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Domain: young-america.com
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Comments · 11
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Microsoft® Wireless Laser Mouse 5000.
Microsoft® Wireless Laser Mouse 5000, Metallic Black It has a mail-in rebate that knocks $5 off the price. I had the optical version , but I like the laser mouse button placement better.
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Re:I don't think so.
But I guess that would hurt the unemployment rate in places like Young America, MN (is there such a place?) where many of the rebates end up being sent.
Young America is the name of a promotions company that does many things other than just rebates. I've noticed many, many things that go there. The drink cap offers Pepsi had, sweepstakes entries, and lots of other promotional things. Just look at all they say they offer. -
This "expert" is biasedThe so-called "expert" in this article works for the "NPD Group". The "expert's" name is Stephen Baker, one of NPD's analysts.
Who pays NPD, which in turn pays Baker? One look at NPD's homepage at the flash banner on the left will show that they are proud of their clients -- clients which apparently include Panasonic, and Gateway.
Doesn't Gateway do rebates, as indicated by their Gateway Rebate Tracker? And hey, so does Panasonic!
The entire article is based on the supposedly "expert" knowledge of somebody paid to tell you what his check-signers tell him to.
This is a basic economics question: where's the incentive? The incentive for Baker's testimony comes not from telling you the truth (whatever that may be, which indeed may be what Baker says in the first place), but from giving you a spin that is pleasing to his paycheck-signer -- which happens to be at least 2 companies who use rebates!
This entire article is biased garbage. Nowhere in the article does Mitchell (the article's author) talk about the real reasons why rebates exist in the first place. Obviously manufacturers don't do rebates just because they like processing thousands of pieces of paper per day! No, in fact, there are one or more other reasons. The article claims this as the explanation:
Rebates are used, Baker says, because unlike regular sales, people perceive them as a one-time opportunity to get a product at a lower price than it would normally be sold at. "You want to make believe that there is a special opportunity here and rebates are the best mechanism for that," he says. They are especially valuable to electronics retailers because they don't scale pricing up and down the way some other retailers do.
This is certainly one reason. But for all the effort involved on the manufacturers' and retailers' side of things, is this the *only* reason? Tricking consumers into believing they're getting a special deal? It's possible, but I doubt it's likely. What other reasons might there be?
Market research? Sure, why not -- geographic and demographic information about consumers is always profitable enough to sell. Moving old inventory to make room for new products? Very likely. Doing it because "everybody else in the industry does it, and we need to compete with them?" Clearly!
I sure wish journalists would "follow the money trail" before writing articles like this... -
At the risk of being sued...
I am a former employee of Best Buy and a current resident of Ohio - I won't say who I am or what I did there but my former supervisor is on their website, on the Executive team list.
I can confirm their rebate practices are less than stellar. For years Best Buy had a "rebate center" in each department that consisted of a rudimentary wire recipe rack, for lack of a better description, with paper coupons from each respective manufacturer. Customers were supposed to use the coupon from the rebate center, send it directly to the manufacturer and wait patiently for 6-8 weeks for their rebate. It was totally hands-off for Best Buy.
Unfortunately, that didn't work very well. Stores were frequently out of the rebate coupons, didn't have the correct ones, the manufacturers would send the wrong ones or too few - whatever the case was, it turned out to be a tremendous headache. Not to mention the "recipe racks" were hard to keep organized and the rebates were freqently misplaced.
Fast-forward to ~1996. In an effort to streamline the process and take some burden off of the sales personnel, the merchandising dept (shelf-stockers) were handed a brand new, nifty, Rebate center that went in the front of the store, organized by department that really ended up just consolidating the recipe racks to a central location. The problem still existed of the missing, disorganized rebate coupons.
Later that year Best Buy decided to make a real effort to fix the rebate problem. That's when the current system was implemented. Corporate management decided to outsource the handling of rebates to Young America, Inc. (www.young-america.com).
Young America did a decent job of handling the rebate outsourcing for a very brief time. I can't speak intelligently of their corporate structure, governance, or policies. However, all of this rebate outsourcing occured during an explosive growth period in Best Buy's corporate history. They are currently opening about 50-60 stores per year in 2004. Between 1993 and 1997 they more than doubled thei size. They had a corporate paradigm shift during all of this when they realized that they were outgrowing their ability to manage it and continue providing the kind of service that enabled them to grow at that rate.
Unfortunately, it seems, the growth spurt never stopped. Eventually the over-riding vision was to break the $20 billion revenue mark. Add-on accessories and service plans became the pot of gold at the end of their rainbow and rebates became the tool to get the sale. This all happened in the mid to late 90's when computer prices were falling rapidly, DVD players were becoming affordable, and the dotcom boom was impending - manufacturers were pushing rebates like mad thus Best Buy was too.
Outsourcing the rebate processing was a mistake for Best Buy. Not that Young America can't handle the volume or the execution - It's because it enables Best Buy to take the hands-off approach and essentially tell its customers that it can't help them because it's being handled by another company. This presents the largest problem for them - they won't stand behind their rebates. Anyone that has tried to resolve a rebate issue should be able to attest that managers at the store level will not do very much to assist in the matter other than hand out the 800-number to Young America. This is unfortunate because the consumer purchased a product from Best Buy and typically makes no distinction between a manufacturer's rebate and where they purchased the product. Consumers rightfully expect a retailer to stand behind the offer they willfully advertised in a weekly sales flyer, not give a brush off that they aren't responsible because the rebate was offered by the manufacturer and is being handled by a third party.
It's not that they willfully and maliciously try to swindle their customers - They truly believe that it absolves them of the responsibility to provide the customer satisfaction in regards to reba -
Re:Physics vs. Software
Ahem. Excuse me but hardware does still stink. My snail mail box has at least 4 or 5 settlement letters from law firms or recall notices from companies about hard drives, zip drives, ibook main boards, etc.
Ever use an HP1100A printer? Peee-uuuuw! It looks great. I'm sure it won design awards. However, HP has had to settle a class action because many of the printers (including the one I own) have a bad habit of jamming (and we ain't talking about Bob Marley either).
Seems to me that some of the hardware developers have picked up some of the bad habits of some of the software developers. The recent rediscovery of TQM is testiment to this fact.
Build it and they will run away screaming... -
Re:HP LaserJet
Looks like HP stopped the program on Oct 31, 03. I picked up a kit for free, from HP, last year and it solved my problem. I see some auctions on eBay for kits right now - 3448949602 and 3448998429 are a couple.
HP's kit is just a "patch" really. The real fix is to buy a new seperation pad and pick up roller.
Lawsuit page. -
Re:Exactly.
Actually, I went and priced Laptops on Dell and Apple today. A 15" PowerBook and a 15.4" Inspiron 8600 are almost even on similar configurations (Dell comes out $50 less in my comparison). If you max the Inspirion to match the 17" PowerBook (2GB DDR333, 80GB, 802.11g, Bluetooth, DVD-R, 64MB Video, Extra Battery, No Floppy, 3yr Warranty) you can add a 40GB iPod, an iSight, and the high-end AirPort Extreme Base Station on and still not hit Dell's price. Dell's has the $200 mail-in rebate (Dell rebates are a PITA, just ask Young America who handles them...)
All-in-all, the prices are pretty decent. The high-end G5 costs plenty more than the high-end Dimension XPS, but it's barely $100 more than a similarly-equipped Precision 360, but it can double the RAM, has FireWire 800, Bluetooth and 802.11g support, and a bit more processing power, depending on who you ask...
Sure, they can't compete with the Dimension 2400's $599 price tag, but the low-end eMac is $800 to the Dimension 4600's $849. -
Re:Okay, bring 'em on
in case anyone lacks the imagination, some good places to start might be:
Free Catalogues!
Free Samples!
Free Magazine Trials!
my favourite:
Free Serenity Pads!
and a load more here...
Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff!
A free gift for anyone who signs him up for more than 100!! Just post your address...
It is our duty to reward them for making a stand for spammers everywhere. These free items will come in handy for filling the extra space in those big houses. -
HP 6L problems
Had the same problem with the 6L, as I assume everyone who ever owned one has, but was actually pleasantly surprised by the free/no-questions-asked cardboard fix. It worked & it was free -- problem solved.
Anyway, half-assed solutions aside, I actually got a message some time back about a Class-Action suit regarding this defect:
http://laserjet.classaction.hp.young-america.com/
Haven't read the fine print, but seems like some customers might get up to $75 refunded... -
Re:You get what you pay for. HP5L FixIt turns out that if you tell HP that you have a 6L, they will ship you the kit. I used the kit on my 5L, and it worked absolutely fine -- no misfeeds for the past year or so.
Another thing of interest is that there is a class action lawsuit over this misfeed problem. If you have enough of the paperwork, you might get something back from HP.
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Re:You get what you pay for. [Laserjet 5L and 6L]
There was actually a class-action lawsuit settled just recently regarding this problem. See: http://laserjet.classaction.hp.young-america.com
The problem is that the "separator pad" on the 5L and 6L's got slippery over time, causing it to feed a whole stack of paper at once. HP "reformulated" the rubber on this piece, and you can get a replacement separator pad that will fix the problem.
The settlement entitles owners of 5L and 6L's to get a free replacement kit for the pads.