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I was using this for a couple months and it saved me a bit of money, but in the end I couldn't get over the idea of a third party having total access to my email account -- which is total access to every account I own (banks, social media, everything). It just weirds me out. I canceled the service and changed my email password.
Does Paribus get anything out of this besides data? Do company's buy Paribus's data?
If you change your purchasing habits to choose items only sold by Amazon, you could quickly exceed any possible savings by paying the higher direct price than you'd pay for the same product (with the same shipping time) that you'd get from a third-party merchant.
Just an FYI if you're thinking about signing up for the service.
Does Paribus get anything out of this besides data? Do company's buy Paribus's data?
We started building Paribus when we realized that most retailers were actually using PII and user information to price discriminate and overcharge their customers. The last thing we want to do is help enable these practices.
I'm currently subscribed and using it. I'm an amazon prime subscriber who makes several purchases a month and so far it's returned $1.68 back to me. As a free service, awesome.
A compare/contrast on the Paribus website would be helpful.
I see statements that Paribus doesn't sell customer data, but on the Paribus blog, I see analytics run against what appears to be customer data. That dichotomy concerns me.
Are there any limits on how often a customer can request a rebate? What happens if the customer hits that limit? Will a company "fire" a customer, as can happen to people who return items too frequently?
I'm also surprised to see that Citibank has a patent in this area…
If a kid screams in the restaurant and they have a policy of giving him a free lollipop to calm him down, that doesn't mean we need an app to keep track of the restaurants you've visited without claiming your free lollipop and then hire a company to go around with an automated screaming device to coax dozens of lollipops out of the local businesses. This seems like the kind of company that would spoil this particular…
But I'd challenge you on your assumption that this is a bad thing for stores and consumers.
It's a powerfully negative experience to buy something, and then find out within a few days (or hours) that it's selling for far less. It happens millions of times per day (www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2014/11/20/amazons-pricing-strategy-makes-life-miserable-for-the-competition/), and most people don't find out. But the reality is that it's happening.
A customer could return it for free (and re-buy it -- many states require this by-law). Or a store could do good by the customer and give a price adjustment.
It turns out that when stores do good by customers when this happens, shoppers become far more loyal (and spend FAR more on average too, growing store top-line & often net bottom line). This is part of the secret of Amazon Prime.
While I can't claim that it is the right or only view, I fully believe that stores will benefit far more than the costs.
*Revised based on mquander's feedback
While this is cool, isn't the concern that a retailer would get upset and change a policy to prevent this from happening? What's the end game here?