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Lastminute.Com Bingo - Playing Bingo Review

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Tickets, Hotels And Now Bingo At Lastminute.Com

Lastminute.Com BingoVisit: www.lastminutebingo.com

Site rating: 7 / 10

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First Impressions & Ease Of Sign up

If you've ever spent time looking for bargain holidays or tickets online, then you'll know the Lastminute brand. Like many companies with interests in the entertainment sector, they've branched out into the online Bingo market with a St Minver powered online Bingo offering.

It took a while to spot the familiar St Minver layout as it was buried in the standard Lastminute page. It looked a little cluttered, they've don their best to carry the site style over into the Bingo section. As usual with St Minver, the sign-up process is a breeze. If you already have an account at Lastminute.com, you'll need to set up a new account for the Bingo.

Given the need to squeeze the Bingo into the overall Lastminute.com site, some elements of the typical design are missing - there's no rolling Jackpot block that tells you how much the massive network jackpot is at present. It can be a little confusing navigating as well, a couple of times I found myself clicking on the external links rather than the internal Bingo ones.

Confusingly, there are two login / account links as well, which some may initially find themselves using incorrectly. Once you realise it's a site within a site, navigating becomes a lot easier, and it's easy to find all those T's and C's and get the info you need to get playing and depositing.

Sign-Up Bonuses

The standard St Minver powered bonuses are availale for new players. You get £1 of free play just for signing up with them (or £2 if you use our Lastminute Bingo Promotion Code). You can play the free games without even depositing money. It's a great way of getting a feel for the site before you have to part with personal details like your credit card numbers and the like.

Once you go on and make your first deposit (Min £10) they give you a 100% match bonus, up to £125. What's more, on your second deposit they give you another 50% match bonus.

Ease Of Use

Once you get away from the main site, the actual Bingo is the typical branded St Minver configuration. The software is superb - everything is laid out in a common sense manner, and easy to figure out. You can quickly select or deselect the appropriate options as you need them, straight off the software.

Buying your games is also easy - you get full control over your purchasing - and you can buy tickets for future games very easily. Your balance is always kept refreshed and includes any wins you may have won. I really like the Parlay software that powers the St Minver Bingo games - the attention to detail and ease of use makes it the best of the lot, for my money.

However, I've already hinted at some issues with the usability, and they do have an effect on the website side of Lastminute.com Bingo. I can't help but feel that they would have been better leaving the Bingo as a standalone with maybe a big banner to take you back to Lastminute.com rather than cramming it into the existing site. It's really busy, and a couple of times I found myself in the wrong sections.

I know why Lastminute has done this - in the hope of their Bingo players jumping between the two sites. But I don't think it helps - it looks clumsy and at times causes confusion. If I'm there to play Bingo then I'm not likely to be jumping off to look at tickets and holidays. That side could easily be reinforced through their mailing list rather than at the actual Bingo site.

Community Spirit

The chat room is always busy - it's an opt-in one so you have to manually enter it, rather than being thrown straight in. The CMs are very friendly and quickly respond to any problems or questions you have.

The chat is always fast paced and lively. It's easy to pick-up and you can quickly find you way around the different smilies and chat-room elements you can use. As well as the chat, there are plenty of extra chat games going on should you want to join in with them. You can play them alongside the Bingo, but you do have to be quick witted with a few of them! If you're not sure, ask the CM.

Prize Money

The St Minver network supplies the pool of players across a range of sites - this means that most times there are a large number of players in. In my opinion, the balance between the total number of players and prize money is one of the best in the market space. Whilst some of the biggest online Bingo sites do have a lot of players and big prizes, the chances of winning them are a lot smaller.

Generally, afternoons see around 105ish people in there with prizes in the £10 line, £15 two lines and £30 full house arena. Evenings it gets a lot busier with 200+ in, and the prize money raising to £10, £15 and £70 respectively. There's a range of game variations as well during the flow of play, with full house games for snowballs, and a number of chances to win the massive network jackpot. At the time of writing its up over £54,000. Recently, it was won at £91,000!

Security

The high standard of security is apparent around the site. Everything is done under padlocks, your password is never emailed to you and the when you make your first deposit, you set a security word that you'll need to use for any subsequent deposits. All in all - as good as you'd expect.

Overall Feel At Lastminute.com Bingo

All the good stuff you'd expect from a St Minver powered site is there in it's right place. The standard offers, the great value for money and the great Bingo experience. My only problem with this implementation of it is (if you haven't already guessed) the way it feels shoe-horned into the existing site. OK, it's not a major problem, but it does make the site feel a bit of an afterthought - and it's been marked down for that.

But - now Lastminute.com have made this leap into the Bingo market, they could differentiate themselves from other network sites by tying their Bingo audience directly in to their other services. They could easily offer their players special exclusive offers from Lastminute.com or similar such things. Then their Bingo site would feel more like it was there own for a reason, rather than tacked on. Time will tell if they develop that side of it. Overall rating - 7 / 10 (April 6th 2007)

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Visit: www.lastminute.com Bingo

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