This week I took a look at the Virtual City Casino, mostly because they are currently giving away $10 with no purchase necessary just to try their software.
First Impressions
I do like their logo, but their site design leaves a lot to be desired - it just doesn't give me the gaming buzz that is often so important when choosing casino. But I had the promise of a free $10 and I knew they used Microgaming software so I soldiered on to the download page and entered my email address.
Download and Installation
When you click on the 'download' button you are sent to a page that has full download instructions and full instructions for claiming your bonus. I liked this because i find that casinos often separate this information and I end up hunting around the site to try and find the promotion details again. Straight away you get an email repeating these instructions, a very nice touch in my opinion. When the software comes down the install was very fast for me and from entering my email at the site and actually loading the software less than 2 minutes had passed.
The Games
When I opened the software I found out why it had only been 2 minutes - the initial install only includes blackjack so you have to download all the other games when you want to play them. Luckily, I am a blackjack player when it comes to free bonuses, so I had everything I needed. We all know that Microgaming software is nice, so I don't want to beat that drum to heavily, but I will say that this version, with the Virtual City branding is certainly not the nicest looking version I of this software I have seen. But hey, if you don't care how it looks then it is all the same to you!
Banking, comps, and payouts
The banking system is the same as all Microgaming casinos, so there are no surprises when you sign up, us veterans are getting used to the basic accounting system on the net these days. You just give them your details, they give you a password, you register a credit card or Firepay account with them, purchase your credits and off you go. Now, when it comes to promotions I started to get a little miffed. Remember the $10 bonus I told you about? I haven't received it yet and I can see no reason why. They multiple instructions I mentioned early are quite long but are very easy to follow. According to these instructions I should have received an email when I registered for real that gave me a username and password for the Casino Rewards system that handles their bonuses and promotions. This email never came. Also, according to the instructions, I was supposed to receive an email when I entered my credit card details. Again, zip. This second email was supposed to tell me about the fact that I was automatically credited 1000 VIP points and how to turn them into $10 at the casino. Well, I never got the VIP points and I still don't have my bonus so I'm not best pleased, and it spoiled my experience at the casino to be quite frank.
Conclusion
Virtual City Casino did not really do it for me. I never got my $10 bonus, I didn't think much of the graphical work on the site or in the software, and even though they say "PricewaterhouseCoopers reviews the casinos payout percentages on a monthly basis, the results of which are published on the website for everyone to view", I could not find these reports anywhere on the site, so I couldn't add them into the reliability reports here on the site. If you are a manager over at Virtual City, get it sorted out or you will lose customers. I'm sure it is a fine casino, but all the niggly little problems meant I didn't rate them too highly. Has anyone out there successfully got their bonus and found the PWC reports? If so you might rate Virtual City higher than 5 out of 10
*****STOP PRESS*****
I just received my login for casino rewards, one full hour after I signed up. An hour after that, I received my VIP credits and transferred them to my account as $10. It took 2 hours but I did get the bonus in the end, so I am upgrading the rating to 6/10
