Microsoft Ends Bing Promotion Early After Hitting Cashback Limit

There is no denying that Bing’s Double Cashback promotion served up some great deals. But apparently they were so good that Microsoft had to end the deal a full four days early — and even earlier for some. Here’s the statement they gave earlier today announcing the official end of the promotion:

“Due to an overwhelming, positive response from our Bing cashback shoppers, we’ve now closed our limited time back-to-school promotion where Microsoft increased the percentage of cashback rewards on behalf of retailers.”

Microsoft had set a cap on the amount of money saved or an end date of August 30, whichever came first. Obviously, the money limit did. But for some retailers that were doing particularly well, the promotion ended even earlier.

One retailer that reached out to us, The Watchery, was offering 50% off of watches under $5,000. On Monday the 24th — just a week after their promotion started — Microsoft reached out to them to see if they could lower the 50% off deal to 20%, we’re told. Basically, they asked some of the retailers offering huge deals to scale them back a bit so the other Cashback partners could take advantage of the promotion before Microsoft hit the cap.

But The Watchery couldn’t be happier with the sales they got while the promotion was in place. “On Sunday and Monday (23rd and 24th), the site did over a million dollars in sales each day. The site had over 250,000 visitors during the sale period,” a spokesperson for the company tells us. “Best sales in our history,” they continued.

Over a million dollars in sales each day, with Microsoft footing much of the bill, that’s a nice deal.

Now, whether this actually led to a significant amount of new users using Bing remains to be seen, but the numbers are trending upward.

[photo: flickr/stopnlook]