WebProNews

On Black Friday, Microsoft Live Search along with HP promised a 40% refund on items purchased in HP's online store. The only problem was that the site for what was called Microsoft Live Search Cashback experienced an outage and then started delivering 3% refunds instead of 40%. Obviously, there were some unhappy campers as a result.

Microsoft apologized for the whole incident and promised to deliver the full refund for those who got ripped off. They also provided some details about what happened at the Live Search blog:

- A significant spike in traffic caused the system to go down for several hours on Friday.

- The downtime was partly related to investigating the issue and partly to rebuilding and redeploying the databases and indexes that support Microsoft Live Search cashback.

- The issues that caused Friday's problem have been resolved. We're confident we won't have further problems.

Customers who completed a purchase that day, can follow up on a cashback rebate by contacting Microsoft at support.search.live.com. You must have your order number and the email address you used with the order to receive the rebate. 

"Let’s hope they are prepared for more traffic now, esp. with the new Live Search Instant Cashback feature for eligible shoppers on eBay! It does explain somewhat why we still haven’t seen the promised roll out to other markets," says a post at LiveSide.net.

Did people actually expect this to go smoothly? On Black Friday?