Live.com Answers Questions About HP/Live.com 40% Black Friday Rebates

Xavier Lanier
News

Rajat Taneja, Microsoft’s general manager of search answered a few of the most commonly asked questions about how customers can receive the 40% Cash Back they were promised on Black Friday, but did not receive. This is the first official word from Microsoft that HP customers will indeed receive the full 40% Cash Back credit rather than the 0% or 3% that many were credited.

From Microsoft’s Live Search Blog:

How do I receive credit for an order that is not showing the correct rebate in my Live Search cashback account?

All orders placed on HP Shopping through Live Search cashback on November 28, 2008 are eligible for a 40% cashback rebate. If your account is showing a 3% rebate or not displaying any rebate for an eligible order, please contact customer support with your Live Search cashback ID and order number to receive your full rebate: https://support.search.live.com/. You can also contact customer support for assistance with your cashback rebate for orders placed through cashback on Friday with our other partners. We’ll do everything we can to credit your account as quickly as possible.

I placed an order directly through the store’s website. Will I be able to receive cashback?

Orders placed directly at the store’s website are not eligible for the Microsoft Live Search cashback program and terms. Orders must have been placed through Live Search to qualify. We are unable to give credit for purchases outside of our system.

Will the HP deal be restarted soon?

We’re working actively to determine next steps for any specific HP promotions. We regret that we don’t have more specific details at this time, but we can point customers to other Live Search cashback merchants with great deals on HP products, including eBay, which is currently offering 20% cashback.

The best news is that customers, including myself and hundreds of Notebooks.com readers, will receive the 40% cash back at some point. There’s still the additional hassle, but it’s better late than never.

This doesn’t clear up everything though considering that many people gave up on the promotion and/or missed out on other deals. A lot of customers canceled their HP orders after they didn’t receive the full 40% credit after several days- will their orders be reinstated?

A Microsoft spokesperson also told CNet that the promotion would be restarted, but HP’s Live.com Cash Back campaign appears to be completely on hold for the time being. HP had previously advertised a 25% Cash Back program that was to run for seven days starting on Thanksgiving. Promotional ads for that campaign on both Live.com and other ad networks have been pulled, leaving HP customers who were counting on Cash Back rewards out in the cold.

As I said, it’s great that Microsoft is at least promising that customers will receive the full 40%, but I think the company needs to put in some extra effort to rectify this problem. Many customers (including myself) have yet to receive responses to support requests filed five days ago. Some have given up and canceled their orders or are saying they’ll just accept the products, open the boxes and then return them to HP to inflict financial harm to the company (I certainly don’t condone this).

I understand that Microsoft has to be careful about what kind of promises it makes, but I wish the company was a little quicker on the draw with its responses. I really hope everyone gets taken care of.

Update: I just received an email from Microsoft for my Black Friday Cash Back purchase. As I suspected, Microsoft is indeed addressing this problem, but must be incredibly back-logged. Be patient.

On Black Friday hundreds of Notebooks.com readers left comments on the blog and emailed me to let me know about their experiences with Live.com’s 40% Cash Back offer. I personally purchased a 25.5-inch HP monitor, an HP MediaSmart Windows home server and an all-in-one printer. My rebate was worth several hundred dollars and am glad it’s now secure.

Hello,

Thank you for using Live Search and for your recent cashback purchase on www.hpshopping.com. Microsoft regrets that you experienced difficulties placing your order due to our limited site availability on November 28th and apologizes for any inconvenience that this caused. Your purchase (order number ##########) received a 3% cashback reward because it was completed after the end of the limited time 40% cashback promotion. However because of the issues with site availability earlier in the day, Microsoft will honor the 40% cashback reward for your purchase eligible transactions.

Within a week, your cashback account rebate will be corrected. You will see a cancellation for the original 3% cashback followed by a new purchase with a 40% cashback reward. At that point, your purchase will be processed in the same way as all normal cashback sales and will stay in pending” status for a period of up to 60 days, to account for returns. After this, all eligible purchases will be marked as “available” in your account and the associated rewards will be available for redemption. To view the details for this purchase or your other Live Search cashback transactions, sign into your Live Search cashback account. Please refer to complete program terms and conditions located here.

We appreciate your patience as we resolve this issue. If you have other questions about cashback, please visit our FAQ. You’ll also find a Help link on the FAQ page to contact support.

Thanks,

Angus Cunningham

Sr. Director Live Search cashback Operations

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21 Responses

  1. Phillip Dampier Reply

    It sounds like your issue was addressed because your support ticket was assigned to a responsive rep. To date, the dozens of most recent resolution e-mails giving the customer a tentative (notice the company reserves the right to rescind the Cashback bonus if they later decide you did not follow the terms and conditions of the promotion) 40% rebate are coming almost entirely from three reps:

    Angus Cunningham

    Cailen S.

    Elizabeth B.

    If your ticket was originally assigned to someone else (mine was to Christine), it has since become a black hole as no responses have been forthcoming, not even to follow-ups requesting additional information.

    It continues to seem more likely that the 3% club is getting more generous response in their favor than the larger number of us who placed orders and simply never received any acknowledgment of a Cashback reward at all. I even sent them the URL’s used to enter the HP website through the Live.com promotional link as well as the HP landing page showing the MSNCashbackDirect right in the URL and all I’ve been asked to do it wait, first for two days, then three, then five, then a week, and now three weeks, and I wrote them the day after the promotion ended.

    Now I am writing them a new message everyday in hopes of having my support request assigned to a responsive rep who will actually get this taken care of. Otherwise, all you get are canned replies which essentially ask you to wait for progressively longer periods of time for something to happen, but nothing has to this point.

    It remains shoddy business and frankly HP might have the best leverage to get Microsoft to move in their customers’ favor if the computer maker was aware of just how many thousands of laptop orders are going to be going back to them, at their own expense, to be sold at a loss at their outlet store.

    Because ultimately Microsoft is going to be influenced a lot more by an ad partner like HP, whose brand was tainted by this promotion even though it wasn’t their fault, who will now also pick up the enormous costs of custom building laptops for customers who will ultimately return them, opened and used, all because Microsoft didn’t come through with what they promised.

    I do not consider the “Answers to questions” blog entry on the Live.com blog to represent any new information. We’ve had the same generic platitudes and promises from Microsoft all week long, but no specifics and no guarantees. In fact, the company has since pulled back on a promise to hold this promotion over again, and the blog entry spent time answering a question I’ve never seen anyone ask – namely, can anyone who just happened upon the HP website on Black Friday also receive a Cashback award. Obviously not.

    The days keep passing and they keep digging. The time for definitive answers was Monday. It’s now approaching Thursday and thousands are still waiting.

  2. Phillip Dampier Reply

    It sounds like your issue was addressed because your support ticket was assigned to a responsive rep. To date, the dozens of most recent resolution e-mails giving the customer a tentative (notice the company reserves the right to rescind the Cashback bonus if they later decide you did not follow the terms and conditions of the promotion) 40% rebate are coming almost entirely from three reps:

    Angus Cunningham

    Cailen S.

    Elizabeth B.

    If your ticket was originally assigned to someone else (mine was to Christine), it has since become a black hole as no responses have been forthcoming, not even to follow-ups requesting additional information.

    It continues to seem more likely that the 3% club is getting more generous response in their favor than the larger number of us who placed orders and simply never received any acknowledgment of a Cashback reward at all. I even sent them the URL’s used to enter the HP website through the Live.com promotional link as well as the HP landing page showing the MSNCashbackDirect right in the URL and all I’ve been asked to do it wait, first for two days, then three, then five, then a week, and now three weeks, and I wrote them the day after the promotion ended.

    Now I am writing them a new message everyday in hopes of having my support request assigned to a responsive rep who will actually get this taken care of. Otherwise, all you get are canned replies which essentially ask you to wait for progressively longer periods of time for something to happen, but nothing has to this point.

    It remains shoddy business and frankly HP might have the best leverage to get Microsoft to move in their customers’ favor if the computer maker was aware of just how many thousands of laptop orders are going to be going back to them, at their own expense, to be sold at a loss at their outlet store.

    Because ultimately Microsoft is going to be influenced a lot more by an ad partner like HP, whose brand was tainted by this promotion even though it wasn’t their fault, who will now also pick up the enormous costs of custom building laptops for customers who will ultimately return them, opened and used, all because Microsoft didn’t come through with what they promised.

    I do not consider the “Answers to questions” blog entry on the Live.com blog to represent any new information. We’ve had the same generic platitudes and promises from Microsoft all week long, but no specifics and no guarantees. In fact, the company has since pulled back on a promise to hold this promotion over again, and the blog entry spent time answering a question I’ve never seen anyone ask – namely, can anyone who just happened upon the HP website on Black Friday also receive a Cashback award. Obviously not.

    The days keep passing and they keep digging. The time for definitive answers was Monday. It’s now approaching Thursday and thousands are still waiting.

  3. Dave Reply

    The only way to teach Microsoft a lesson about how poorly they have operated as a software manufacturer and customer service company is to take your business somewhere else. The only language that they understand is the language of $$. Buy a Mac and stop giving your money to such an inefficient and arrogant company. That’s what I did this afternoon.

  4. Dave Reply

    The only way to teach Microsoft a lesson about how poorly they have operated as a software manufacturer and customer service company is to take your business somewhere else. The only language that they understand is the language of $$. Buy a Mac and stop giving your money to such an inefficient and arrogant company. That’s what I did this afternoon.

  5. POH Reply

    Let me add Robin to the growing list of unresponsive CSRs. I interacted with her twice, each of her replies evaded my main issue. On her third reply, she told me to send an email describing my issue to [email protected], basically sending me back to the end of the line. Hopefully, my new support request will get handled by Angus Cunningham, Cailen S., or Elizabeth B.

  6. POH Reply

    Let me add Robin to the growing list of unresponsive CSRs. I interacted with her twice, each of her replies evaded my main issue. On her third reply, she told me to send an email describing my issue to [email protected], basically sending me back to the end of the line. Hopefully, my new support request will get handled by Angus Cunningham, Cailen S., or Elizabeth B.

  7. What.A.Mess Reply

    Like many others, I never got past the CAPTCHA on the live.com/HP cashback link because the site was unresponsive the entire day.

    Short of having a new sale, I can’t imagine how HP will “make things right” for those of us who frustratedly kept entering CAPTCHAs and getting nowhere.

  8. What.A.Mess Reply

    Like many others, I never got past the CAPTCHA on the live.com/HP cashback link because the site was unresponsive the entire day.

    Short of having a new sale, I can’t imagine how HP will “make things right” for those of us who frustratedly kept entering CAPTCHAs and getting nowhere.

  9. dan Reply

    I just got my 3% changed to 40% cashback today. I had frankly given up hope, but better late than never. Their servers must have been overwhelmed with the amount of people trying to get through.

    • Xavier Reply

      Same here- they canceled my 3% saying that the order had been returned. Then an hour later I got the email w/40% credit.

  10. dan Reply

    I just got my 3% changed to 40% cashback today. I had frankly given up hope, but better late than never. Their servers must have been overwhelmed with the amount of people trying to get through.

    • Xavier Reply

      Same here- they canceled my 3% saying that the order had been returned. Then an hour later I got the email w/40% credit.

  11. Steve Reply

    They are not restarting the 40% promotion as promised, people let’s start contacting Microsoft on this flip flopping response.

  12. Steve Reply

    They are not restarting the 40% promotion as promised, people let’s start contacting Microsoft on this flip flopping response.

  13. TaraW Reply

    I for one am totally confused by their statements that they have “reached out to all affected customers whose e-mail addresses and purchase details you have on file.” I’ve sent numerous e-mails to them. Is the following automoated letter I received below what they mean by reaching out?

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Live Search cashback Customer Support. We have received your service request.

    We want to assure you that your issue is very important to us. Our agents respond to all service requests in the order in which they are received. We appreciate your patience. Please note that submitting another ticket on the same issue will not expedite service.

    You should receive an e-mail from a Customer Support agent within 3-5 business days. In the meantime, please review our FAQ’s here

    Thank you for your patience.

    The Live Search cashback Customer Support Team

    * Please note this is an unmonitored mailbox

    OR Is this letter from Microsoft that I received this morning what they mean by the term “reaching out”?

    We apologize that we have not responded to you regarding the ticket that you opened with us. We are diligently working to reach everyone as quickly as possible.

    Please bear in mind that we work on the oldest issues first. Therefore, opening a new ticket about an existing issue will not expedite the process. Your original ticket should be your only point of contact. We appreciate your continued patience while we work through these issues.

    Thank you,

    Ellen L

    I would like some clarification on this “reaching out” issue because neither of these letters tells me that my order will be processed correctly and i will recieve the 40% Cashback from Microsoft. That is what I really want to know. Especially since my computer shipped this morning from HP. How hard is it to tell us that? Do I need to just return it when it arrives or am I getting my cashback. Microsoft hasn’t reached out and touched me because I still don’t know anything.

  14. TaraW Reply

    I for one am totally confused by their statements that they have “reached out to all affected customers whose e-mail addresses and purchase details you have on file.” I’ve sent numerous e-mails to them. Is the following automoated letter I received below what they mean by reaching out?

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Live Search cashback Customer Support. We have received your service request.

    We want to assure you that your issue is very important to us. Our agents respond to all service requests in the order in which they are received. We appreciate your patience. Please note that submitting another ticket on the same issue will not expedite service.

    You should receive an e-mail from a Customer Support agent within 3-5 business days. In the meantime, please review our FAQ’s here

    Thank you for your patience.

    The Live Search cashback Customer Support Team

    * Please note this is an unmonitored mailbox

    OR Is this letter from Microsoft that I received this morning what they mean by the term “reaching out”?

    We apologize that we have not responded to you regarding the ticket that you opened with us. We are diligently working to reach everyone as quickly as possible.

    Please bear in mind that we work on the oldest issues first. Therefore, opening a new ticket about an existing issue will not expedite the process. Your original ticket should be your only point of contact. We appreciate your continued patience while we work through these issues.

    Thank you,

    Ellen L

    I would like some clarification on this “reaching out” issue because neither of these letters tells me that my order will be processed correctly and i will recieve the 40% Cashback from Microsoft. That is what I really want to know. Especially since my computer shipped this morning from HP. How hard is it to tell us that? Do I need to just return it when it arrives or am I getting my cashback. Microsoft hasn’t reached out and touched me because I still don’t know anything.

  15. ackmiller Reply

    I finally received the 40% cashback pending in my cashback account. I sent a 3rd email yesterday to the cashbk(at)microsoft.com address and this morning I had an email from one of their employees saying I received the rebate and sure enough, it is now showing in my cashback account. I am not sure if my 3rd email spurred them to take action of if I was simply in queue waiting to be helped, but either way I am very happy to have this resolved. This morning’s reply and subsequent cashback rebate were the first time I received any feedback from Microsoft (except for the canned automated reply). Prior to today I never had 3% or any other amount pending in my cashback account. Now I don’t have to return the HP items I purchased as a Christmas gift for my wife. This has left a bittersweat taste in my mouth about the live.com cashback program, but I can’t say I wouldn’t use this service again should such a sweet deal come around again (40% off your HP order is hard to turn down). For those still waiting, hang in there, you have until after Christmas to return your laptops, and if you can I suggest waiting a while longer before sending back your hardware (assuming you really want the hardware and aren’t itching to stick it to HP by returning your purchases).

  16. ackmiller Reply

    I finally received the 40% cashback pending in my cashback account. I sent a 3rd email yesterday to the cashbk(at)microsoft.com address and this morning I had an email from one of their employees saying I received the rebate and sure enough, it is now showing in my cashback account. I am not sure if my 3rd email spurred them to take action of if I was simply in queue waiting to be helped, but either way I am very happy to have this resolved. This morning’s reply and subsequent cashback rebate were the first time I received any feedback from Microsoft (except for the canned automated reply). Prior to today I never had 3% or any other amount pending in my cashback account. Now I don’t have to return the HP items I purchased as a Christmas gift for my wife. This has left a bittersweat taste in my mouth about the live.com cashback program, but I can’t say I wouldn’t use this service again should such a sweet deal come around again (40% off your HP order is hard to turn down). For those still waiting, hang in there, you have until after Christmas to return your laptops, and if you can I suggest waiting a while longer before sending back your hardware (assuming you really want the hardware and aren’t itching to stick it to HP by returning your purchases).

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