You Need To Look Beyond The Bonus Before Signing Up With An Online Casino
Casino bonuses – especially for new customer sign-ups – can be dazzling. They’ll have you super excited and have you rushing to fill in your details to join, ready to start playing right this instant. But instead of rushing to complete that form and your ID check you should slow down a minute and see just what’s behind that $500 bonus.
Whether you’re looking at the best SA online casinos or ones based in other countries or continents, the following factors should be considered as your standard list of criteria to be ticked.
Check the bonus payout terms carefully
Bonuses are a dime a dozen at online casinos, but that doesn’t mean that one casino’s 200% deposit bonus equals another casino’s 200% deposit bonus, or that those free spins have a chance in hell of paying out. As with anything free, the devil is in the details, so make sure that you read over them carefully.
Many casinos have a sign up bonus that’s wild, crazy, and seems almost too good to be true – because it often is too good to be true! When the terms of payout on the bonus include items like “Must play through 40x,” that means if your deposit is $100 and the bonus is $100, you will need to bet $4000 before you’re allowed to cash out. Ouch. So, when looking at bonuses make sure to read that fine print first – and compare the terms to competitor casinos.
Check the general payout terms
Beyond bonus payout terms, casinos also have regular payout terms surrounding rules of how they make a payout for customers. Some casinos do instant payouts, while others take hours or days. Some casinos have a minimum and maximum withdrawal at any one time, or within a given time period. Some casinos require you to cashout using a certain monetary exchange method, which may not be the same way you deposited funds into the casino, whereas others require the exact same method of payout as your deposit method. Again, here, you will need to go over the fine print to see what the exact terms are for the casino you’re considering, and whether they will satisfy your needs.
Read the casino reviews
Just like you’d check a hairdresser on Google Maps or Yelp before you walked in and got a haircut, you want to see what other people have had to say about the casino you are looking at before you jump in and start playing there. There are plenty of online review sites for casinos, from private sites to Reddit, to Trustpilot.
Take a look at the ratings and see what people’s reviews are like. While the reviews may not specifically mention bonuses, there may be other standout feedback like good or bad customer service and helplines, or that people have received their payouts in either record time or after weeks of back and forth. Reviews are everything to businesses, and online casinos are no different!
Play for fun first
Most bonuses only cover a few games for their terms of play. Now, if you’re a huge online casino fan you might not care which games these are. But for others, you should try before you buy. Almost every online casino has a free-to-play section or version of each of their games where you have the chance to play the game with fake unlimited funds.
We recommend trying out the games available under the bonus first to see if you like the style of gameplay and can commit to playing the games until the bonus payout is complete. When you do this, you might realise that it’s more difficult than you thought or that the gameplay itself would take too long – particularly if there are time limits imposed on bonus payouts under the T&Cs.
See What Other Games are On Offer
While you may be pretty focused on that bonus, and so you’re concentrating on those one or few games, it’s worth taking a look around the casino to see what else is on offer. You might find that you like a particular live dealer game or that they offer some games that you’ve never seen before and would like to try out.
Take a Look at The VIP Club
If you’re playing for that bonus, you may as well take a look at the VIP club and see if you’d like to join up. If you intend on playing over a few days or weeks then VIP clubs offer deals like special happy hours with free spins and other ways to earn points. Joining the VIP might in this way help your chances of getting another bonus or at least enjoying all that the casino has to offer.
