One of Bing's most touted features is its ability to direct Web searchers towards relevant shopping results, but a competitor says consumers are unknowingly getting stiffed.
Bountii, a price comparison Web site, explained how shoppers may actually see higher prices on Bing than they would at a retailer's Web site, and that some retailers even use tracking cookies to show Bing users inflated prices when they visit the store's Web site directly.
The example Bountii demonstrates is for a Canon Vixia HV40 video camera, as listed on Bing through the Web site Butterfly Photo for $758. When Bountii's Samir Meghani visited the Web site directly, the same price of $758 was shown. However, when visiting the site in a different browser or after clearing existing browser cookies from Butterly Photo, the price shown is $699. That's even lower than Bing's offer of $742.84 after 2 percent cash back.
Meghani calls this phenomenon "negative cashback," and notes that the cookie persists for three months. "Just clicking a Bing link means three months of potentially negative cashback, without me ever realizing it." he says, adding that there are "more than a few instances" where this occurs, though not every product is guilty.
Responding to an InformationWeek story on the matter, Microsoft said the case of Butterfly Photo is "an isolated instance" and that the company has tools that are supposed to catch discrepancies. At the time of this writing, you'll still see Bing's results for the Canon Vixia HV40 listed at the higher price, but clicking through to Butterfly Photo now reveals the lower price of $699.
I don't blame Microsoft for this issue, as the discrepancies and tracking cookies appear to come from the individual retailer. After all, the retailers are paying a sales commission to Microsoft, so I could see why a dishonest store might try to recoup those costs. Still, the next time you're offered a deal just for shopping through a search engine, it may be worth double checking the site through a different browser to make sure you're not getting ripped off.
