high contrast setting that is designed to better suit the requirements of customers with poor vision, while the site’s help and support section has also undergone a makeover. In this respect, however, Sky Bingo’s help facilities are not the most comprehensive available and, at the time of writing this review, there are a number of rough edges to the site that are yet to be corrected, such as pop up script errors and corrupted page data. Nevertheless, these points are common to sites that have been recently redesigned and they do not affect the overall user experience to any significant degree.
In fact, Sky Bingo provides a generally competent, effective and ultimately competitive service to its many thousands of customers, each of whom will be able to use the Sky Bet, Sky Poker and Sky Vegas services with their existing Sky Bingo account. Furthermore, the Sky Bingo site has managed to achieve a gaming environment that is both entertaining and friendly – two factors that are arguably more important to bingo than they are to casino and poker related services. Indeed, bingo customers generally tend to prefer large and friendly playing communities as online bingo has become very much a social experience, so in this respect Sky Bingo is on par with any other site of its kind.
Before discussing the specific promotions and games that are available at Sky Bingo, it is worth noting several other important aspects. Although the Sky Bingo help section itself is somewhat lacking, the customer support service provided by the site is far more effective. Indeed, should Sky Bingo members experience difficulties on the site, the live support system – which is generally very helpful – is available to lend a hand on a 24/7 basis. Furthermore, e-mail (help@skybet.com) and telephone (UK – 08000 724 777; ROI – 1800 928 949; Overseas – (+)44 1423 850 640) queries are also dealt with efficiently. Should the need arise, customers can also write to Sky Bingo at Central House, Beckwith Knowle, Otley Road, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG3 1WA.
Sky Bingo also operates a responsible gaming policy, which encourages fun and entertaining betting within individual user limits. Moreover, the site employs industry standard encryption technology, extensive gaming and site usage rules, a detailed privacy policy and various other security measures in order to ensure that its members experience safe, secure and fair gaming. Without testing the security of the site to any great degree, it would appear that Sky Bingo is a relatively safe place to play bingo online.
Furthermore, the site features high accessibility options that are designed to benefit customers who have a range disabilities. In respect to banking procedures, Sky Bingo features a relatively fast withdrawal service and deposits can be accepted using MasterCard, Visa, Visa Electron, Switch, Maestro, Delta and Laser cards in currencies including UK Pound Sterling, Euro and Australian, Canadian, Hong Kong, Singapore and United States Dollar.
Sky Bingo offers a wide variety of games comprising Free Bingo, Bingo 75, Bingo 80, Deal or No Deal Bingo, Pennies (90), Anytime (90) and Premium (90). These game types will be familiar to most seasoned online bingo players, although free bingo is of particular importance as many other sites do not provide such a service. Free bingo is available every day for up to four hours at Sky Bingo, with games taking place between 10-11am, 1-2pm, 5-6pm and 10-11pm. Other Sky Bingo games operate on a 24/7 basis, so there is plenty for players to do on the site at any time.
New players at Sky Bingo who spend £5 on games will be rewarded with a £15 welcome bonus, which is a relatively competitive offer as far as other bingo sites are concerned. Other ongoing promotions on the Sky Bingo site include the 2p £20,000 jackpot game, which takes place on the first Friday of every month, the 10p daily £1000 jackpot game (every evening at 10pm) and the 25p £5,000 jackpot game (every Wednesday at 9:30pm). Following the redesign, Sky Bingo will soon launch a new community page, whilst recent winners include bobbyblueboots, who was “over the moon” after winning £1655, junglejim (£192), battleroyale (£176.11) and Bouncer123, who intends to spend winnings of £857 on his or her son’s 18th birthday!
