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Are Rebates Scandalous?
theodp asks: "Motley Fool offers a dead-on take on the computer mail-in rebate fulfillment process--Once I receive your 'claim,' I will begin to 'process' it. Assuming that you filled out all the information correctly, and assuming nothing is missing, and assuming your claim doesn't get lost somehow, and if you call or write a few times to check on your claim's status, then I will mail your check within 10 to 12 weeks. Maybe. Or maybe it'll be four to six months. Or never." What are your thoughts on rebates, and have any of you noticed who, at least in the computing industry, is more trustworthy with rebates than others?
Update by J :
Here's the
short version
of the article.
At times I forget to send them in. What should happen is the selling company, should take it upon themselves to handle the rebate for you in store, instead of you dealing with the nonsense paper trail of it.
Like most Americans, I like my free money right here, right now -- mostly because I won't remember the purchase when I finally get the rebate. Getting a check for $50 in the mail three months after I bought that hard drive is like winning the beauty contest in Monopoly. Wow, fifty bucks out of thin air, cool!
So for that reason I don't like rebates. I like my savings at the register, not in my personal cash-flow analysis at the end of the quarter.
levine
They're buying your personal information so they can either use it to fill your mailbox with their junk or everyone's junk. There's no other reason for them not to do rebates at the POS/cash register.
Regarding computer-related rebates, they are even worse. I bought some CDR media that was "$2 after $10 rebate". I had a weak moment and figured it was worth the $10. The Best Buy receipt offered a way to file your rebate request online. I thought, great! Mailing rebate requests is sure lame!
So I go to punch in the rebate information and am presented with a page that I can print and USPS mail in.
Completely worthless, except now some additinoal "rebate processor" company also has my information.
They send you a check in return for the marketing information that you provide them. If they don't send a check, complain until they do. How is this a scandal, again?
[
Um, yeah I want some guy to hold my money; who has no accountability, etc.
Ever notice when they send the check back to you it never says what the original item you bought was? This is so you cannot be pissed at the store or manufacturer because it took forever!!
Boycott teh mail in rebatez!!!!!!!!!!1
Part II
Rebate tracking - great forum from FatWallet.com, search for company name before you purchase anything that requires a rebate.
I would recommend Dell, Amazon.com and Viking Components for rebate deals - never had problems with either one of those, and just got another $50 Dell Axim rebate in the mail today. The rules are always clear, the fulfillment is on time.
The whole rebate thing does strike me as odd - if they can pay you back the money, why not lower the price right there in the store? You still have to pay state sales tax on the before-rebate price.
When you think about it, companies offering rebates could have as well simply lowered the price of the product and make more convinient for consumers.
However, they *know* that most people: (1) forget to send them, (2) lose them, (3) fill them incorrectly (even a misspell of a city name is "wrong" for them, (4) or simply cannot fill them because the box where the product came in (and that had the barcode scan number on it) has been long gone in the trash.
In other words, it's a way for them to screw you. I have to admit I only received *one* check in my entire life out of a rebate, and it arrived so long after the purchase that I had already forgotten about it.
My thought is that any self-respected company who *trully* cares about customers, should simply drop rebates and lower the price of the products (even if not by as much as the value of the actual rebates).
Curiously enough, these are much the same set of reasons that a rebate is bad for the consumer.
There is one other bad thing about rebates from a consumer's point of view: you pay sales tax on the non-discounted price of the item.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Write another letter back and CC it to the FTC and your Senator, explaining that barcode means barcode, and if they don't send the rebate, more politicians might be hearing about corporate rebate scams than just your Senator.
Enron was a tasty snack, and chewing up some companies to win some popular votes appeals to a great many politicians.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Assume you won't receive the rebate when deciding whether to buy a product (just assume you'll pay full price), and then if you get the rebate, consider it a bonus.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
...they like to hold it in the first place is that the company is actually making money off the interest of it's holdings. That's part of the reason it takes 6 friggin' months for you to get your money back. In that time, the vender(like Viewsonic, where my friend works) will have made some more change off that original $200 rebate of yours that they hold.
If you think
Seriously, most of the time, I can buy gear via mail order for about what the store price minus rebate is. I've had enough rebates "lost" to be very, VERY wary of them. Just give me a decent price to begin with and quit wasting my, the post office's, and some minimum wage working stiff at the processing center's time.
I can't help wondering whether these rebate processing companies aren't a variant of the coupon fraud crooks, where criminals gather those grocery store coupons and submit them for credit without anyone actually buying any items. al-Qaeda is/was involved in those. "When big corporations use rebates, they're funding terrorism!" (cue scary music...)
I'll give Best Buy credit for having the best rebate system out there. They print out separate "rebate receipts" and rebate forms at the cash register. I emailed them a complaint about the racks of rebate forms they used to have at their stores so I'd like to think I had something to do with that, even though they didn't quite get the hint that rebates in general are fscking repulsive. I think I've received every rebate since they started their new system though, averaging 2 months turnaround time.
I have participated in many rebates. I have had very good success. I have received approximately $500 in rebates. I use those free return address labels from charities on them to save time and ensure clarity. However, I have found some of Best Buy's adverts misleading. For instance, they post a sign in front of the Linksys 10/100 PCI NICs saying 9.95 each when you buy two with multiple rebates. They imply you need to buy two to get the rebates and that they are marketing the fact that you can get 2 for $19.95. They even print you two sets of rebate receipts and forms for each product. The fine print says 1 rebate per household. I still took a chance and the 37 cents for the stamp. DENIED, I got one rebate and none of the seconds. Same thing when they ran the same type of promo for D-Links. Maybe I am missing something but I don't consider myself too dumb.
A little less than a year ago i bought a Maxtor 160Gb hard drive that was advertised as like $200, after $30(store) and $40(mftr) rebates. I bought the drive, got both my rebate recipts and the forms, sat down to fill them out, and hey, guess what, BOTH CompUSA and the manufacturer wanted an original UPC, no photocopies. There being only 1 UPC on the box i was SOL on the $30 rebate, kinda sucked.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
HINT to the wise:
Tiger Direct, fine store otherwise, is a complete scam on rebates, from my findings.
Every rebate offer wants "a copy of the reciept".
Included in the shipments from Tiger, you get a "Packing Slip".
On 5 different occasions, out of 5 tries, my rebates have come back as a postcard, "sorry, you didn't send a reciept.
I called Tiger. They said my e-mail confirmation letter was my reciept. Print that, and go.
Tried that 3 times. Included both the e-mail "reciept" and the "packing slip".
3 failures.
God, I'm a slow learner.
It's a big-assed scam. Tiger is otherwise a fine company to work with, just realize that the price you pay is the price you pay, and that rebates are a big fat lie.
The trickiest rebate offer I dealt with involved cutting off thick cardboard UPC stickers. Unfortunately the company in question had three different bar code stickers on the box -- all apparently different. Yet only one was acceptable for the rebate. By the time I found out the wrong one had been sent in the rebate was over. Very, very annoying and ended up "costing" several hundred dollars.
>... and there's not just one magical rebate God that sends you all your rebate checks.
Actually, there almost is.
VERY few companies actually handle the rebates themselves. I'm guessing from personal experience with a truly fraudulent rebate here (this rebate didn't specifically limit quantity but the rebator refused to provide me with one rebate per item bought), but the reason they take so long is they are sent to a rebate processing company that handles hundreds, perhaps thousands of different rebates at the same time. Eventually yours is picked from a bin, entered into the computer, and, when the rebate is over (or, if the rebate availability is longer than the refund waiting period, when the "term" is up) a whole bunch of cheques are printed up and mailed en-masse, saving lots of people lots of money.
I can't imagine there's more than 50 or 100 of these companies in a country such as the US or Canada.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I bought a Verizon phone last summer. By signing a 2 year contract I could save fifty bucks on a nice flippy phone. Sweet, so I sign up and got the phone. I sent in a copy, rather than an original of the UPC. The company taking care of the rebate(definitely not Verizon, I forget their name) would not accept that, so they sent me a letter. I needed to respond in letter, with the original UPC, within 7 days of the printing of the letter I received. It arrived on a Saturday, when I was out of town. Saturday was day 5. Statistically, they know they can screw some of us out of our money. And all I have to show for it is this shitty caller-id full of "unavailable" numbers from solicitors and piles of junk mail.
Open source- the greatest equalizer mankind has ever seen.
I hate mail-in rebates. Either you get a rebate or you don't. They should make a law that the customer can give the rebate form directly to the cashier and immediately get the rebate deducted from the purchase price. Then the stores can mail the paperwork around and wait for checks, and call, and get impatient/annoyed...
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
on MSFT Flight Sim was so small I had to take it to that guy in the mall that writes your name on a grain of rice so I could fill it out properly.
I assume that a rebated product is overpriced to compensate for the rebate. I don't like processing rebates, so on numerous occassions, I have purchased a competitors product instead to avoid getting overcharged on a product I would have bought anyway at the non rebate price. The rebate made me change my mind.
most people are so damn lazy and/or disorganized that they never send in their rebate
Exactly. And all these are the same people who will spend an hour or more reading through slashdot forums regarding how big of a "hassle" it is to take 3 minutes out of their lives to fill out their name and address, put it in an envelope and drop it in the mail box. God forbid they actually get off their fat super-sized ass and walk all the way to the mail box.
I had 4 checks coming to me. One was the $30 Toast rebate I got through the Apple Retail Store, one was the $30 rebate for buying TurboTax State, $70 or something was from CA state, and $370 from the Federal Government. I have recieved 3 of them. Which one took the longest?
Hint: it wasn't the feds.
Yup, Intuit takes longer to process a $30 rebate than the Federal Government takes to process my income taxes. Man, how would you like to have "Slower than the Feds" on your feature list...
Rebates have always seemed a joke to me. They do take weeks and that's only when there aren't any 'problems'. There have been two instances where I haven't been screwed. Once with HP and more recently, once with Lexmark. Lexmark seems to be right on top of things when it comes to sending their customers rebates and free stuff. *hugs her crappy Lexmark printer*
HP gave me a $150 rebate on my PC, and a $50 one for my inkjet. Had to wait 8-10 weeks, but it did come. I've had good luck with rebates...I do remember to include everything that's asked for and not to scribble illegibly. I'm sure the companies that do them know they'll only pay a percentage of them since people forget to send them in, or don't send all the required stuff.
I have submitted over 6 Frys rebates and everyone has been rejected - something always seems to be missing. At least they send me a notice saying so. I have nothing against Frys (you can see I have kept buying stuff from there), but before I buy I always remember to translate their advertised price to the price without the rebate before deciding, because I don't even bother any more.
I'm wise to them now - I don't buy anything on rebate, anymore. Fooled twice, any more and it is my fault.
Of course, there are a lot of suckers out there, and I don't expect rebates will go away any time soon. But that's just like every other scam that is being perpetrated in the name of "business" these days.
Spam, junk mail, unsolicited phone calls, club memberships, point systems, etc., etc. Some schmucks use them.
That's why they'll never go away. The only thing you can do is educate your children against them (and your significant other).
Well around here we actually have a rebate department. Our rebate department handles all rebate request processing and keeps track of any pending requests. If a company fails to send a check in a reasonable period of time, our Rebate Department tracks them down and harrasses them until they send us the money.
Over the past four years this system has worked pretty well. We've only had one rebate deadbeat. Microsoft kept kicking back our request for a $75 rebate on Win2K. It was kind of odd, actually. They'd return the paperwork with a form claiming the request was incomplete and asking for the proof of purchase from the product box (included in our request and in the envelope they repeatedly sent back to our company). After four tries we finally got a check. Somehow I think a lot of people didn't get their $75 rebate. Of course, not everyone has a rebate department.
Many posts correctly point out that these discounts are designed so that many who intend to send them in never bother/ succeed. But there is actually a more subtle reason as well; the same reason that supermarkets use coupons (as opposed to just lowering the price).
That reason is price differentiation. If the company charges a high price, they sell few units at a high margin; a low price means more units a lower margin. By introducing these coupon schemes, they can charge different prices for the same product. Price-sensitive customers go through the trouble of filling in the coupons, insensitive ones don't. It is the best of both worlds!
Another example of price differentiation is university tuition. There it is called "financial aid" - a scheme clearly designed to make everyone pay exactly what they can afford (note: I am not saying that there is something wrong with financial aid; I am just pointing out that it is very much in the financial interest of the universities).
Tor
I recently bought some equipment at CompUSA and only when I got to the register I realized that the advertized price was after the mail-in rebate ... in other words I had to pay more than I thought. I figured though that at that point I'd spent so long chosing that I'd go ahead and make the purchase anyway. It turned out that I had about $30 of rebate coupons. When I got home I started filling in the coupons, but stopped to think about it before mailing them in. I came to a startling conclusion, which was that I would rather let them keep the $30 and stay off the mailing lists. The amount of aggravation that having my name on potentially countless mailing lists and receiving catalogue after catalogue for perhaps years on end made it a better deal to give up the money. Of course if someone said 'pay me $30 or I'll put you on a bunch of mailing lists' I sue them for extortion. But based purely on the merit of the two cases, without the moral question of which decision results in the best social consequence, I figured that staying off a bunch of mailing lists is probably worth about $30 bucks to me.
... in the future when someone asks for my address, I shall consider first: are they giving me something in return that I think is worth about $30. If not I shall decline to give my address.
That's rather enlightening information
As much of a scam rebates appear to be, at least in most cases you have a chance to develop an inkling of the crap you're getting yourself into prior to buying the product.
But here's the scam: Products that are advertised in ways that do not make the fact part of the "deal" includes a rebate. For example: products listed as purchase price minus rebate with insufficient indication of the rebate figured into the price. Even worse (and this pissed me of in a major way): I bought tax software a year ago that included "free" state income tax filing software. After I had purchased the original bundle, I learned that I actually had to spend more money to buy the state software and then wait 6 f ucking months for a rebate check to arrive.
A total fuc king scam. That should be illegal.
...for the inventor of rebates.
Basically it's an interest-free loan to the vendor. You get to pay sales tax on the pre-rebate price, and then have to jump through hoops to maybe get the rebate months later.
The store ought to be required to hand you the rebate at the time of purchase, or submit the information electronically at the time of purchase...but then they'd actually have to give you the money, wouldn't they? Stores can take rebates and use them for reaction mass, as far as I'm concerned.
"Thank you for processing my rebate. I have marked my calendar to receive my rebate no later than (2 months to the day I mailed it.)" = Fill in () appropriately.
Just below this type your information from the receipt including SKU numbers, your mailing address and store of purchase plus how much you are expecting. Printing an actual two month calendar and highlighting the day of rebate is a nice touch.
I will gaurantee you will not have another "missing" rebate. They think, "looks like this guy would sue over a $5 rebate, we better get it right"
A buddy of mine goes a step further and puts:
"Consumer protection laws in my state require that rebates be processed in 8 weeks"
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Could you use your credit card company to help out? I have always received my rebates, but have wondered if you put the sale in dispute saying you have not received all of the purchased items, if this might give you some leverage.
A good friend of mine works for Continental Promotions Group, Inc, a Scottsdale, AZ company that processes rebates for Costco, Dell, and several other large corporations.
:)
... go into some office machine store and just feed the rebate form into a typewriter or whatever. At least make damn sure that the claim is clearly written... if you're a's look like o's you're bound for trouble. Assume that the person who will be processing your rebate is completely incompetent and natively reads Sanskrit.
Most of the stories I've heard are largely due to the incompetence of the home workers (many of whom do not speak english as a first language) that basically open the envelopes and enter all the relevant data. Their pay? US$0.08 an entry. Not the highest pay around--working dilligently and competently this comes out to about $10/hour.
The reason it takes 10 - 12 weeks is that CPG will usually invoice the company they're contracted with at the end of the month and there's considerable turnaround time. Costco, on the other hand, directly wires the rebate money to CPG--I got my $2 Dove soap rebate a couple of weeks after I mailed it in. Another reason to shop at Costco.
My friend works the phones at CPG and basically the problems that he handles with regards to Dell are data entry errors. From this I derive that it's best to type your application
Also, he sees a lot of situations in which the rebate didn't apply to the customer for whatever reason because a pushy uninformed Dell phonemonkey just wanted to get off the line and close the sale. Make sure that the product you're getting actually has an applicable rebate. Just another reason to not listen to salespeople and by your stuff online.
I didn't tell you this, but most rebates can be reissued for $20 and under cashed or not because it's too much trouble for CPG and their clients to work the specifics out of actually sending out a STOP payment. Get double the rebate simply by calling them and inventing some story.
The average rebate takes ten or so weeks to process, so mark that window on your calendar and a halfway point to remind yourself in a month to call up and check on the status of the rebate by calling up the 800 number.
Most of what the article bitches about is largely just symptomatic of lazy people forgetting receipts and the rebate itself. If the money is important to you, don't forget stuff. Don't throw anything away until you have confirmation that the rebate is on its way or you actually have the check in hand. It's not that difficult to stow a box in the garage.
Keep on top of things and you should have no problem... I got dicked by Ericsson for a hundred bucks because of some missing paper and by the time I called the window expired--this is what you get when you expect the rebate to come without problems! They of course said they sent a letter in response, I never got it. Buyer beware.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
My most recent rebates were from Apple, filled out my slips and got my checks back within a week. Probably the best rebate experience I've ever had. Most times you forget about the rebate and it comes half a year later in the mail.
I bought TurboTax for the past few years and sent in the $40 (approximately) rebate with ALL of the information filled out correctly. I swear I spent at least 30 minutes putting together each rebate package, copying the contents in their entirety and mailing them on time from the post office. Out of $140 (approximately) that they owe me in rebates for YEARS now, I received only about ten bucks for a state rebate. I assure you that everything was done correctly.
Then, my mother bought a Sony laptop. There was a $100 rebate. I spent over an hour putting together the entire rebate package, going over the rebate checklist several times, and I *know* for a *fact* that I did it correctly. I also sent it in ahead of the deadline by nearly a month. A couple of months later, my dad (who checked my email) said that I got an email from Sony stating that there was some error in my preparation of the rebate papers. I got so pissed off at that point that I decided no longer to buy products that offer a rebate of any kind.
Yes, this story is absolutely true. Rebates are fraudulent and these companies get away with it because they know that most people consider it too much trouble to go after them for a rebate and the rest will call in a few times, so when lawsuit threats come, the company can shut them up by mailing the check then. Sony can go to hell. Intuit can as well.
COMPANIES, WHAT YOU SHOULD DO: Make the stores handle the rebate process. The store should charge me the price AFTER rebate and then deal with the distributor for the money, the same way as coupons are handled at the grocery store.
http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorr.htm#Rebate
Rebates used to be a way for a retailer to sell something for list price, with the manufacturer kicking back some moolah separately. That way, the retailer keeps their cash flow. So why do gateway and dell do rebates? If the purchase is direct from the manufacturer, then a rebate is just a short-term loan to a sleazebag company, counting on your forgetting to ask for your money back! -Chuck
---- Yow! ----
Connecticut has a Rebate Advertising law requiring retailers who advertise the net price of an item after deduction of a manufacturer's rebate to pay consumers the amount of that rebate when they buy the item. If the retailers don't wish to do this, they cannot advertise the after-rebate price as the final price to be paid by the consumer. Thus, there should be no confusion about the amount the customer must pay at the cash register.
Here is the law:
Sec. 42-110b-19. Advertising "free," "reduced," "discount," "below cost," or a rebate
It shall be an unfair or deceptive act or practice to:
(a) Advertise any merchandise or service as free by the use of the word "free" or any other terms of similar import when the merchandise or service is not, in fact, free (see (d) below). Failure to disclose any and all terms, conditions and obligations required of the consumer shall be a violation of these regulations.
(b) Advertise the price of merchandise or service as a reduced or sale price, or compare the price to a previous price unless the advertised price is lower than the actual, bona fide price for which the merchandise or service was offered to the public on a regular basis by the advertiser, for a reasonably substantial period of time prior to the advertisement or as a discount price, unless the advertised price is lower than the price being charged for the same merchandise or service by other sellers in the area; provided, however, in the case of a new product, if the advertised price is less than the price which the advertiser, in good faith, expects to charge after termination of the introductory sale, there is no violation of this subsection. The actual price after the sale shall be evidence of the advertiser's good faith expectations.
(c) Advertise the price of any merchandise as below cost, unless the price is, in fact, below the cost for which the merchandise was purchased and prepared for sale by the advertiser.
(d) Advertise merchandise or service as free or the price of merchandise or a service as a discount, reduced, or sale price if receipt of such merchandise or service is contingent upon the purchase of other merchandise or service at a price which is higher than the actual, bona fide price at which the merchandise or service was offered to the public on a regular basis by the advertiser for a reasonably substantial period of time prior to the advertisement, or at a price which is substantially higher than the price being charged for the same merchandise or service by other sellers in the area; provided, however, in the case of a new product, if the advertised price is less than the price which the advertiser, in good faith, expects to charge after termination of the introductory sale, there is no violation of this subsection. The actual price after the sale shall be evidence of the advertiser's good faith expectations.
(e) Advertise the availability of a manufacturer's rebate by displaying the net price of the advertised item in the advertisement, unless the amount of the manufacturer's rebate is provided to the consumer by the retailer at the time of purchase of the advertised item. A retailer will not be required to provide the purchaser of an advertised item with the amount of the manufacturer's rebate if the rebate advertises that a manufacturer's rebate is available without stating the net price of the item. For the purpose of this subsection, "net price" means the ultimate price paid by a consumer after he redeems the manufacturer's rebate offered for the advertised item.
These guys are the best (don't flame me yet). Years ago they were doing a $50 rebate on the latest and greatest office. The real neat thing was instead of just the usual UPC code they accepted the following, from ANY of the products you UPGRADED from.
Top of the box
Front page of the manual
Paper insert from the CD. (didn't specify front or back so I used both.
You had to have a receipt (real tough to make..)
The original rebate coupon (slick paper copied great at kinkos)
So at the big company I worked for they actually bought boxed versions, no license agreement and we kept them in the storage room, TONS of them.
Toughest part was the limit of two per address. Ended sending them to every friend and relative I had. Also tried (and succeeded) by slighty changing my name and street name for multiple receipts at the ole home address. Worked, and redemption time was pretty quick. We called them presents from "Uncle Bill" Odd thing though, about eighteen months later I did start getting random junk mail to those bogus address...
??? Profit.
My big problem with rebates, is that they require you to send in the UPC (sometimes to two places, violating the laws of physics), but if you send in the UPC, you can't return the product to the store if it fails for some reason.
I run into this all the time, because at least half the stuff I buy breaks or fails to operate within specifications within the time alloted by the store for returns (30 days in general). It's a pain to be constantly returning things, but it's even worse if you have to send the UPC to the rebate people in the same time period as the warranty! It's like you are forced to choose one or the other...it's really a gamble.
man tunefs | grep fish
Another thing I don't see people addressing is the topic of tax.
When you buy an item for $1,000 (which includes a $100 rebate), you're actually paying the tax on the $1,000, not on $900.
So, make sure you factor in the tax factor before committing to a rebate sale. Actually better yet, everyone should just boycott any and ALL items with rebates. It's all just a scam. If they wanted to give you the money they would've discounted it at the counter.
eTrade SUCKS
I once fell for a rebate offer from Best Buy in which you could get $30 back from a Western Digital hard drive and $30 back from some overpriced RAM, be only if you bought both. You had to send the memory UPC to one address and the hard drive UPC to another, while copies of the receipts went to both.
Well, I dug out the UPC from my hard drive box, triple checked the forms and receipts, following Best Buys handy "Rebate Receipt" guidelines (why can't the just take care of the rebate for me if they are going to go to this much trouble?). After waiting three months, I got the rebate back from my memory. Another month went by and I still didn't have the rebate from my hard drive back. I mailed and tried to call, with no luck. Then, I finally got back my original rebate letter I sent them, with everything except the UPC. It said that I had sent the wrong UPC. This was quite laughable because there were only two, and I knew that I sent the memory UPC to the correct address because I had already gotten back the rebate. So why didn't they send me back this "wrong UPC" ? I sent the whole thing back to them asking this question, and they sent it back to me again with a letter describing how they have to be strict to prevent fraud. I called and finally got ahold of someone, who gave me a different address to send my letter to. After sending it to this address and waiting a month, I finally got a letter back saying that the deadline for the offer has expired.. have a nice life.
Well, I will never buy anything from Western Digital again. Other than this misfortune, I have never had any problems getting back rebates, other than the absurdly long response times.
Also, how to prevent information from being sold ? You can't, but how do you deal with potential SPAM ? Each company gets their own rebate address. Also the only company that really seems to sell information is Staples.
I've gone out now 3 years now, and spent over 1500 and gotten 1200 of it back. (and I DO track my rebates).
What people are probably doing (not doing ?) is following the instructions EXACTLY so of course they get screwed.
The only products I won't buy now are Mad Dog (they keep screwing my rebates claiming a problem).
UPS Sucks
Costco -- the rebate form is printed on the register receipt. You only need to fill in your address and mail the rebate form. You can check the rebate status online.
Verizon Wireless -- pretty decent too, check if and when they sent you a check.
I am sure other vendors will follow the lead.
ps. I've received a check for every rebate I sent out.
But if you had sent in the rebate, that wine would only be 50 cents.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
A big motivator for some folks buying laptops and other big ticket items for their small-medium size business is that the purchase price is a tax deduction (and reduces cash on hand at the end of the year), but the rebate is totally off the books.
So that $5000 projector yields not just $1200 in rebates, but a tax free $1200! That makes it equivalent to something like a taxed $1600 worth of income or so.
I've gone out now 3 years now, and spent over 1500 and gotten 1200 of it back. (and I DO track my rebates).
So what you're telling us is that over the past 3 years you have *loaned* several companies $1200, interest free.. and don't have a problem with that?
I used to work as a temp for some faceless "processing center" that handled claim verification/approval. They told us flat-out that they wanted EVERY form filled out EXCATLY right, and that it be PERFECTLY legible, otherwise the claim be denied.
They even gave us a little checklist for things to look for (ie: 9's that look like 4's, copies of receipts (they wanted the originals), forms filled in pencil or red ink (on the form in fine print it said: only use black or blue ink), etc) and other little technicalities that made it so that the people who sent them in would not get their money.
It really sucked because the forms themselves were from CD spindle packs, and so they were coated with a layer of like wax or plastic or something that made it very difficult for ink to stay on. sometimes people who would write with a ball point pen would leave only the "engraved" writing on the form, because the ink would smudge onto the inside of the envelope, and so those would obviously get put into the DENIED pile.
I guess they were afraid of a class-action lawsuit or something, because forms that had the ink smudged off had to be 'destroyed' and the only record of it was a little slip that had the person's name/address from the envelope they sent it in and the reason why it was denied (illegible) that way, no one (like a lawyer) takes a second look at the forms and says "hey, look! if you angle it just right, you can see what they wrote!"
needless to say, I am now very careful not to commit the same mistakes when I submit rebates!
I worked at a company that made scanners several years back, and like most high tech firms, they didn't handle their own rebates. They hired a special rebate company to do it. A good number of people just plain fail to mail in their rebate forms, and that's how the rebate folks make their money. The statistic that was quoted to me at the time was that for a 50 dollar rebate, only 50 percent of the people managed to mail their forms in. For a ten dollar rebate, only ten perent of customers mailed their stuff in. I have no idea how true that was, but it seemed to make sense, given the fact that I've never mailed a rebate coupon in at all, for any amount. Rebates are an entirely sleazy practice, but then again, what isn't in big business these days? It's just another example of how corporate america makes people jump through hoops to get basic service, in the hopes that most people will just give up. I just pretend the rebates don't exist, in the hopes that they'll go away. I look only at the price that I'm paying going out the door - if that doesn't work for me, I buy something else. Shawn
So what you're telling us is that over the past 3 years you have *loaned* several companies $1200, interest free.. and don't have a problem with that?
No. I think he was trying to say, in return for loaning those companies $1200, he has received discounts on goods and services.
Just suppose that he spent all of his money in year 1, and he could get a rate of 4.00% a month on this money, had he kept it:
Nominal Rate of Return: 4.00%
Investment Duration (Years): 3 years
Compounding Frequency: Monthly
Compounded Rate of Return: 12.73%
$1200 * 12.73% = $152.76 opportunity cost.
He obviously thought that $152.76 + $1500-$1200 = $452.76, was worth $1500 worth of goods and services.
Perhaps someone could explain why this is tolerated [by consumers], but it does seem rather strange indeed.
Either it's "In order to purchase something here, you need to give us a $200 loan for 3 months" (the exact opposite of interest-free-credit, which is what most shops use)
Or, it's "Here's a computer for $1200, and by the way, we're lying about that price" which should certainly have the retailer shut-down by trading standards. The evidence in this article certainly indicates that they have little intention of paying this money back (what's the interest rate on a borrower who defaults on 30% of loans?)
If an advert says $1200 (inc rebate), I think the correct reponse should be " you can fsck off, and I'll choose a more reputable place to buy ". Does that sound reasonable to anyone?
My first ever post WOO HOO! =) Ok, I have been using rebates for many many years. I have about a 99% success rate. The only one I lost was a $50 rebate for a tape drive. When I called about it, it sounded like two guys running a business out of their garage. They claim it was lost of course. Ok, So I use to just throw everything in an envelope and send it on its way. That was back when I had only 1 or 2 pending rebates. Then, after the tape drive ordeal, I started keeping copies. Actually had to call a few companies when I didn't get a rebate. It's funny, every time I ever had to call they ALWAYS said the check was ALREADY mailed and I did recieved the check within two to three days of calling (and the postmark date was the day or day after I called). Then the rebates got too many to deal with manually. So I set up an asset account with Quicken to track exactly how much $$ I was owed in rebates. It also allowed to to quickly see which rebates were overdue. So now I have a pretty good system. I scan everything I send. Everything is taped to one sheet of paper with annotations indicating all the requirements. It's been pretty good. Now the rules have changed. I got some pretty substantial rebates from CompUSA and some pretty small ones. I glanced at a random rebate for that I received and everything looked normal. Then a few days later I went to fill them all out. The BIG rebates ($70, $100) had a requirement that the prbate be postmaked the NEXT DAY (that is about 4 days from when I purchased the items!!!). The smaller rebates were the normal 'postmarked within 30 days of purchase'. The big ones were withing the SAME WEEK!! Not many people rush home to fill out their rebates. They want to play with their new router or hard drive (which may take 4 days for some people). So, yet another way for the companies to deny your rebate. What's next 'Must be postmarked on a Monday before noon or Thusday after the post office is closed'.