How We Review
Our mantra is quality.
What sets us apart from other casino and bingo comparison sites is we don’t just serve up the highest bidding brands.
We list the best range of gambling operators out there, from the most well known British sports betting brands, to independent casinos that you literally might not find anywhere else.
Table of Contents
- Brand Onboarding & Listing Process
- Nature of Commercial Relationships
- How We Review – The Criteria
- Trust, Safety, Security & Independence
Brand Onboarding & Listing Process
We have a specialist team, including our commercial manager Chris Humphries, who personally reaches out and develops partnerships with the most interesting online casinos.
Sometimes we are approached by brands to be reviewed and listed by us. We are perfectly open to it! However, we rigorously vet all such brands and hold them to properly high standards. Some of these are absolute non-negotiables. For example, if you’re not fully licenced by the UK Gambling Commission and therefore not a legitimate and regulated operation, you’re not going to appear here.
Every brand that is listed is reviewed 100% independently from whatever commercial arrangement we make with the brand. They cannot pay us to say nice things!
These reviews are always thorough and are written by experienced writers who test the products to give them first hand experience. Then, all reviews are fact-checked by another writer or by the Head of WDW Bingo himself, Harrison Score.
Harrison has a decade of experience in the industry and has been running WDW Bingo since 2018. No AI, not bots – all human experience and Harrison is the real deal.
You can learn more about his story and experience on his author page or his LinkedIn. He even has a blog documenting his time working in the iGaming industry.
He is also something of a protégé of the “Queen of Bingo” and industry doyenne, Sue Dawson, who runs our sister site Best New Bingo Sites. Harrison learned everything he knows from Sue, so you can see the real history and lineage of experience we possess.
This is another area that sets us apart from other money grubbing comparison sites.
Nature of Commercial Relationships
As laid out in the Advertiser Disclosure, we are in commercial relationships with the brands that we list. We are paid in various arrangements but most likely to be either:
- CPA – Cost per acquisition, fixed fee per player we send.
- Rev Share – Revenue Share, a percentage of revenue.
- Hybrid – a combination of the above two elements.
- Tenancy – a fixed fee for an arranged period of time for display in a certain part of the site.
As any other factor, this may affect the positions in which the brand is promoted, but this is usually on the margins.
Because we believe in quality, and we know that players are only going to be happy if we give them quality, it is in everyone’s best interests for our listings to be the best quality they can be.
And we reiterate: a commercial agreement may get you listed on our site… but it may not, especially if the brand doesn’t reach some of the aforementioned quality requirements.
It defintely won’t guarantee a good review! All our testing and reviewing is 100% independent. An operator can certainly get in touch to make a query or request a factual change. But that’s it.
That leads us on to a bit more about how we review and predominant criteria that our experts are making their judgments on. As you can see, we believe in transparency, and that extends to our review process as well. We feel it’s crucial for players to know what they’re getting into when signing up at a new brand.
How we Review – The Criteria
These five criteria form the bedrock of how we adjudicate the quality of a review, and we try to include it explicitly in the body of as many reviews as we can. All aspects are personally tested if possible, and our experts make a judgement on the casino’s offering in that particular regard.
- Offer Quality
- Game Choice
- Payment Methods & Process
- Navigation
- Customer Service
Let’s dig a little bit deeper into each one.
Offer Quality
- How generous is the offer?
- How many components does it have?
- What games or game areas is the offer valid on?
- What are the timeframes?
- How does it compare to similar brands?
- What are the wagering requirements?
- Is there a promo code required in order to redeem?
- Are there any quirks in the redemption process?
- Are there any other T&Cs worth highlighting?
- We then go beyond the welcome offer and talk more broadly about ongoing promotions. We look for prize draws, tournaments, regular spins offers, large networked promotions etc.
Again, we’ll decipher the quality and scale of these offerings and whether they’re commensurate for a brand of its type.
Game Choice
- How extensive is the overall games catalogue?
- What are the primary providers? Are there any quality game providers missing?
- What software platform powers the site and how does that affect everything from welcome offer to games catalogue to player protection to payment processing and more?
- Are there different types of game products? The main areas we tend to focus on are slots, table games, live casino, sports betting, instant games and, of course, bingo.
- Then we delve into each game product type. Are there game shows in the live casino section? Does the betting section offer odds beyond just sports? Are there large jackpots?
- How frequently do they add games? Is their selection fresh or just the same old?
Payment Methods & Processes
- What methods are eligible for deposits and withdrawals? Do those differ?
- How do they stack up to similar brands?
- How seamless is the processing of payments?
- What are the processing times? In this day and age, once KYC checks have been established, slow processing times (ie more than 24 hours) are probably unacceptable.
- Affirm that regulated UK casinos do not allow credit card deposits. If a brand does, then it is not legal in the UK!
Navigation
This is all about user experience.
- How smooth is the player’s journey from deposit to play and all the way to the withdrawal?
- Most of our players now play on mobile devices. When we test, how well is the site formatted to the smaller screen? Have we received disgruntled player feedback about the state of the mobile version?
- Is the design attractive and even more importantly, intuitive? Does it look modern?
- Is it part of a platform network and do we rate that network more generally?
- Is having an account at a different brand on the same network going to affect your experience on this brand?
- Is there any gamification that makes the experience even more engaging? How are the rewards? Are there different levels? Is loyalty rewarded?
Customer Service
- How responsive is the customer support team?
- Are they available 24/7?
- How easy is it to get through to a human?
- Are contact details well displayed?
- If you do have to chat to a bot, how advanced is it?
- How seamless is the signup process when you first start?
- How seamless are the KYC and affordability checks? Are there delays? Does it affect your gaming experience?
- Do players feel respected and served by an online casino?
Trust, Safety, Security & Independence
Something that infuses throughout our reviews, and is a large part of our overall verdict, has to do with brand trust and respectability. We interrogate the following areas:
- Is the brand well-known and well respected?
- How long has the brand been running?
- Does it run on an independent platform, giving an impressive level of personalisation for the player?
- Is it part of a larger network or a white label brand?
- Who is the UK licence holder for a brand? Are they in good standing?
- What are the player protection standards? With regard to funds protection, this is by licence. Is your money protected should the business go bust?
- Does the brand have an impressive safer gambling programme?
- Are there good player protection tools that are easy to implement for players of any experience level?
As you can see we approach each review with rigour, curiosity and a genuine desire to inform. Our good graces cannot be bought. If the players are happy, we’re happy.
We have the best selection of high quality online casinos and bingo sites anywhere serving the UK regulated market. We can guarantee that!
Visit our Contact Us page if you have more questions about our process. Visit our About Us page if you want to know more about our history and parent organisation.
