In response to a report about pricing discrepancies in its Bing Cashback service, Microsoft says it has tools to prevent the problem from happening and the case in question was a mistake on the merchant’s part.

The Bountii blog wrote Monday about a pricing inconsistency for the Canon Vixia HV40 camcorder. In Bing Cashback, the price from retailer Butterfly Photo is listed as $758 with 2% cashback, for a final price of $742.84. But skipping Bing Cashback and going directly to the merchant’s site leads to a price of $699.

After becoming aware of the blog post, a Microsoft spokesperson blamed the problem on Butterfly Photo’s data feed. Here’s part of the official statement as posted by Bountii:

“Within the cashback program, each retailer sets the allocation of products and pricing of those products, which are delivered to Microsoft through a realtime data feed. We have tools that will catch discrepancies, and in this particular case, there was an error in the information delivered to us.”

Bountii notes that the Bing Cashback listings for the product in question still show the higher price from Butterfly Photo, but the price on the merchant’s web site is now the same for Cashback users as for shoppers who visit directly.

Related Topics: Channel: Retail | Microsoft: Bing Shopping & Cashback

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