DISQUS

Consumerism Commentary: More ING Direct $25 Bonus Links Posted, Now Required to Clear Cookies?

  • Yana · 10 months ago
    That's kinda weird. Why would someone have ING cookies when about to click a link on your site? I don't know about others, but I always have a second browser minimized in the system tray. That would be useful in a case like this.
  • Flexo · 10 months ago
    The place it would cause a problem is if someone clicks on link 1, which is expired, and goes back to click on link 2. There is a cookie that stores the first link. The second link would then appear expired even if it's not. It's easier just to clear cookies for *.ingdirect.com before clicking on the link.
  • Patrick · 10 months ago
    I just noticed the same thing, Flexo. That makes it more difficult to keep track of links. You would think ING would want more people to sign up - especially when banks are hustling for extra depositors more than ever.
  • Yana · 10 months ago
    I get it now. That would make it harder, and might explain why the link I submitted here last time wasn't used.
  • thomas · 10 months ago
    Sucks that they lowered their rate again, but they are excellent in the customer service department and who can turn down $25 for such little work!
  • nickel · 10 months ago
    I haven't noticed this. I wonder if it's intentional, or a bug. I know that they recently re-worked their links.
  • Stephanie PTY · 9 months ago
    This is driving me nuts. I just had an email exchange with a reader who couldn't get the links on my site to work. She ended up finding links on another site to use. It's frustrating me to no end. I may take down referral links altogether, because it's such a hassle now.
  • Stephanie PTY · 9 months ago
    Ok, my boyfriend took a good hard look at what was going on with the cookies today, and found out what the problem was. The old-style referral links looked like this: http://home.ingdirect.com/promo/promo_set.asp?t=.... and the new style ones look like this: https://banking.ingdirect.com/savings/set_promo...

    The problem occurred when someone clicks and old-style referral link, and then clicks a new one, without clearing their cookies in-between. The best thing to do is eliminate all old-style links from your site, and tell everyone you know that has referral links on their site, because the less old-style referral links there are on the web, the less this will happen.
  • Flexo · 9 months ago
    The problem still occurs if you click on a new style referral link that has expired and then click on any other referral link. This has all been fixed here already. We've only been using new style links here since February 8.