Rob F. passes along that TheSweeterDeal.com — a cash back site that looks similar to ebates and TopCashBack — has an amazing offer.
Airlines and some hotel programs have ‘mileage malls’ — shopping portals where, if you click on a store through their link you will earn points for the purchases you make.
Some similar portals offer cash back, like ebates and TopCashBack and BigCrumbs.
This one falls into the latter camp.
And they appear (quite clearly, actually!) to be offering 25% cash back on bookings made through Kayak.com, which would be huge.
Now, such a high cash back offer seems inadvisable for the site to me. Their business model is to rebate a portion of the commission they’re receiving from the merchant. That way they incentivize you to use their site, and they make money. It seems inconceivable that Kayak.com is offering them 25% or more.
Shopping portals have been known not to honor some of the really great offers that they ultimately deem inadvisable.
And here’s what I think they mean to say.
When you click through to the Kayak details page, it appears as though they’ve reproduced the language that Kayak gives to them to explain what they will receive.
25% revenue share is offered to you on all revenue generated by Kayak from visitors who are sent to us from your site. Kayak does not sell the travel products displayed on our site, but generates referral fees by sending qualified traffic to travel suppliers, agencies and other advertisers displayed on Kayak.com (typically between $0.25 and $.50 per click).
But even this could be worded much more clearly. They say a 25% revenue share is offered “on all revenue generated by Kayak” and it seems a plain reading of this statement alone is that a purchase through Kayak of a $400 airline ticket generates $400 in revenue. Kayak won’t receive $400 in revenue, but Kayak has generated a $400 transaction. I think they want to say ‘all revenue ‘received’ by Kayak’.
They anticipate 25 cents to 50 cents ‘per click’ but that’s different than per purchase, and the data we don’t have and cannot be expected to know is what the conversion rate is. It could take hundreds of clicks through to Kayak to generate a sale, and thus a single sale might well be a large payout!
It should be interesting to see how this plays out nonetheless. And I would probably make some airfare booking through this link to Kayak.com if I have any trips to ticket while this offer still appears (and I would take screen shots of the offer).
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Not a lawyer, but I don’t think even a plain English reading of Kayak’s statement supports your position. Kayak is not a party to the purchase of the airfare, and therefore I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest that their activities “generated” the (in your example) $400. The revenue generated by Kayak’s linking to a merchant is the referral payment that clicking on the link brings into existence.
I won’t waste my time on this.
Good luck!
Of course, the 25 percent only refers to the referral fee kayak is getting – and not the transaction amount. There are similar but much better offers. For example, topcashback.com offers 60 percent cashback for bookings made via hotelscombined.com which has the same business model as kayak.
I’m sure some jerk will sue them when they don’t get “their money”.
Probably ensure you book a reservation that offers no penalty cancellation.