I’ve never bought anything using Bing Cashback, but the balance of my account is $2080.06. Apparently, I placed two $1 orders on January 24th of this year, and spent another $104,000 on October 24th. Let’s see how these transactions might have “accidentally” got credited to my account.

First, we need to try to figure out how transactions get into Bing Cashback. Microsoft posted some documentation here. The explanation of how a merchant reports transactions to Bing starts on page 20.  Merchants have a few options for reporting, but Bing suggests using a tracking pixel. Basically, the merchant adds a tracking pixel to their order confirmation page, which will report the the transaction details back to Bing. The request for the tracking pixel looks something like this:

https://ssl.search.live.com/cashback/pixel/index?
jftid=0&jfoid=<orderid>&jfmid=<merchantid>
&m[0]=<itemid>&p[0]=<price>&q[0]=<quantity>

This implementation, while easy for the merchant, has an obvious flaw. Anyone can simulate the tracking pixel requests, and post fake transactions to Bing. I’m not going to explain exactly how to generate the fake requests so that they actually post, but it’s not complicated. Bing doesn’t seem to be able to detect these fake transactions, at least not right away. The six cents I earned in January have “cleared,” and I’m guessing the remaining $2080 will clear on schedule, unless there is some manual intervention.

Even if Bing detects these fake transactions at some point in the future, the current implementation might have another interesting side effect. I haven’t done enough work to say it with confidence, but a malicious user might be able to block another user’s legitimate purchases from being reported correctly by Bing (I only tried this once, but it seemed to work). Posting a transaction to Bing requires sending them an order ID in the request. Bing performs a reasonable sanity check on the order ID, and will not post a transaction that repeats a previously reported order ID.  When a store uses predictable order ID’s (e.g. sequential), a malicious user can “use up” all the future order ID’s, and cause legitimate transactions to be ignored. Reporting would be effectively down for days, causing a customer service nightmare for both Bing and the merchant.

Based on what I’ve found, I wouldn’t implement Bing Cashback if I were a merchant.  And, as an end user and bargain hunter, it does not seem smart to rely on Bing Cashback for savings.  In our next blog post, I’ll demonstrate some other subtle but important reasons to avoid using Bing Cashback.

We’re happy to announce a change that many of you have been asking about for a long time– a Rock Bottom Price Alert delivered to your inbox everyday. Previously, you received this email once a week or so, but that just didn’t make much sense. With constantly changing prices and availability at stores, we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss out on Friday’s amazing deal just because you already received a Rock Bottom Price Alert on Thursday.

With the Holiday Shopping Season in right in front of us, we think you’ll love this change and the others we have planned to improve your shopping experience… stay tuned.

Not yet signed up for our Rock Bottom Price Alerts? Enter your email address in the sign up area you can find on the right side of our home page.

With stores changing a product’s price often multiple times a day, you might think it was difficult to stay on top of the latest prices for products you’re looking to buy. However, Bountii offers you a number of ways to easily stay in the know.

Email: Click the “Email Me When the Price Drops” link on a product page

RSS: Click the “Subscribe” or “Track Price Changes” link on a search results or product page

On Bountii.com: Click the “Add to Favorites” link on any store’s price on a product page to see price changes appear on your favorites page

Now on our store’s pages is a list of its active coupon codes plus links to which products they work best on. Take a look at some active Dell coupons here.

We just rolled out an easy way for you and your friends to shop for a TV. Where can you see it? Simply look for the “More to Explore” area on most any TV product page like this one.

You’ll be surprised at some of the deals you stumble upon. For example, a 22-inch TV might be cheaper than the 19-inch version in the same series. Or you might find that the step-up model in a particular line of TVs is cheaper than the one you’re looking at.

In case you haven’t been around lately, check out our updated home page. With the popularity of our Rock Bottom Price Alert emails, we thought it would be nice to carry over the format and keep it updated constantly for everyone.

If you ever wondered why it pays to shop around, check out our new store rankings. As you might guess, no one store can legitimately claim to always have the lowest prices!

Now available at our stores is the latest Blu-ray player from Samsung, the BD-P1600. Especially of note is its internet connectivity which not only allows you to receive firmware upgrades, but also allows you to stream movies from Nextflix and internet radio from Pandora. While there’s no official press release from Samsung yet, you can read more about it in the user manual [PDF].

For the latest pricing information on this unit, check out this link:
BD-P1600

Now available at our stores are the latest Blu-ray disc players from Panasonic, the DMP-BD60K and DMP-BD80K. You can read more about these new players in Panasonic’s press release

For the latest pricing information on these two units, check out these links:
DMP-BD60K, DMP-BD80K

Now available at our stores are some plasma and LCD HDTVs from Samsung’s 2009 product lineup. New features in this year’s HDTV line include wireless internet connectivity, increased energy efficiency and slimmer form factor. You can read more about these new sets in two press releases from Samsung: LCD, Plasma

For the latest pricing information on these HDTVs, check out these links:
UN40B6000, UN40B7000, PN42B450, LN46B650, UN46B6000,
PN50B450, UN55B6000, UN55B7000, PN58B550 and PN63B650