Virgin Bingo review by InternetBingo.co.uk

When it debuted back in 2005, Virgin Bingo had a bit of a shaky start with a slightly unfinished feel to its website with new customer information being a little haphazard. Happily Virgin got its house in order and its Bingo ship shape pretty rapidly and it has since become a very popular destination for UK players.

Virgin’s name and associated reputation is enough to reassure players they’re in safe hands here, but Virgin Bingo has also chosen to get into bed with the highly-regarded St. Minver network to deliver its games, giving its players access to one of the biggest Bingo beanos on the Internet. St. Minver is the ‘engine room’ of several big name, blue chip online Bingo halls, such as Littlewoods and Yahoo! Bingo to name but two, and whilst we know that size isn’t everything, it can’t be ignored that the cumulative effect of tapping into a pool of shared players means the progressive jackpots on offer at halls on this network can be rather HUGE.
Why? Well, the principle of a progressive jackpot is that a percentage of every ticket sold at a St. Minver powered hall is added to the jackpot on offer, so the more cards being played, the bigger the progressive jackpot grows. Since there are so many players on the entire St. Minver network (accessing it through different online halls) it doesn’t take long for the progressive jackpot values to get very meaty indeed! Play through Virgin Bingo and you’re getting to play for jackpots that are building through the combined pool of players having their fun in several other popular online Bingo halls too. Neat huh?

The large pool of online Bingo players who generate these tempting progressive pots does also mean you’ll be competing with a large crowd for them, but the ticket prices at Virgin Bingo are pretty thrifty so you’re not going to have to mortgage your granny to be in with a chance to pocket these prizes.

Turning to Virgin Bingo’s specific charms we really like the clean, bright layout of its website and the presentation of the non-download games is lovely. Classic UK-style 90 ball Bingo used to be the only Bingo game in Virgin’s town (which isn’t a bad thing!), but we were pleasantly surprised to see that it’s now added 75 ball sessions to its round-the-clock schedule, adding a little extra variety to the ball-based fun on offer. Good stuff. The simplicity of Virgin Bingo’s website also marks it out as a good choice for players dipping their toe into the online Bingo waters for the first time. Virgin have clearly put some effort into helping virgin Bingoistas find their feet with very well considered ‘getting started’ information and comprehensive supplementary customer support available 24 hours a day.

Virgin recognises that (wo)man cannot live by online Bingo games alone, so lay on all the extras we’ve come to associate with the best online Bingo operators, with a nice selection of minigames and live chat functions fully integrated into its main gaming screen. Chat is the crucial social glue to any online Bingo hall, and we were delighted to find a nice, friendly crowd populating Virgin’s different rooms – on all our visits during this review we never found ourselves being ignored like a Billy-No-Mates wondering if we might need to get a stronger virtual deodorant! Virgin’s CMs also do the decent thing by running lively Chat Games as part of their duties, and these are a great way of getting to know fellow ‘roomies’ and picking up some extra discretionary bonuses.

Joining in the action at Virgin Bingo couldn’t be much easier, with clear links to ‘Sign Up’ taking you to its online registration form. There’s a minimum of form filling to do to open an account and new players will be delighted to see Virgin have already stuffed a free quid into it from the off so you can go and play a few tickets for free (and with some of the scheduled Bingo sessions offering penny tickets – yes, 1p a ticket – that quid can go a long way indeed)! First deposits of £10 or more also attract a Welcome Bonus that matches that deposit pound for pound up to £125, followed by a 50% match bonus on a player’s second deposit up to £65. Virgin Bingo also takes advantage of its sister companies within the wider Virgin Empire to offer its players non-cash promotions to win cosmetics, pampering, adventurous outings and exotic holidays, so there’s an awful lot of extra rewards to play for with this hall!

Any problems to report? Well, we always like to test all our reviewed online Bingo halls for compatibility with both Windows and Mac computers, and we did find a slight glitch when using the Mac’s Safari browser to access the website – the sign up page wouldn’t display properly making it impossible to register as a new player. Thankfully, further investigation showed this issue only to be a problem with Safari version 2 so, if your ‘puter is a Mac, make sure to use either Safari version 3 (or later) or alternatively Firefox’s free browser and all should be dandy. With our extra critical hat on (and a splendid titfer it is too) one final niggle we’d note – although not exactly a problem to deter anyone playing here – is the content of the advertised ‘Celeb Chat’ on Virgin Bingo’s website. The list of ‘slebs’ on offer when we looked in was really pretty lame. Ex-Big Brother winner Brian Dowling? Purrlease! Even the Virgin copywriters seem to have been unimpressed by that, referring to him as Brian Downey in their spiel! C’mon Virgin, if you’re going to promise ‘celeb chat’ get some proper celebs booked!

Our z-list celeb sneering aside, we think Virgin Bingo has some terrific online entertainment to offer UK players. The games are fun, the chat rooms sociable and the promotions plentiful. What more could you ask for? And with Virgin Bingo bunging £1 into every new player’s account as a deposit-free welcome, what more reason do you need to click on over for a no-strings-attached date with their attractive 90 and 75 ball sessions? Whether you’ve already fallen for the charms of online Bingo, or are coming to the game as an online Bingo virgin, Virgin Bingo is undoubtedly a ‘good call’ for its online hall.

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