Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Bing Cashback Can Cost You Money

Posted by timothy on from the wotta-boggin dept.

paltemalte writes "Microsoft and various retailers have teamed up to bring you cashback on purchases made via Bing's price comparison feature. There is a little snag, though — it seems that when you have a Bing cookie living in your browser, some retailers will quote you a higher price than if you come with no Bing cookie in your system."

17 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. MS Liability? by Mechanized+Elf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could MS be liable in a class action lawsuit if it explicitly offered or otherwise encouraged this practice? This story could have teeth.

    1. Re:MS Liability? by Korbeau · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Could MS be liable in a class action lawsuit if it explicitly offered or otherwise encouraged this practice? This story could have teeth.

      What makes you think that MS encourages a practice that makes prices LESS appealing using its search engine?

      I'm more inclined to believe the official statement that it was a mistake (i.e. item went on sale at some point but got updated wrong in the Bing index).

      Maybe the shop was truly giving an higher price but that's a totally absurd practice. I would have understood if they had given a price that with the 2% cashback was the same than without (the price appears the same to the costumer and the shop cashes more in), but 50 bucks more?! Also, change a price under 699$ to go above the psychological 700$ level?

  2. The first thing that came to mind... by rcolbert · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...are the notorious 'employee discount codes' that vendors such as Dell and other have employed. A few years back I was looking to buy a new LCD and had a Dell in mind when I remembered my company had a discount code. So I dug it up, and used the instructions provided to logon to the 'discount' site (the mechanics of doing so may be different today.) To my surprise, I found that the 'discounted' price of the monitor was several hundred dollars more than just the plain ol' Dell site. WTF? How do you advertise a code and process as a discount, and then the merchandise therein is actually priced higher than your regular price from your main site? I'm glad I double checked before hitting the purchase button.

  3. No surprise ... price variations based on cookies by gordguide · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No surprise ... price variations based on cookies ... is old news. I remember reading about how cookies resident on the user's machine can cause different quoted prices to appear years ago ... probably five years ago at least. I was able to test it at the time using two browsers with different cookie loads. It's definitely happening. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it was a /. story years ago that first mentioned it.

  4. Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just had occasion to visit a Microsoft developer's website earlier today. Very rare event, believe me.

    After browsing, I always clear out my cookies.

    I went nowhere near the Bing "decision engine." But lo and behold, there was a cookie for "bing.com" in my cookie cache before I cleared it.

    So, is Microsoft inflating Bing's numbers? Visit any Microsoft site, and you get a Bing cookie counted as a search on Bing? What gives?

    1. Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? by Mia'cova · · Score: 4, Interesting

      MSDN's search is powered by bing. So... no surprise?

    2. Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Original poster here.

      Here's the thing - I didn't use the search function on MSDN.

      I knew the exact site I was going to, and did zero search.

      So now what is the explanation?

    3. Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? by TrancePhreak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Just because you didn't do a search doesn't mean search was unavailable on the site you were on.

      --

      -]Phreak Out[-
    4. Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Why set the cookie?

    5. Re:Is Microsoft Inflating Bing's Numbers? by DrXym · · Score: 2, Interesting
      MS could easily insert a tracking cookie by using a hidden iframe. It may even be that the iframe is original on the msdn host site but actually redirects you to the bing domain. Some browsers offer an option to disable 3rd party cookies if it worries you, or you can use an extension or proxy to explicitly block cookies you don't like. Banner ads are able to infest a machine with cookies through similar means.

      In the case of bing, I really don't see a big deal about it at the moment. Bing cookies are benign compared to google or yahoo cookies which are used to access multiple services. That may change of course, for example Hotmail users must now accept 3rd party cookies, and it's Microsoft's attempt to do what the other sites do and create a strong association between a user, their searches and any other service MS thinks it can monetize.

      If you were feeling paranoid about this, the solution would be to get your email through MS / Yahoo and your search through Google or vice versa so there is little chance of the two worlds being associated. Or use a lesser known service, especially a pay service. Or avoid webmail apps entirely. Since Yahoo is constantly discussed as a takeover target by MS, it may be best to avoid combining MS and Yahoo together.

      I'd add that it's not just cookies people should be worried about. Flash shared objects are, IMO, a far more serious concern. They work on the same principle as cookies but they're browser independent and reside in a different place. Very few people are even aware they exist, or think to clear them out. Even if you deleted all your cookies, a 3rd party could (and many probably do) use shared objects in conjunction with cookies to keep that strong association. In the future you can throw Silverlight in there too as another way that sites can acquire limited local storage.

  5. Re:"Is this legal" is the wrong question by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is microsoft we're talking about, I don't think any non-physical action is even CAPABLE of hurting them at this point. They've just got too much money to harm by anything short of either a standard oil style breakup of the company.

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  6. It is? by Weaselmancer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is slightly more userfriendlier(ish) than Google.

    How is that even possible? Google is a plain white web page with a text box and a logo.

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
    1. Re:It is? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      A lot of time when I search for something technical I get tons of useless links to acm, ieeexplore, arxiv etc. sites that give one set of data to googlebot and another to non-paying visitors. With bing (and practically any search engine that doesn't have something to do with google) there's no such problem.

  7. Re:No surprise ... price variations based on cooki by armyofone · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "When you go to Dell and click through as a home user vs a small business, the prices are different for the same machine!"

    Yeah, and my residential phone line costs $25.00/month while my business line costs $120.00/month. There is no discernible difference in service level between the two.

    WTF Verizon?

    --
    "A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
  8. Re:Hehe by Antiocheian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually IE was "The Internet".

    Bing is OK. I've tested it sometimes and gave me good results, sometimes better than Google. Google is too targeted by SEOs, for examples when searching for reviews one has to skip over a few results to find the meat. There is actually a service called Give my Google back which filters those SEOed sites.

  9. Re:Credit Cards? by noidentity · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry, but you're wrong, at least for Texas (I've seen mention of similar laws for other states, but only verified them for Texas). Also, look how the government conveniently excludes itself from this restriction. I also thought that there was no way surcharges could be illegal, that surely it was just in the contract between the merchant and the card processor, but I shouldn't be surprised at the reach of government these days.

  10. Slimy Bountii by bigtallmofo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm no user of Bing, but it was pretty obvious reading the article that this guy has an axe to grind against Bing. First he supposedly finds a security flaw that enables you to game the system, uses that security flaw personally and posts for others how to do it on his site and now he's posting about this.

    And to top it off, he's a competitor. Pretty slimy.

    --
    I'm a big tall mofo.