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Microsoft Cancels Bing Cashback Program

Posted by timothy on from the it-couldn't-last dept.

pjfontillas writes "Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President of Microsoft's Online Audience Business Group, recently announced, 'One of the principles we have here at Bing is to constantly experiment and learn. We do this to ensure we are keeping pace with new social and technology trends, and can continue to deliver great value for our customers and advertisers. As part of this "test-and-learn" mentality, we will be retiring the Bing cashback feature, which means that the last day you can earn cashback will be July 30, 2010.' From the look of the comments, Microsoft has at least 35 saddened users. eWeek does a follow-up attempting to explain the situation in more detail."

9 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Bing by freefrag · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They had to pay people to use their search engine?

    1. Re:Bing by bob8766 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I didn't even see how it was getting paid to use Bing. I would search on Bing for a deal and find ones where I would have to wait for cash back.
      I'd then do the same search on Amazon or go directly to the store site and get offfered the same deal except the price was just lower by the amount that Bing was offering for a cashback.

      What's worse is that even when it was a little cheaper I'd go through a different site because I couldn't be bothered with signing up for the program, nor would I just make the purchase without signing up knowing that I was forfeiting the cashback deal.

      People like me are what really screw up corporate marketing campaigns.

    2. Re:Bing by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      People like me are what really screw up corporate marketing campaigns.

      Really? Because I think you may have fallen right into it with your post just now. I'm a member of several forums covering some diverse topics and the one thing I have noticed several members in all forums over the past year jump in saying "Btw guys just realised with this website you can get bing cashback on this camera" This entire scheme doesn't give me the vibes of paying people to use the search engine, but rather getting people to talk about using it in various unrelated forums. Although I admit that you're talking about bing right now in a bing related post, but did you ever talk about bing outside of slashdot due to this marketing campaign?

      It seems to me a clever trick to get people to use Bing just to see what the savings may be. The people who probably never heard of Bing in the first place now must actually use the search engine. Some of them may like it and stay, some may have more sense.

    3. Re:Bing by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You really don't get it do you. Just like all the other B$ (lies for profit) marketing tools, everyone except the youngest or the most foolish have become accustomed to them. Any time I see cashback, my immediate thought is, yeah yeah, charge me extra and give some of it back, eventually 'er' maybe and, more often than not the product is going be crappy because they "need" gimmicks to sell it. So immediate reaction to product is negative, just put the offer out of consideration and when comparing it to competitors ignore the cash back .

      Marketing is now down to factual product claims and warranty conditions, as well a consumer reported background on the companies actual ability to fulfil claims about their products and to provide real warranty services. Then I check the price and see often I will have to pay that price again, upgrade B$, end of warranty auto breakdown features, missing buts and pieces actually required to make use of the product and of course cost of using the product normal cost as well as bugs and defects costs.

      It is commonly accepted corporate marketing tactics to lie about the product, to lie about it faults when the occur and, to blame customers for faulty products. In turn in is now commonly accepted consumer practice to accept most marketdroids are lying ass hats, just give me the technical details and urinate on your company board not me. Truth in advertising what a joke, it is about time a law was enacted to force companies to only make claims about provable product qualities and to institute random audits of the claims with full consumer refunds plus costs when those claims are proved false.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  2. Re:35 saddened users by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I used Bing cash back all the time... it's the only time I used Bing.

    Bing cash back deals are huge on Fatwallet because sometimes they go up to 10%.

    Back in the day, when bing was first released. They had up to 30% off certain Buy It Now items on eBay. I'd just go through and buy gift cards. $100 gift card for $70. I got my first Canon SLR at the same time. 13 months later I sold it for more than I actually paid for it (after cash back).

    So there was a bit more than 35 users. People will use your crappy service just to save $1.

  3. It was a scam by rm999 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I and several other people I know used bing a lot for about a week in late 2008. At the time, Microsoft was literally offering 25-35% off any buy-it-now item on ebay (I'm pretty sure from their own pocket, no way they were making 25% off those purchases).

    I bought a new car stereo, camera lens, laptop, and several gifts. I saved over 500 dollars. Then, like a month later, I saw a news release where Microsoft showed off that the number of Bing users had doubled or something over the holiday period. They probably used this to gain traction in advertising and increase their collaboration with companies like Apple.

    They literally paid people to use bing over a month-long period to pad some statistics! I wonder if it was worth the 500 dollars they handed me.

    1. Re:It was a scam by clifyt · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Of course it was a scam, Microsoft screwed more people out of money than anyone will ever know and any time someone complains on their forums too much, the message disappears. Or they claim the payment was paid and the comment is closed...and then the user is banned where they can't complain any more.

      I've had a dozen purchases canceled.

      I made certain to check prices with and without Bing. A lot of times, if you used Bing, the price was jacked up...if you looked at the price elsewhere with a second browser you'd get a better deal dollar to dollar. If you counted the cash back, it was still not that much better, but I'm all for delayed gratification even if it is only $5.

      Sadly, more often than not, Microsoft would send notes saying that the purchase was not made correctly and the cash back would be canceled. They claimed a few times that the product was not really a cashback item...even when there was a banner advertisement FROM THE RETAILER on the side with the specific reward. Or they will say that the purchase never went through. OR just not respond at all.

      Every time you'd go through proper channels, and they'd request information -- screenshots or otherwise -- it was always someone with a script. If you managed to get something escalated, the support person would ask for the same information the next time you asked, and if you said you sent it, they'd say that apparently the issue was closed since you didn't send it. or throw out a THE RETAILER DETERMINED IT WAS A 37B ISSUE (or something like that, of which the issue had NOTHING to do with the terms of service quoted).

      I tried using this service, and for 2 months it looked like I was getting about $300 back...and I lost all but $20 of this about 60 days after the purchases. Long enough to keep using the system thinking I was getting something and ended up getting scammed...

      Microsoft scammed too many people with this Bing...they knew their retailers were abusing this and went along with it to get users. I will never use their service regardless of how good it may every be. On some things it was better than google, but you couldn't pay me at this point to touch their shit...it just made me realize how bad I hated Microsoft in the past and realized they haven't changed...

  4. Re:And no one cared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    my blackberry from verizon search suddenly changed to bing with no way to undo it. so i undid my blackberry.

  5. Re:And no one cared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I've actually seen a (one) user with Bing as their home page. Not sure what would cause that to happen.

    I use it intermittently for privacy concerns about google's data collection habits. Big deal.