

Negative Cashback from Microsoft's Bing Cashback - jpuskarich
http://bountii.com/blog/2009/11/23/negative-cashback-from-bing-cashback/

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petesalty
But this could just be the vendor (not that I'm defending MS). It could easily
be a different price for Google, and another for Yahoo, etc. It doesn't mean
MS has any knowledge of this, although they could probably police it if it's
affecting their reputation.

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tonyb
Your exactly right. Search for the same product using google shopping and it
shows the higher price.

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jrockway
Ouch. This is why I usually buy everything from Amazon, instead of some random
place that shows up in Google Shopping results.

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oneplusone
I read a while back that Amazon does something very similar. They give new
visitors a larger discount on certain items compared to regular visitors. Of
course googling it now only returns
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/09/06/amazon_makes_regular...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/09/06/amazon_makes_regular_customers_pay/)
so it may be bunk.

~~~
ggrot
This is pretty old news. Amazon experimented with this briefly, caught alot of
flak, and stopped.

I recently had an experience where I thought amazon was doing this - I'd get
one price when signed in to prime and another cheaper price when not signed
in. I called up amazon and the rep was astonished as she could see the exact
same thing. A few minutes of digging and she figured out what happened. Amazon
was showing me signed in the item shipped from amazon (candidate for prime)
and showing me not signed in the item shipped from someone else. When shipping
was added in, Amazon was always showing me the lowest price available. In both
cases, I was presented an option to choose a different supplier, but it wasn't
very prominent on the page.

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amalcon
It's not that difficult. Turn off your cookies. Manually allow them for the
rare cases where they're actually necessary. If that's too much work for you,
clear cookies or turn on your browser's "privacy" mode before you buy
anything.

This sort of thing has gone on for years. You used to be able to find a good
deal on a flight at orbitz.com, leave to go comparison shopping, come back,
and see a higher price. Clear the cookies, the original price was back.

~~~
bigiain
I wonder if a Firefox plugin could have a list of shopping aggregator sites
(like Bing and google shopping) and automatically block referrers when using
outgoing links from them, and maybe specially treat cookies being set by the
sites those links land on?

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bumblebird
If you're clever, you find the merchants affiliate scheme, sign up, check it's
ok to place orders through your own affiliate links, and place an order.

Then there's no middle man and you get all the discount. Hassle for cheaper
items, but worth it for bigger stuff.

I once signed up to get a 0% rate credit card (first 6 months) that gave cash
back on purchases. I signed up through my affiliate link that paid out
something like £40, had a few K of credit for 6 months, and got cashback on
everything I bought using it. Then I cancelled it. I expect they hate
customers like that.

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bdr
I doubt they're giving you more in cashback than they make from transaction
fees.

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jrockway
They might be. For every person that implements this trick, there are 100 more
that are making only the minimum payment every month and paying thousands of
dollars in interest (free money).

~~~
pyre
I thought that most credit card companies sold off this debt for Wall Street
to repackage.

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tonyb
Don't blame Bing. It is the store that is deciding to charge you a higher
price.

I have seen this several times, on both newegg and Buy.com. Normally the "add
to cart to see price" type items are cheaper if you don't do the bing cash
back

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natemartin
Yeah, I also think this is the merchant's fault. (full disclosure, my wife
works for a competitor of Bing Cashback)

My wife's company runs into this issue, and they try to stop the merchants
from raising prices, but sometimes a few companies slip through the cracks.

However, maybe Bing doesn't make this against their ToS. In which case, that's
bad.

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tk999
On a side note, anybody interests in doing a startup related to affiliate
and/or rebates? I have an idea and I want to talk to somebody about it and
hopefully the idea is good enough to create a startup.

terencekwan at gmail dot com

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bantic
I've always wondered what I might be revealing (demographics-wise) through my
cookies while browsing, but I never though I might be getting shafted by them!

Wonder if Bing is revenue-sharing w/ their vendors this way somehow.

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dangrossman
It appears on Microsoft's quarterly financials as "income from overcharging
partner customers"...? Unlikely.

