Christian Financial Forums

[pochax]

i don't typically like promoting for particular companies/websites but this has a lot of potential for saving money for many of us so i am throwing it out there. many of you do online shopping and microsoft has recently come out with their search engine to compete with Google called Bing.com. right now, this is a great opportunity for those of us who do online shopping because just by using Bing you can get an extra 10-20% (or more) cash back when you do your purchase through Bing. the caveats are that you will not have access to the cash back until at least 60 days have elapsed since the purchase and you need to generate over $5 in your cash back account to redeem. still, i think it is a good opportunity for many of us who are going to buy certain things online anyways. please don't use this as an excuse to buy something you don't need....just an added bonus in case you have to get something regardless.

[4jacks]

Hmmmm.... What do you mean purchase "through" Bing?

Can you still search the item on Bing and the purchase it on Amazon or ebay or where ever?

[pochax]

Yes, you search through Bing and when you click on the link in Bing it will direct you to the vendor site. you will be purchasing it from the vendor....but if you went directly to the vendor site, Bing would not log that you bought through them and thus you would get no cash back.

[4jacks]

Hmm, sounds very cool I will check it out. cash back is very good and I buy a lot of junk online.

[TheWealthSquad]

It works great with Ebay and Buy it Now auctions. I saved $300 on my last laptop purchase doing it that way. I also bought several silver bars on ebay using this method and got a 10% cash back doing it. They do limit the maximum amount of cash back you can get so don't think you can set up a business doing this :)

It is a good way to save some money on things you were already going to buy. Just don't go buy things you don't need simply to "save" the money :)

[4jacks]

I tired it for shopping for my Vitamins online (which I normally purchase online) and it stunk.

If you "shop" for Creatine Monohydrate, you get a million results starting at $1. So Awesome, I can get it for a Dollar, right. Wrong. You click on the link and you go to some page for something completely different and the item you go to isn't even $1. It was pretty worthless to me becuase I couldn't sort out the real item I wanted to purchase. So I normally shop vitacost.com. And I see Vitacost on the side ad, like they are a sponsor of the site. So I search Vitacost Creatine Monohydrate and none of Vitacost's items are worth cash back.

[pochax]

i just bought a new computer monitor through it and got 10% cash with Bing. (monitor was ~$190) and i am getting $19 cash back.

i think the site works best for these bigger ticket electronic items or books or clothes. never ordered vitamins online....

[4jacks]

I purchase $200 of vitamins and supplements just about everymonth. Granted it's a lot of small items combined. I didn't spend too much time on the bing shopping site, becuase I got very frustrated with it. The fact that website could post up false ads on the site was a huge turn off. I would search one item, I would see ads for the item I wanted a really low price, but when I clicked on the ad, it was something different, and I couldn't even find the item I wanted on the site it lead me to.

So then I decided to find the item I wanted on my own. Becuase bing was worthless for finding items with 100's of false ads. So I find it at vitacost, then spend 5 minutes on bing trying to refind the item I want, only not to find it, and to find out all vitacost stuff doesn't give cash back.

[pochax]

my suggestion is to pay no attention to the ads (i have been googling for so long now i basically filter them out in my mind...i don't even realize they're there). only type in what you want on the Bing search window and see what it spits out. if what you want is there on the list it generates...great, you might get cash back. if not, go directly to where you've gotten it before (as in the vitacost example you gave). lots of trial and error....hopefully, when you need something like a new computer or tv, it will work better for you.

[Bob]

thanks for sharing Pochax, I have traditionally used Ebates, but most of their vendors don't offer 10% off, so this sounds like a better deal - I will investigate further! thanks!

[gourdwoman]

Thank you. I appreciate the heads up. Especially if you can access ebay through it. Will give it a shot.

[KrozFan]

Anyone use Bing to buy stuff yet? How did it go? Looks like one guy has a problem between Bing and HP with getting his credit.

http://consumerist.com/5395580/hp-refuses-to-make-good-on-100-cash-back-promise-wont-explain-why

[pochax]

Anyone use Bing to buy stuff yet? How did it go? Looks like one guy has a problem between Bing and HP with getting his credit.

http://consumerist.com/5395580/hp-refuses-to-make-good-on-100-cash-back-promise-wont-explain-why

i have used bing to purchase 3 products in the last 3 months and got my money everytime. the one problem is that even though Bing puts the money in your cashback acct, you don't have access to get it for at least 60 days from the time of purchase. many people will forget they have money in there by that time! i can happily say that my purchase from August has cleared those 60 days and i transferred by Bing cashback into my paypal acct without any problems whatsoever 2 days ago.

i have heard that certain vendors do not trigger the cashback right away (takes 2-3 days, eg. office depot), however, most people do eventually get it.

[cjenish]

Great idea... thanks for the info.

[Colvin]

Very interesting. I might have to try it, every little bit of savings helps.