With all the strife caused from the current economic climate, the last thing the land based bingo industry needs now is a row over the technology it uses. Unfortunately, a Top Ten Bingo hall has become mired in controversy, with a row erupting between the Top Ten bingo hall and a local player. Lynsey Dickinson, a player at the bingo hall, had thought she won the £5,000 jackpot after a winning message on the screen.
However, bosses at Top Ten Bingo decided to deny Ms Dickinson her prize, citing a technical fault which had meant to show she had only one £1,000. Lynsey, who had gone out for a night of bingo, was delighted to find she had scooped the big prize jackpot of £5,000. A staff member had even signed the official document, the Prize Winner’s Document, stating that she had won £5,000. However, when she went to claim the prize, she was only given £1,000, along with an explanation that there had been a technical fault on the screen that overestimated her jackpot winnings.
Although we are sure anyone would be delighted with £1,000, the fact that Lynsey had been told she had won £5,000 only to have this taken away from her was a big error in judgement from Top Ten. Sometimes, you have to bite the bullet, and whilst we are sure mistakes like this happen rarely in bingo clubs across the UK, there are even rarer occurrences in the online bingo world. Because of the nature of technology used in online bingo, sites are dependent on consistent systems that leave next to no room for such errors.
And with the offline bingo world, much more responsibility is placed on human error – any technical hitch or fault with a screen may have possibly been able to be picked up by a member of staff. To have an employee of the company verify the results, only to later be told by company bosses that this means nothing is a bad state of affairs in terms of customer service.
Now Ms Dickinson has taken her complaint to the Gambling Commission, to see if Top Ten Bingo are breaching their duties towards her.
The news will most certainly be regarded as unwelcome publicity for the land based bingo industry. With dwindling levels of customers, you would assume that chains would be doing all they can to ensure their loyal players are kept happy. To embroil themselves in such an argument, when there is a discrepancy of £4k (which is not a huge amount to many of the larger bingo operators) seems to indicate a set of misguided principles.
Especially when one considers the growing popularity of online bingo. Although the two industries remain closely linked to each other, in the past few months the gulf of popularity has widened, so much so that many bingo industry experts predict the two will not be able to co-exist as peacefully as once hoped. Although this is not a case of choosing sides, nevertheless, it seems like any bad news for the land based industry will only serve to strengthen it’s younger online based cousin.
We hope the situation can be resolved as quickly and as fairly as possible, for all parties involved.
Related Posts
- No related posts found
Add a Comment