Free money offers and sign-up bonuses at bingo sites such as Mecca Bingo and Paddy Power might seem incredible at first, but as someone who has rigorously studied the terms and conditions of these bonuses, they’re not always as tempting as they seem.

When you’re given an incentive to join a bingo site and make a deposit for the first time, the homepage will usually be listed with all sorts of jazzy promotions to encourage you to deposit. The most common of these special offers is a one-time first deposit bonus, which credits your account with a bonus based on the amount that you deposit.

However, there are a number of restrictions for these bonuses which you need to be aware of.  These include expiry dates, rollover requirements, withdrawal limits, which games you purchase tickets in, minimum deposits and customer accounts.



As an example of admonishing players of the strict conditions of how to clear bonuses in bingo, let’s take a look at Foxy Bingo who current offer an interesting 200% up to £100 deposit bonus for new customers. You can find plenty of other excellent bingo promotions and offers at BingoBonuses.net.

What you might not realise about this Foxy Bingo deposit bonus however is that it is only available to one individual per household, and the withdrawal limits mean that you need to wager double the amount that you made in deposits and received in bonuses.  For example, if you claim a £20 + £20 bonus than you’ll need to spend at least £80 in bingo tickets before you can claim or withdraw the bonus money.  The interesting thing is that if you try to make a withdrawal before you meet these conditions than you relinquish the right to any of the bonus money won.  This means even if you deposited £20, received your £20 bonus but only spent £79 on bingo tickets (£1 less than the 2x wager amount), if you made a withdrawal you’d than forfeit the £20 bonus.

The other irritating problem at bingo sites us that usually the bonuses are only applicable to bingo tickets.  This means any money spent in the instant win or casino games such as roulette, 3 card poker and Cluedo, would be wasted (ironically these are the casino’s biggest earners so you’re wasting double as much money).

You can see similar strict bonus requirements at other sites such as Bet365.  In addition to a stringent 30 day withdrawal policy, if you don’t meet your full conditions then the entire bingo bonus will be removed from your account.  You also need to be careful to insert the correct bonus code before you make a deposit there.  

In conclusion, next time you see a brightly coloured, bingo offer promoted across the homepage, take a look at the FAQ and terms and conditions.  They might surprise you a little more than you expected…