Microsoft's Cashback failing to pay for holiday purchases

Is Microsoft's Live.com Cashback search engine offering living up to its promise? Maybe not.

The idea of the service is to give you a percentage back from purchases made at qualifying merchants. Since the service launched, it has become very popular for offering deals of up to 30% off at eBay during the holiday season. The promotion promised to credit shoppers' Paypal accounts within 60 days for qualifying purchases but there are resounding reports coming in that suggest Microsoft is having trouble making the payments.

Affected users have been greeted by the following when they log in to check the status of their transactions:

"We've encounterd[SIC] a problem depositing your cashback reward into the Paypal account that you used for your eBay purchase. But we will keep trying."

This unhelpful and frankly ambiguous message fails to let shoppers know who is at fault for the delay or what steps customers should take to get further assistance. Users who have emailed the Cashback support team haven't fared well, with many reporting waits of over 72 hours without an email response.

These problems are not isolated to a specific subset of shoppers or stores within the Cashback network. Many users have reported receiving payments from Live.com's Cashback to their Paypal account in the past -- a few as recently as this week.