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FTC Tells CompUSA to Pay Up QPS Rebates
prostoalex writes "FTC told CompUSA they will have to keep their word on paying out rebates for QPS equipment purchased at CompUSA. QPS is currently bankrupt, according to the article, although it's not clear whether they went out of business before or after the promised 6-8 weeks deadline came. CBS MarketWatch says this should spur rebate re-evaluation among other electronic retailers. The habit of offering rebate incentives seems be especially notorious in the consumer electronics and computer hardware industries as a third of shoppers for such goods bought a product with a rebate offered. Reason for such popularity? 41% of shoppers never send in their rebates."
Rebates serve 3 purposes. One is to take advantage of people who don't send them in. Another is to trick people by offering rebates that expire too soon for people to actually get them (see Tiger Direct - rebates often expire in a few days). And lastly, in a corporate environment I've heard of _people_ getting rebates for corporate purchases - this amounts to a way of bribing purchasers or other such corruption. If you want to offer a discount, just reduce the price. There's no ethically decent reason for rebates.
The article said 41% of consumers don't send in the rebate paperwork. Well I send in close to 100% of mine, and I fail to get the checks for about 41% of them. So they will maintain their 41% non-payment rate one way or another.
Now I stop thinking about rebates before purchasing and only buy based on the full price. If one thing is plain $50 and a similar product is $60 with a $20 rebate, I'll buy the $50 one.
If I do buy something with a rebate, after buying I'll send in the papers and hope to receive the money and if I get it, it's a bonus. But I won't factor it into my purchase decision because I don't trust that I'll actually get it.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
I read the directions and send them in religiously. Got a card back from Belkin saying I hadn't sent in 'some required information'. Not enough info on the card to tell me what information, or what rebate, or when. So what the hell do I do? Stop buying Belkin is about all I can do.
I get 90% of my rebates back, but those that I don't- I really have no recourse, and it's a ripoff.
They really have no incentive to change it. Since the rebates NEVER refund the taxes, the states get a extra windfall in taxes.
It just another conspiracy to collect more taxes.
If you paid attention at the link, 41% is how many forgot to send in rebates, amongst all those that didn't get rebates. The relevant amount you ought to have quoted (though it isn't as prominently place in the title) is, "Half of consumers never even try to get the rebates."
ProofReading Markup Language - and yes, I find typos.
1) Mailing the claim can cost as much as $10 with reception confirmation and other such options... make that $2 for plain enveloppe and international postal charges.
2) Cashing the refund can cost over $5 for people without USA-funds banking accounts.
3) Most rebates I have seen have a disclaimer that says they will be honoured at the manufacturer's sole discretion.
Because of this, I only buy into rebates when the base price suits me - FutureShop having a $110 CDN Audigy2 sale plus $45 mail-in is nice when the next lowest regular price around is $115 - this is how I discovered that USA rebates cost about $10 to claim... so that $45 rebate barely covered taxes, postage and cash-in costs so the card cost me about $110 net.
All in all, rebates are annoying and doubly so when they are in some other funds, not worth bothering with if under $20 - I prefer waiting a little longer until the "rebate" price becomes the regular price since rebates usually mean pending price adjustments and new models.
Why? Here in the UK they are, or at least the advertised price has to be the price you pay at the checkout. Doesn't seem to have done us any harm.
I am trolling
Six months ago, PNY claimed I didn't send the UPC from the product for a $30 rebate. How do I prove otherwise?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The USPS does a pretty good job of delivering conforming mail to the high-volume incoming mail operations I work in, mostly remittance processors. Credit card and other bill issuers don't include an envelope just to be nice (just look how evil they can be in other aspects of their business), they include a return envelope to streamline processing. A good return envelope will be decently constructed, of a standard size, and include either a preprinted postnet bar code on the envelope, or on the part of the statement which shows through the window. The window itself is a feature which facilitates efficient handling once it reaches the incoming mail area, ensuring that the statement and enclosed checks, money orders, etc. are in a predictable position in the envelope. This facilitates processing by automated machinery such as this and eases manual processing on machines such as this.
Contrast this environment with my recent experience sending in 3 seperate rebates in order to reduce the cost of my Tax Cut program with the included E-filing fees from about $80 to $35 or so. I had to search over the whole pile of advertisements and coupons to find the necessary coupons, cut 2 coupons out of a booklet, and cut the UPC from the cardboard boxes which the programs were enclosed in. I also had to provide 3 of my own envelopes to send them in, each addressed to seperate P.O. boxes, all to the same Zip Code in El Paso TX.
Using my knowledge of remittance centers in general, my picture of this particular mailroom isn't very pretty. Receiving millions of rebate requests per month, from hundreds of constantly changing PO boxes, the incoming mail arrives as a jumble of random types of envelopes. The contents in these envelopes is a random combination of being taped, folded, stapled, and paperclipped together, and in random order in the envelopes. All of this work is processed by a small army of poorly paid processing clerks. Based on the location (El Paso, TX) many of these clerks probably have only a tenuous hold on the English language.
Under the current system, there is no hope of being able to process this work automatically, or even efficiently process it on semi-automated workstations. Errors will abound, lost and misrouted mail will be common, and stacked up all over the place. Rebate coupons expire in the waiting trays as indifferent and poorly trained clerks fumble to try to keep this mess under control. There is no urgency to process this work, as the company has no incentive to process it quickly or accurately, like bill payments are.
If the rebate processing business was like the payment processing centers of major banks, credit card agencies, etc. then the customer would merely have to include a coupon or two into the provided envelope. The work could be processed by automated equipment, imaged inline, then payments could be sent with 99.9 percent accuracy, and the customer would receive their check less than two weeks after they mailed it. On a per-transaction basis, it is much cheaper to have a process designed around automated processing than to do it the way they are probably doing it now. Either the processing center managers are ignorant of modern processing techniques, or they benefit by the current chaos within their walls.
Maybe they should get David Spade to do rebate fulfillment.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
They (the gov) don't even have to outlaw rebates. Just make it false advertising to put prices in ads or store displays with the rebate amount already subtracted.
We have a law in Connecticut that deals with this. If a retailer advertises a price for a product, they must accept that price at the point of sale, whether or not that price includes in small print "after rebate." So if Crazy Bob's Komputer Outlet wants to sell RAM chips for "$1.99!!!*" they have to take $1.99 at the register. If they want to offer a mail-in rebate, they have to advertise the product as "$91.99 with a $90 mail-in rebate!!!!" We also have a litigious Attorney General who is pretty zealous about enforcing this law, so we find that it accomplishes its purpose.
* after rebate
We would average 5-10 different people a day come in or call about a rebate they sent in 3-4 months prior who got a rejection letter even if they did everything right. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to denials or accepts.
At first I thought it was just our lame duck salesmen telling them the wrong information, which was a common exercise on their part. Then a friend of mine who had moved for college and "transferred" to a CompUSA there was telling me about the same thing.
Most of the time we could get everything straightened out in a day or two. Some of them we had to battle our own corporate monkeys to get them their scratch.
My advice for people shopping at CompUSA because of a rebate: Keep photocopies of everything you send if the rebate requires the original receipts and such. Seperate them into individual "packets" for each rebate (it's much faster/easier if you do this prior to coming to the CS desk and have to shuffle through a manila folder full of loose documents). If you're sure everything was correct and you got burned, take it to the store and rattle your saber. They can enter the information directly to the powers that be who will usually approve any legit claims in 24-48 hours.