Bit of a rant/review more than anything, but I swear these sign-up freebies have gone downhill hard. Years ago you could jag a half-decent little crack on the pokes, maybe spin up a balance and have at least some chance of seeing real cash. Now heaps of them feel like pure bait — tiny credit, cooked wagering, half the decent games blocked, then a max cashout so low you just laugh.
What does my head in is the way some places splash the offer everywhere, then you read the fine print and it’s basically “cheers for joining, now jump through 14 hoops for twelve bucks”. If I get free spins and hit something nice, I don’t want to find out later that the game was excluded, or the winnings are capped so hard it barely covers a servo pie and a Coke. Bloody pointless.
I still reckon these offers can be handy for one thing though: testing a site without chucking your own money in. You can get a feel for the lobby, loading speed, whether the pokies are any good, and if the whole thing looks dodgy as. For that, fair enough. But as an actual chance to win something worth withdrawing? Nah, most of them are taking the piss.
Curious what everyone else has found lately. Any places actually doing a proper free starter deal without the usual sting in the tail, or are they all pretty much the same now?