Thomas Jowers'  Instablog

Is Microsoft's Cashback program driving people to use its Bing Search Engine.  For me, yes!  I usually use whatever search engine is in my toolbar and on whatever computer I am at (college, library, laptop, desktop etc.).  Recently I have caught myself typing in Bing.com to check prices of items that I want to buy.

I usually start with ebay or amazon, but now I start with Bing because I might find a link to buy it on ebay anyway, but through bing I save about 8% that comes back to me via Paypal.

The reason I am writing this is because I just purchased a book from Buy.com through Bing.  I could have gone through half.com or amazon, but when I calculated in the FREE shipping and the 7% bing cashback it comes out to be $4 cheaper from Buy.com via Bing.

Here is a snapshot of my BingCashback account for the year.  It does not include the book I just bought but you get the idea.

Pending	$30.24
Available	$7.22
In process Action required	$0.00
Rewarded	$28.70
Total cashback	$66.16

This year alone I have saved over $66 from purchases I would have bought anyway.  Its like a coupon that takes 60 days to go into affect. With Christmas coming up I will be relying on Bing even more to shop within my budget.  I will be buying DATG sales from home and getting an even BETTER deal then going to the store at 3AM!

My total would have been $130 higher had Dell not screwed up, I was trying to buy a new laptop and Quickbooks Small Business,  The price they advertised and the price that was present in the "cart" where 2 different numbers.  I called Dell to confirm the price and they said once I paid it would only charge me the Sale price.  Well it didn't, called back to cancel/re-order at the sale-price.  After going through the cancel debacle (30 minutes on hold) i was told it was cancelled, so I was connected to the ordering department, told the rep what I wanted, they tried to place the order, the previous order was not cancelled!!!!  Had to do a 3-way call to get the first order cancelled (again).  Once I was told it was cancelled and had a confirmation number, I apologized to the sales rep and said I no longer wanted to purchase anything from Dell after 2 hours of waiting on the phone.  I was going with Dell because my HP laptop was having problems with the wireless card.  Found out through BestBuy and GeekSquad that it was under a recall and they showed me the papers, when I tried to get it fixed under the recall from HP they repeatedly told me there was no such recall!  I SAW the PAPER HP sent to BestBuy!  I tried to get it fixed through HP for 3 days and was on the phone for over 6 HOURS total. I even had my credit card statement proving the date of purchase.  I gave up. 

A savings is a Savings.

What do you think of BingCashback? Is it a Gimmick? is Microsoft making/Losing money from this?  Are other people like me and check Bing before they go other places?    Without Spamming this post, are there other worthy Deal/savings programs?

P.S.. I am still looking for a good small business laptop, any ideas?

I am long MSFT and do not hold any position in AMZN, HPQ, DELL, or EBAY.

 I remember hearing a few weeks ago that Diller would consider selling Ask.com (formally AskJeeves.com) I immediately thought of 2 suitors Microsoft (Bing) and Aol.com.

Both companies have made deals to increase their reach. Microsoft is making a deal with Yahoo and Aol purchased Bebo. Aol will be out of TWX soon and will need some kind of growth since its ISP business is all but dead.

Both companies need and want ask.com for its amazing content and reach of 'eyeballs'. Ask.com (IACI) has over 50 different branded companies. Most are in the top 5 websites for their niche. Some even have branched out into TV, the CollegeHumor series for one. They also have evite, citysearch, match.com, and zwinky. All of these properties could be expanded on their own or added to an existing property from the potential suitors. Some could even be spun off for a quick return of a portion of the purchase price.


Microsoft has not been the .com darling, they have literally thrown Billions of dollars at the internet with not much to show for it. Aol will always be tainted concerning its failed merger with Time Warner.

Curently, IACI trades at about $19/share with a market cap of $2.25 Billion. I can see Aol or Microsoft making a bid of $25 per share or $3.3 Billion for the entire company and walking away with a nice internet trophy.'

Hey, They have to do Something. What are your thoughts?

I am long MSFT. I hold no positions in IACI or Time Warner AOL

This is also posted on my blog at AbuckADayBlog.com
Please follow me on twitter at twitter.com/thomasjowers

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Did you know that buying and using a Zune is saving the world?  (not just the Zune, but an Ipod, or any other MP3 player)

My Zune 80 holds 177 albums as of right now.  If I had to buy all of those albums think of all the packaging waste that would come with those. 

cdrecyclingcenter.com says that MILLIONS of plastic CD's are thrown away every year! 

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Half of the year is now gone and I was going through the first 6 months of paperwork I have piled up and was filing everything like a good person should do.  I was seperating all of my credit card statements into their respective folders when I started looking at their interest rates.  So I came up with a plan to call the companies and try to negotiate a lower interest rate.  So as you read about the companies and what they said I am going to also give my opinion 1-5 with 5 being the best on customer service.

The companies I called were: American Express, Sears Mastercard, Chase, Fingerhut, and J.C. Penny.

I was extremely nice in all of my calls because lets face it, you can catch more flies with honey then vinegar.  Some of the questions I asked were:  Is my account in good standing? (I already knew they were) Do I have any late payments? (I knew I didn't) and is there anyway I can get my current interest rate lowered?

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Microsoft recently made Bing.com available to the masses.  I personally love it...it will be my number 2 search engine after Duperoo.com (my own search engine that is currently being redesigned)

I am about to propose that if Microsoft gave me $5 billion from their war chest, I could make their online venture be positioned better and maybe even profitable.

Like I said, I like Bing, I think it will even get them a small sliver of marketshare from yahoo, not google, not yet.

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