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Bing Cashback Can Cost You Money
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."
Deal with MS, get screwed.
Nothing to see here, move on....
Find out what sites go higher and what sites go lower in quoted prices. Fake a cookie to maximize savings or delete it altogether if it gets you a uniformly higher price.
That's the behavior I'd expect from /. . None of this Newsweek / Dateline NBC alarmist "They're using COMPUTER MACHINES to scam us!!!" Get on it, people.
I read the article; the author works for Bountii which also directs users to places to shop for things. What the article describes is one retailer specifically inflating prices of things when a user comes from Bing. That same retailer could just as easily do the same for links from the author's own site, Bountii. They even go as far to state "At Bountii, we do our best to make sure we always show the lowest available price at a store." It just seems a bit disingenuous to me I guess.
So 'ButterflyPhoto.com' is slime; thanks, got it.
This has nothing to do with Microsoft. From the article: Butterfly Photo set a three month cookie on my computer to indicate that I came from Bing.
So, a disreputable web site is setting a cookie when you click on a sales link. How is this Microsoft's fault again? What does this have to do with Bing?
A/V and photography stores are notorious for ripping off customers, both in-store and on-line. Surprise surprise, you can find these disreputable sites using search engines. Trying to blame this on Bing is like trying to blame your phone book for recommending a sketchy car mechanic.
...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.
Did anyone else notice the story submitter's alias links to a sex toy shopping site?
You went to all that trouble to transcribe the PDF without reading the summaries noting that it had to do something else entirely? The takedown letter was for explaining a mechanism to post fake transactions to Bing Cashback, which could reasonably be described as telling people how to exploit Bing for money.
This is completely separate from telling people that merchants charge Bing customers more.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Because anyone using Bing cashback at this point is obviously mentally handicapped.
Oh-oh ... incoming chair ... BING!
Well, what's illegal is deceptive business practices.
They claim to be offering a cash back if you utilize Bing, which implies a discount, where in fact, they are charging a higher price upfront to Bing users and creating a deceptive impression that the cash back is providing a discount of their normal price.
After the search is where it gets better. The results pages on Bing are way better, and have even caused a stir at Google.
In what way? During the brief period I tried Bing, I was thoroughly unimpressed.
Giving me relevant results is the ONLY thing I care about with a search engine. Bing didn't do as well as Google - end of story. If it had done as well as Google, I still wouldn't have cared - it'd have to provide better results for me to even care.
#DeleteChrome
He could explain to you why you are wrong, but unfortunately, /. won't let him post his .ppt explaining it.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Not to mention the hidden "parking lot" tax. Just as it costs retailers money to take credit cards, it costs them money to have parking space. They fraudulently present this as "free parking" when in fact the cost is hidden in the price of the goods.
Then, drivers think they're getting "free" parking when they aren't, and non-drivers such as myself who have never once used a parking space are 'gypped' untold amounts of money.
And don't even get me started on those leeches who use the so called "free" shopping carts...
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