Meet Earny: The Price-Tracking Bot That Pays Back

A new bot has launched that aims to take the consumer pain out of redeeming post-purchase price protection.

Last week, the retail space saw the arrival of Earny, a personal assistant bot that — as a press release explains — automatically tracks users’ purchase history and monitors price adjustments. When it finds that an item that a consumer purchased has dropped (and on which the retailer had offered price protection), Earny files refund claims back to the original payment.

On the same day (May 5) that Earny launched, the company also announced a $1.2 million seed investment from Sweet Capital Ltd. and Science Inc., with additional participation from Jeff Bonforte, SVP of communications products at Yahoo, and Wealthfront CEO Adam Nash.

“Earny’s ultimate vision is to protect users’ wallets by making sure they don’t overpay on any purchase made. We want to eliminate the headache of tracking down money people are owed on discounts on flights, hotels, products and more. We expect to get consumers approximately 10 percent of their yearly purchases back. Now, with the support of the seasoned team at Science, we are excited to launch nationwide and help millions of people put money back in their wallet,” stated Earny CEO Oded Vakrat in the release.

“As an early Earny beta tester, I saw firsthand how exciting it was to get cash back on dozens of purchases I didn’t even know had gone on sale,” commented Michael Jones, CEO of Science Inc., in the press release. “Science spent a lot of time getting to know the Earny team and was very impressed by their sophisticated bot technology — once installed, users can just sit back and watch the app collect money they’d otherwise leave on the table. We anticipate that more and more people will rely on bots to handle complex queries and tasks on their phones. Science’s partnership with Earny will help expand the team’s reach, and we are excited to have them move from San Francisco to our L.A. office, where they can work side-by-side with our operators, engineers and marketers.”

The release adds that, as part of the investment from Science Inc., Earny — whose transactions are handled by MasterCard’s Simplify Commerce — will be relocating from San Francisco to Santa Monica.