An email dropped into our inbox today detailing the Game Village Bingo Christmas promotion and to say we were shocked is an understatement. The Game Village Advent promo seems to have been designed as a money making scheme. This makes us wonder why, with so many excellent Christmas promotions flying around, they would choose this time of the year to charge their loyal players for entering their ‘promotion’?
When you first check out the Game Village Bingo Advent promotion you could be fooled into thinking everything is ok. The internet bingo sites game is based around an advent calendar with a prize hidden behind each door. These prizes include Christmas hampers, bluray players, coffee makers, iPod shuffles, televisions, sandwich toasters, iTunes vouchers and cash jackpots from Game Village Bingo.
The trouble is before you can actually access the advent calendar at Game Village Bingo and start winning prizes you have to answer a Christmas related question. This multiple choice questions is so easy you can’t help but get the answer correct. You have to then text you answer to dedicated telephone number that will cost you £1.50 a time on top of your normal text rate. To make matters worse Game Village Bingo will let you enter up to fifteen times a day so in reality this Christmas bingo promotion could cost you a whopping £22.50 a day. When you multiply this over a month you could end up spending hundreds of pounds trying to win a toaster worth £20; what is the point?
We cannot explain why an internet bingo site such as Game Village Bingo has taken this approach towards their Christmas promotion. At a time when other bingo sites are giving you the chance to win thousands of pounds and brand new cars why would anyone choose to waste their money on something that seems designed to take advantage of player loyalty.
Previously we have always loved Game Village Bingo and it’s with a heavy heart that we bring you the news of this ‘promotion’.
In the pursuit of fairness to both players and Game Village Bingo we did try and clarify the percentage of players who could win a substantial prize but it was a question that was simply avoided. The most information we could get was the the “database of prizes changes, each prize is allocated at the time a window is open. So if 20 £1 prizes are won it is topped up with a further 20 prizes which could be anything”. Our question was simply “Are the top up prizes then determined by the revenue generated by the texts?”. The answer was “no, the prizes have already been allocated in the database”
We did however manage to find out that the minimum amount that a player can win on the Game Village Bingo advent calendar is £1 which simply clarifies our belief that this promotion is a little ‘shady’ considering the cost of a text is £1.50 + your normal text charge from your mobile phone provider.
If you choose to enter this bingo promotion from Game Village Bingo then all we ask is be aware of the cost per text and only spend what you will be able to afford on your next mobile phone bill.
Who knows, you could be the winner of one of the grand prizes – a TV or BluRay player.
