What is curious about such a pioneering behemoth of the British Bingo scene is that it took until late 2005 before it opened the virtual doors of an online hall to play the classic 90 ball game. But open it now is, and so we thought we’d pop in to see if Mecca can bring their magic to the online game.
Clearly Mecca’s history and reputation means you’re in extremely safe hands playing for real money here, and so it really comes down to the quality of the playing experience as to whether you’ll make Mecca your online Bingo home. On arrival at its site you’re met with a very colourful and cheery home page with a neat tabbed navigation to allow quick selection of the games you’re interested in. While slots, and casino games are great fun, Bingo’s our bag so that’s where we clicked . . .
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Once in the dedicated Bingo zone of MeccaGames.com things are kept nice and simple with a menu of all the Bingo-style games on offer, headed up by the main event of Multi-Player Bingo. We must quickly mention at this point a slightly annoying kink in the navigation here; Mecca have confusingly added links to ‘Bingo World’ and ‘Mecca Bingo’ in the left hand margin of the screen that go to different micro-sites. ‘Bingo World’ takes you via a somewhat pointless alternative page to the online Bingo game (which you can simply access by a single click on the ‘Play Now’ buttons on the ad for Multi-Player Bingo) whereas ‘Mecca Bingo’ takes you to a separate site dedicated to details of its land-based clubs. This may seem a small issue, but why complicate things for novices coming to try its online Bingo with superfluous and potentially confusing links?
Providing the navigation quirk mentioned above doesn’t trip you up, playing here requires a simple sign-up process and a deposit of some money to play with in your Mecca account. Sadly, whilst many of the Mecca games have freeplay versions to let you trial them, its 90 ball Bingo does not, although there is a Welcome Bonus offered, of which more later. We do like to see online Bingo halls offer new users some kind of free trial, so we must mark Mecca down for this, but we also doubt a new player would regret their decision to play here. Mecca uses its own, non-download software so you’ll enjoy a game that’s distinctive to this company with nice pacey calling. Additionally this is a pleasingly busy site so the prize money’s very good and the chat rooms are lively places to hang out. The software is not quite as slick as some rivals, but that’s not to suggest that it doesn’t play well, and we think you’ll find it delivers a first-class, authentic Bingo experience.
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One problem we experienced during our review that may affect you is that we were unable to access the Multi-Player bingo using an Apple Mac computer. The published support clearly claims Macs are supported, but we were unable to make this happen using four different modern browsers. Even after a number of e-mails to Mecca’s support and following their promptly delivered suggestions to the letter, we still failed to get into the game. This problem won’t affect the majority of players who access Mecca using Windows PCs, but it is something that needs fixing for the Mac minority. A call to the telephone support (which was extremely efficient and friendly we must add) confirmed that Mecca’s games were under further development to maximise compatibility with the widest range of browsers and computers, so this note of caution will hopefully be redundant by the time your read this.
On the issue of player promotions, these are a little thin on the ground at Mecca compared to some of its competitors, but, as mentioned earlier, there is the £10 Welcome Bonus to claim once you’ve played over £10 from your own account. Not bad to have and it bests its big UK rival, Gala, who offer nowt at the date of this review!
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Mecca is synonymous with Bingo in the UK and we think its well-deserved reputation for delivering great entertainment at its land-based clubs has been very successfully migrated to its online hall. Yes, we’ve expressed a few niggles, however if you’re looking for a bustling online Bingo hall with big-money games from a company you can trust, Mecca must make it on to your shortlist of sites to try.
