Earlier this week the Vancouver Province newspaper and RGTonline reported how FreeLiveBingo.com, a free bingo prize game, abruptly closed its doors leaving winners and employees unpaid. Stephanie Hancock, a player at FreeLiveBingo, sent us this letter telling what she knows about the situation.

I was a player at Free Live Bingo (FLB). Recently they have shut down their site with the news to the players that they were going to "upgrade their servers" and then be back on and running a week later. Well, a week later, the servers were gone completely! The pages all gone -- the pages for FLB, and their companies' home pages, Omicron Technologies (the parent company) and Emotive Solutions. There have been articles of this Vancouver based company that have run in the Vancouver Province, a newspaper in Vancouver, British Columbia. An article has also been posted at RGTOnline, and more are forthcoming. I have been enveloped in the heart of this matter, trying to help out as best I can.

None of the workers or players have been paid their earnings/winnings. Now, as a player, I am personally owed $100 USD. I don't expect I will receive it, but I would love to see the workers get their due pay for the time they worked! They are all wonderful people, whom I have grown to be great friends with, in light of the current situation, which is why I continue to write letters and inquiries to everyone possible.

The idea behind FLB was wonderful. Live bingo, live callers and chat hosts that you could view via a "click to refresh" web cam. The host/hostesses were very charismatic people, easy to talk to (in the live running chat room, beside your bingo cards). It was easy to fall in love with the site. The bingo itself was top of the line with live callers and great graphics, they were paying $50 USD per hour as a draw in their beta testing. This came after the "web cam" draw at the top of each hour. (They would take the hour's 6 game winners, and draw for the prize.) The idea was when they came out of beta testing phase II that they would be "live" and paying $50 USD per game, 6 games per hour, 24 hours a day. Sounds too good to be true, and it was!!

I just want everyone to know what I have learned so far from this horrid experience. When you sign up for a bingo game to play, whether it be free or pay, there are a few things that you should keep.

1. The terms and conditions as laid out by the site. You can copy and paste them into Word, Works or Word Pad, so that you have "typeable" access to them, meaning you can copy them back into email to prove your cause if you are ripped off. (Or you could just print them out.)

2. Any emails you receive from them regarding your account, and your winnings.

3. Any correspondence you have with them, ie. if you send them an email, keep a copy for yourself as well.

4. Make sure you find out who owns the site and if they are a public company, if they are publicly traded on the stock market, and if the company has been around for a while -- if they are legit. Ask other players if they have won, and if they've received their winnings.

I'm not saying to go and hound all the new sites that come out, but be cautious, don't throw it to the wind, especially if you are paying to play!! Emotive Solutions, who owned FLB also had two pay to play sites, FatCat Bingo and Bingo Basement (Basement Bingo). Is this the company YOU want to trust with your credit card information??