

Paribus (YC S15) Gets You Money Back When Stuff You've Bought Goes on Sale - justin
https://blog.ycombinator.com/paribus-yc-s15-gets-you-money-back-when-stuff-youve-bought-goes-on-sale

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mfkp
I tried out Paribus when it launched on ProductHunt a while back.

I was very uneasy about granting email access, but I did anyway. Turns out
that they have trouble scanning my emails for Amazon receipts, so they
recommend giving them my Amazon username and password.

No way I would ever do that. I can revoke gmail oauth access (which I did),
but giving you my Amazon password also grants you access to my AWS account
(not really because of 2-factor, but still).

Why would I trust them to correctly store & encrypt such sensitive data, just
to save a few bucks on Amazon purchases. Not worth it for me.

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zck
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty reluctant to let any company
"View, manage, and permanently delete your mail in Gmail". Yes, I could create
a new email address that I only use for purchasing stuff, but that's a big
change.

This product looks cool, but I'm not seeing past the privacy issues right now.

~~~
karimatiyeh
Fair point. That's why we make our business model extremely clear. We're out
there to help users claim the money they're owed and keep 25% in the process.
We're not out there to sell user data.

Also, you can set up a secondary account and auto-forward emails relatively
quickly to a forwarding address linked to Paribus. On Gmail:

1- Go to filters and start creating a new filter:
[https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/filters](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/filters)
2- In the from field, type: amazon.com OR bestbuy.com OR staples.com OR
macys.com etc. with all the retailers for which you want to track receipts 3-
Click "create a filter with this search" 4- Click "Forward it to" and add your
forwarding address.

You should be all set after that (although you will have to change your filter
if you want to add the new retailers as we add more)

Hope this helps. We'll add to the FAQ :)

~~~
zck
>Also, you can set up a secondary account and auto-forward emails relatively
quickly to a forwarding address linked to Paribus.

Oh, this is interesting, and should get around most of the privacy concerns.
One question: how do you get the money back from the retailer? I had assumed
that Paribus sent an email from the account, but that won't actually work if
my email is zck@example.com and I give you access to zck-shopping@example.com.
If you email Amazon from zck-shopping@example.com, would they refund
zck@example.com? Or do you send me an email saying something like "Amazon
dropped prices on $PRODUCT_X, contact them here<link> to get a refund"?

~~~
karimatiyeh
Hah ;) I love that you caught on on this quickly. Shoot me an email and I can
go into more detail on how we do this. We handle all the communication on your
behalf and have a couple of tricks up our sleeves.

~~~
zck
Cool, I'd love to chat. Unfortunately, the "email" field in HN profiles is
private, and you don't have an "about" filled out.

My email is zkanfer@gmail.com.

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gleb
I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, would be happy to get some money back.

My concern is that if I take margin away from Amazon, and a take up a bunch of
their CS time using Paribus, Amazon will classify me as a customer they would
rather not have. And then, say, cancel my account if I end up returning bunch
of stuff later, as they are rumored to do.

So for Amazon, are price drop claims Amazon's official policy, or something
that their CS allowed to do to appease customers? What kind of Amazon price
drops qualify for refund?

Also, if setting up a separate account to forward receipts to, the email will
be different than one Amazon has for me. Is this a problem for your automated
emails going from that account?

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karimatiyeh
Hey HN! Karim here (cofounder/CTO at Paribus). Happy to discuss any questions
you might have about how it works or why we're building this

