PokieSurf Casino

PokieSurf Casino Review

While we at casinoaustraliaonline.net specialize in, well, online casinos for Australians, it’s very rare that the casinos we review are actually aimed at Australians. Instead, they’re usually more global brands that just so happen to also accept players from AU, as well as our currency. Which is why it’s always a surprise to find a casino that is specifically intended for Aussies and Aussies only.

PokieSurf Casino is one of them – it doesn’t accept international traffic, and only players from a land down under can even visit it, let alone sign up! Of course, we’re already intrigued, but the bigger question remains: is it good? That’s what we’re here to find out by examining the casino’s bonus structure, games, payment options and all features!

So, is PokieSurf casino truly a worthwhile Australian casino, or should you surf far away from it?

Bonuses

Welcome Bonus – 150% Match up to AU$1,000 + 100 Free Spins

The welcome bonus is one of the most important things that an online casino needs to get right. After all, that’s going to be most players’ first interaction with it, and if they’re disappointed by what they get, they’re starting their entire casino journey on the wrong foot! So, with that in mind, how does PokieSurf Casino fare?

Well, that depends on what you’re looking for out of a bonus. To start off with the positives, what you’ll be getting out of it is actually pretty good! Your first deposit will be matched 150% up to a maximum of AU$1,000, and both of those numbers are decently high without coming across as absurd. Even if you’re a high roller, you’ll get plenty out of this bonus, and that’s without mentioning the 100 free spins that all players will receive.

With that said, there are also some downsides. Chief among them are the high wagering requirements – you’ll need to play through your entire amount (deposit + bonus) x40 times in order to withdraw it, which is going to be nigh impossible. On top of that, no withdrawal requests will be accepted until you complete all wagering requirements, which is extremely shady as it basically locks you out of cashing out until you either complete a crazy requirement or lose all your money. Not the best first impression, overall!

Second, Third & Fourth Deposit Bonuses

PokieSurf Casino will also give you a bonus for your second, third and fourth deposits as well, all of which are rather similar. They all have the same conditions (like, for example, having to be wagered x40 times before they can be withdrawn), which is why we’ve decided to group them together.

When you deposit for a second and third time, you’ll grab a 100% match up to AU$1,000. Your fourth deposit will net you a slightly higher match percentage – 150% up to AU$1,000. Sadly, none of these bonuses come with any kind of free spins. Not like that matters, because with an x40 wagering requirement, it’s highly unlikely you’ll withdraw even a cent.

Another unfortunate aspect of PokieSurf Casino’s bonuses is that once you deposit for the fourth time… That’s it. No reload bonuses, no recurring promotions, no seasonal bonuses, nothing. What you see is what you get, and what you get isn’t very much. The casino overall gives off the vibe that it’s desperately trying to lure in new players rather than retain existing ones, which is a very bad look.

Games

If you’re a fan of pokies, then PokieSurf Casino might just feel like paradise to you. There are thousands of games from dozens of operators here, with a clear focus on quantity AND quality. Which is quite rare, so, credit where credit is due – we were very impressed with it. Well, for the most part, there is a bit of an asterisk here, but we’ll get to that when we talk about the pokies in further detail below.

Less impressive is the selection of table games. Currently, PokieSurf Casino only provides its players with seven different titles, all of which played against the computer rather than a live dealer. They’re also all very big and popular games, like roulette and blackjack, which means that if you’re a fan of more obscure table games (like sic bo or tiger dragon), you won’t really find much to your liking here.

Pokies

As its name might suggest, PokieSurf Casino is focused on pokies, and the selection is, admittedly, really good! … But perhaps a little too good. To start off with the positives, you’ll find a very wide variety of extremely high-quality pokies on display.

Pretty much every name worth recognizing in the entire casino industry is here – Play’N GO (the creators of the ever-popular “Book of Dead”), IGT (one of the oldest and most experienced providers with games like “Wolf Run”), Nolimit City (a rising star with great games like “Mental”), NetEnt… Wait, NetEnt?!

Indeed – while NetEnt may be one of the best online pokie developers in the world, if not THE best, they also have not made their games available in Australia. This decision, as painful as it may be, is universal, and pretty much all international casinos that offer NetEnt games will either hide them from being viewed by Australian players or will not permit them to place real money bets. So the fact that they’re on display here, at a site specifically intended for Australian players, is baffling, and it may mean that PokieSurf Casino are explicitly in breach of NetEnt’s terms and conditions.

Live casino

True to its name, PokieSurf Casino primarily focuses on pokies. This means that the number of table games is very limited, and the number of live casino games is a big, fat 0. Indeed – as of the time of this review, you’re not able to play any kind of live games, such as blackjack, baccarat, keno or even roulette.

While it’s natural to feel rather disappointed by this absence, it’s also important to recognize that the casino has chosen a specific niche to specialize in, and there’s nothing inherently bad about that. There are plenty of casinos that have, similarly, specialized in live casinos games, and if you’re a fan of cards and roulette wheels, one of those might be a much better fit for you.

Deposits & Withdrawals

We have to be honest here – finding out any kind of reliable information about the casino’s payment options was nothing short of a nightmare. The whole site is created as basically an SEO trap designed to stuff as many keywords as possible without actually giving any real information about what it offers.

For example, it has a hyperlink in the footer of the page titled “PayPal banking”, but that doesn’t actually go anywhere, it’s just a hyperlink meant to show up in Google searches, and there’s no evidence to suggests that the casino accepts PayPal (no logos or anything of the sort). Speaking of the casino’s footer, it talks at length about “payment methods found at Australian casinos”, but makes no mention of whether or not PokieSurf itself offers these methods.

If you think making an account will show you the available methods or the minimum deposit requirements, think again – the only method that appears to be usable at all right now is credit cards, and they’ll let you deposit pretty much any amount (with no clearly indicated minimums or maximums), which is highly unusual for a casino. But then again, this is probably what happens when you focus more on SEO and less on actually making a functional casino.

Withdrawal time

If you happen to win a decent sum at PokieSurf Casino, you’d probably be quite anxious to learn just when you’ll be able to make use of it. While the casino states that it’ll take up to 2 days to process any withdrawal requests, that’s only half the story. It’s important to mention that the only withdrawal methods currently available at the casino are credit cards, which take quite a while to fully process a withdrawal. It can take anywhere between 3 and 5 day (on top of the 2 days it’ll take the casino to send the money) for you to see anything in your bank account.

However, there is a decent chance that you won’t see anything at all even if you wait. There have been multiple reports and reviews from players who have found their withdrawal requests canceled with no explanation. The pattern usually seems to be that the casino will postpone withdrawal several times and then outright cancel it, thus refusing to pay anything. While we can’t say that this has happened to every player at PokieSurf Casino, it has happened to enough of them for said pattern to form in the first place.

VIP Program

There are many ways in which online casinos like to earn their players’ loyalty. Some will offer them reload bonuses, rewards that they can get every week (sometimes every day) if they make a deposit. Others will settle for a loyalty program, and providing players with points or a level-up system that will give them extra perks while playing.

Well, in the bonuses section of this review, we already established that PokieSurf Casino doesn’t actually have any reload bonuses, so surely they must be trying to earn player loyalty with some kind of VIP program… Right? Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to be the case, as there is no loyalty program to be found anywhere. Not even something basic, like a cashback system.

This further gives the impression that it doesn’t really care about its existing players, and merely targets new ones with big, enticing bonuses. Once you come, make your first 4 deposits and claim those bonuses, you’re almost treated as a second-class citizen compared to someone who has freshly joined and has yet to receive those rewards.

Tournaments

Considering how popular pokie tournaments have gotten in recent years, it’d be quite foolish to not include them in some form of fashion at your casino! Luckily, even PokieSurf Casino’s elusive owners agree with that much, as the site has a dedicated section specifically for tournaments.

PokieSurf Casino will host tournaments every few days. Currently, it’ll alternate between exactly two types: “Warm-up”, which have a total prize pool of AU$500, and “Lucky Weekend”, which have a total prize pool of AU$800. But don’t let those numbers fool you, as the actual rewards are way smaller than this. The winner of “Warm-up” tournaments brings home AU$200, and the winner of “Lucky Weekend” snatches AU$350.

Honestly, we really like the idea of smaller, more frequent tournaments, because it means that even if a high roller “usurps” the number one spot with numbers you can’t hope to match, you can easily just wait a few days and try again. But in practice, the lack of diversity between the tournaments and the games involved, as well as the small prizes, make PokieSurf Casino’s tournaments feel rather stale and boring after a while.

Verification

Every single online casino needs to enforce a procedure known as KYC (Know Your Customer) in order to comply with some pretty serious international money laundering laws. Those laws state that while the casino can take money from whoever it wants, when it’s time to give money back, it absolutely needs to make sure that it’s not giving them to terrorists, criminals and other flavors of bad guys.

These laws apply to PokieSurf Casino too, and when it’s time for your first withdrawal, you’ll be required to submit a series of documents that prove you are who you say you are. Those documents will include pictures of the card you used to deposit (both sides, with the first 6 and last 4 digits of the card number clearly readable, while the remaining digits CVV / CVC code concealed), as well as a bank statement proving you own the card. Because your name on it isn’t enough proof, apparently.

If you’re thinking “Oh, well, I’ll just use a different method to deposit” – well, you can’t, because as of the time of writing, it only accepts cards. You will also need to submit a photo ID (like a passport or driver’s license) and proof of current address (like a utility bill that shows your name and Australian address). After that, even more documents will be requested, although the casino doesn’t specify which and claims they will “depend on payment channels”. While verification is always a pain, at PokieSurf it’s just ridiculous!

Is PokieSurf Casino Legit & safe?

Everyone wants to be safe when they’re paying money online, but that goes double for online casino players who can reasonably expect to receive money back if they win. While there is no surefire way to know if a casino is 100% safe, a very good indicator for it is the presence of a license. If a casino is licensed, it means a certified gaming authority (for example, Curacao) has authorized it to do business, and has deemed it trustworthy enough to not yank that license out.

Unfortunately, PokieSurf doesn’t have any kind of license. It’s not authorized by Curacao, Malta or any other gaming authority, which means that it’s not beholden to anyone. No one can hold it, and its elusive owners, responsible if they end up scamming players. Oh, yes – on top of having no license, the casino has also gone out of its way to conceal which company owns it by using a paid service which hides their true identity from WHOIS searches. Our investigation into this casino uncovered a lot, but not who is actually running it.

Do we need to tell you that this is a scam? You’re reasonable enough to have figured out by yourself that there’s no reason why a trustworthy company should ever need to hide its identity.

Customer support

If you’ve seen as many fraudulent casinos as we have, you’re probably thinking “Oh dear God, their customer support system is a mess, isn’t it?” And you’d be completely correct! Usually, it’s extremely important for an online casino to have fast, responsive and reliable customer support, because glitches and errors can happen unpredictably and need to be resolved very quickly. There’s money involved, after all!

But PokieSurf Casino appear to have missed that memo. They not only lack any kind of live chat (which is pretty much the bare minimum of what a modern casino should have in terms of support options), but they’re also lying about it. Their “live chat” is actually a glorified ticketing system that tells you representatives will get back to you within 12 hours after you try to write them. Of course, they never got back to us, which means it’s very likely nobody is actually reading those tickets.

Your only alternative is to write them an e-mail, but at this point, is there even any point? If they’re not responding to tickets submitted through their own site, they almost certainly wouldn’t respond to an e-mail. This paints a very, very bleak picture of the casino as a whole.

Mobile casino

By this point, you might be asking yourself “Wait, so have PokieSurf Casino done anything right at all?” And yeah, they have! Funnily enough, their mobile version is unironically really good! It has the same basic interface as the main desktop site (which is fairly common when it comes to online casinos), but slightly restructured to fit a much smaller display.

Every single game and feature that we tested on mobile worked perfectly, and the site overall was very fast, without any loading times longer than maybe half a second while browsing between pages. It’s all very impressive, considering it runs in your browser (and not in a downloadable, dedicated app). If only the rest of the casino had this much effort put into it, we might have written a very different review of it.