Microsoft Cancels Bing Cashback Program

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."

Comments

Bing

[freefrag]

They had to pay people to use their search engine?

Re:Bing

[bob8766]

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.

Re:Bing

[symbolset]

Actually, to pretend to use their search engine to buy things. The Bing advertisers would tell you - no matter how you arrived at the product - at checkout time that you could get Bing cashback if you put in the Bing code. So you had to go find the thing on Bing to get the code.

The basic dishonesty of this evolution didn't lend credibility to Bing with anybody involved.

Re:Bing

[Cthefuture]

That might be true for some stuff but for example when buying from Newegg the price is the same but you get the Bing discount. Also when doing Ebay.

There are often sales of items and many of us use Cashback to make those deals even sweeter. It really is a discount in many cases. Actually, I have personally never seen what you are talking about where it's the same price with or without Cashback. Usually I find the cheapest price then use Cashback to make it even cheaper.

Re:Bing

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:Bing

[Ecuador]

I don't know what sites you looked at, but this was never the case for large sites like newegg, buy.com, overstock etc. However, the greatest deal was the 20% (later dropped to 8%) cash back on ebay get it now purchases. I saved a lot of money with that and could never figure out how they could afford it. Plus, even if I loved the cash back thing, I would only visit bing to go to ebay through it - google was still my search engine, so they didn't gain anything by paying me. In all canceling the program seems to me an inevitable (and late) decision.

Re:Bing

[rtb61]

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.

35 saddened users

[socsoc]

From the look of the comments, Microsoft has at least 35 saddened users.

Snarky remark in TFS slamming MS, check.

Re:35 saddened users

[0100010001010011]

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.

Duh!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

MS tried the same thing with their "passport" single-sign-on-shopping system back in the dotcom boom days. It didn't work then either. People only used it for the money and ignored it otherwise. You would think they could learn from their own mistakes. I'm surprised it took them 2 years to figure it out this time around, it must have been a massive cash suck the way people like those on fatwallet have been milking it. Funny thing about that - the only reason I even knew about bing cashback is because of fatwallet. Whatever other means of advertising they used, it sure didn't make it to my ears.

Can't have Muslim Socialist w/o MS!

[emeade]

Is MS a secret muslim socialist, racist, america hater who blew up an oil well in the Gulf? Hey, I'm just asking questions!

I'm Sad

[LearnToSpell]

They've given me just under a thousand bucks over the last year and a bit, including buying a Wii and an N900 (20% off each). It was easy to use, I didn't have any problems, and it's a shame they won't send me money to complete my shopping trips anymore, after I found what I needed with Google.

Re:I'm Sad

[Etherized]

Indeed. This program is solely responsible for me ever using ebay. They say it's discontinued due to poor adoption, or some such thing; I think adoption was quite rapid amongst people looking to save money and get the absolute best prices possible. The problem is, as an advertiser, those are the people you're least interested in.

Cliche

[hilather]

Microsoft couldn't pay me to use bing. Literally.

Re:And no one cared

[v1]

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

your search engine of choice?
google. check
yahoo. check
dogpile. really?
bing. what?

Microsoft doesn't get advertizing

[Tablizer]

Almost all their recent TV ads are as lame as hell. I'm watching and thinking, "What the hell are they talking about? Is this Random Night?". Then they mention the name of the product, such as Bing or Windows 7.

In one ad, there's a guy sitting in a college class, then suddenly he's naked, then he's a caveman at a business meeting, then a naked caveman. WTF city. I seriously expected them to say, "Windows 7 and Bing will together help you locate better LSD".

Please go back to Gates and Seinfeld wiggling their asses together. At least I know which end I'm looking at.
       

It was a scam

[rm999]

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.

Re:It was a scam

[inKubus]

Google Checkout was giving cash discounts and free shipping for a while. It's nothing very new. But yeah, it didn't convince me to use Bing. Although I do use it on the iPhone, I find their maps are much more accurate than the built-in Google maps. Sometimes Google would put me miles away from where I was when using the location feature. I've used them on Blackberry also with AT&T and it sucked as well, so it could just be AT&T location services. But Bing has always worked, and it also has the voice query which is really very good, better than Google's as well. It just seems to know what I'm looking for whereas Google takes a few tries. But the app is dog slow ;) I wish I could go back to my Verzion, say what you will about VZW, their cell navigator is awesome.

Re:It was a scam

[clifyt]

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...

Re:I walk among you

[Ethanol-fueled]

4/10. You lose 2 point for delusions of grandeur(God complex), 1 point for excessive length(does every line have to be double-spaced?), and 3 points for lack of offensiveness.

Please resubmit with a few racial slurs or a Mormon explanation of the fate of black people.

Bing! Should just buy Flooz...

[Klinky]

...after all that has become the defacto currency on the Internet... right? right?

Re:And no one cared

[Peet42]

I've actually seen a (one) user with Bing as their home page.

I think I saw that on television! It was something like CSI, and I thought "that's the least realistic thing they've ever shown..."

Yeah, but the cashback was often your own money

[aklinux]

Those 35 disappointed users must have forgotten how several of the merchants that signed up to give the Bing discounts could afford to do so. Show up with a Bing cookie and the price went up. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/11/24/0112201/Bing-Cashback-Can-Cost-You-Money

Re:Picking on an autistic kid

[grcumb]

I'm 35 years old, I've been fed up with Microsoft since about Windows XP SP2 although previously not much of a fan before that.

But at this point it's just like you guys are picking on the autistic kid.

We get it. Microsoft sucks. Give it back it's helmet.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I'll leave Microsoft alone when it starts leaving me alone.

Microsoft may be autistic, but that's not why we pick on it. We pick on it because it's also crazy and occasionally a little scary. But mostly we pick on it because we all know it's the crazy, scary autistic kid, but nobody else seems to see the problem in that.

Re:And no one cared

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Just as unsustainable as Google cash back

[kriston]

Just as unsustainable as Google cash back was back a few Christmas seasons ago, where I was awarded $20 for every purchase transaction for no apparent reason. I will enjoy my $280 and $320 dual-core, wide-screen laptops courtesy of Bing.com, too. *sniff*

Re:And no one cared

[Kakari]

Perhaps your IT department pushed IE7/8 with an automated installation script so that it 'just worked' rather than coming up with a post-install setup wizard. Firefox could then have grabbed your search engine default. If you muck with your hosts file Windows defender will flag it as a 'potential hosts file hijack' and, again depending on your IT department, may have set it to automatically clean it. Hope that helps with the mystery (or at least leads to new ones :) !