Slashdot Mirror
Computer Rebates Not As Sinister As You Think
Lam1969 writes "Robert Mitchell dug up some details about rebates after getting up at 5 a.m. to get a free (with rebates) computer bundle at Circuit City. He had to deal with five separate mail-in rebates to get his money back, and decided to ask an expert about whether rebate come-ons are some sort of attempt to trick consumers. The reply: 'The big lie that the media and attorneys general want you to believe is that all the retailers and manufacturers are crooked and the reason [they] do rebates is breakage, which is people not turning them in.' Furthermore, Mitchell reports that retailers are making the process easier, by printing rebate forms and receipt copies at the register, and letting people track rebates online. His conclusion: The trade-off of having to do a few hours of copying and envelope-stuffing is worth the price of a new computer, so stop whining -- 'suck it up and accept your rebate check like a man.'"
I have never had a problem with mail-in rebates. Sure, they take a long time to get a refund, but it's worth it. I have received many free and discounted items this way. Especially for the xmas season.
All is prevelant in the world...
Does anyone really think they won't get their rebates? I suppose sometimes you might have problems (i.e. two different rebates both require original proof of purchase) The fact is their friggin' annoying. Who wants to deal with envelope stuffing, etc? They take advantage of people's laziness and it's irritating for people with a life.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Why don't they take it one step further and file it for us as well? Then we can just take the rebate off at the register? I don't mind paying sales tax on the full price.
Agile Artisans
If they really wanted to make it easier for consumers, why wouldn't they just discount the price by that much to begin with?
If the manufacturers REALLY wanted us ALL to send in the rebate forms, and were NOT expecting this 'breakage'... then why? Tell us WHY you have this convoluted rebate system in place, rather than offering us a lower price WITHOUT the rebate system?
:)
The ONLY reason I can think of is that they want to collect the interest on my $40 cheque between the time I've bought the product, and cashed the rebate check. Surely they could not be earning enough interest on that to warrant the expense of maintaining the rebate system.
The only OTHER reason I can think of is so the manufacturer can advertise the 'after rebate' price, but exclude bunches of people from being able to obtain that price (ie, multiple orders, businesses, etc).
Well, okay, I think I just answered my own question
Check out http://www.rebate-tracker.com/ if you want to have a central point of management for all your rebates.
Something the article seems to miss is that many rebate processing houses like to invalidate rebates for no reason whatsoever. They often claim that you didn't include all of the materials, or that they weren't mailed in time. I've had this happen to me several times. Thankfully I've kept copies of everything, which I was able to fax to them to "prove" that I did send everything that was required. If rebate houses behaved a little more honestly, they wouldn't have such a bad reputation.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Do circuit city really hand over the tax the the state, or do they cunningly assume you'll file the rebate and refrain from paying that portion of the tax.
Putting aside the obvious question (who the fuck is The NPD Group? Why, a marketing consultancy!), the guy who talked to the ComputerWorld reporter is full of shit at best ad bald-faced lying at worst.
I should know - I used to manage a service with rebates. (Hence the anon post.) The rebates were only cost effective because of breakage. In fact, we once had to reduce the rebate amount for a particular group of users who had too good a take rate (business users who would send in rebates en masse, for an IT product.) The only way we could tell customers they saved $XXX was because we knew some of them wouldn't turn it in.
If this so-called reporter had asked even one or two sources inside a company that uses rebates, instead of talking to a consultant who probably recommends them for a hefty fee, he would have figured this out.
The big lie that the media and attorneys general want you to believe is that all the retailers and manufacturers are crooked and the reason [they] do rebates is breakage, which is people not turning them in.'
So WHY do they do it then? Get one tenth of a percent interest? Right.
Maybe they will soon spin it as some form of corporate social security, all the people who have more time on their hands (students, unemployed, elderly) get discounts.
The guy might have had a point if he actually waited to see if the checks showed up before he came to his conclusions.
Christmas just got a whole lot easier, yay wellfare!
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
What about rebates as a way to get around privacy laws by making you fork over all your personal data in exchange for the rebate? For me, this one of the things I disliked the most about rebates - I shouldn't have to pay an extra premium on my purchases because I refuse to give out my contact information the company.
I have talked to some people who claimed that they never received rebates. But as for me, I have turned in about 50 mail-in rebates over my lifetime, and I have received all of them. Sometimes they really do take the full 8 weeks stated in the fine print, but I have always gotten them eventually.
As much as I dislike some of the 'underhanded' sales tactics of Best Buy, the rebates they offer are usually well worth having to buy something there.
As long as I know exactly what I want when I walk in there I usually end up with a nice deal.
Quite a few people complain about Best Buy not honoring rebates for a myriad of reasons but again, I follow the instructions on the rebate form they give me at the time of purchase, send them in and usually have a rebate check within 3 weeks.
Ka - Ching
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
I had a set of rebates that were set up something like as follows
Rebate Department 4913
City, State, 12345-4931
Rebate Department 4931
City, State,12345-4913
Those rebate departments and zip codes MUST have been chosen to make it complicated for the consumer filling in both rebates.
You know what they say, "Fool me once, shame on you - Fool me twice, shame on me"...
Get your Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool Here for FREE! - http://fedora.redhat.com
For example, I once bought a computer with a rebate on x or y with z. the question i asked at the time was "is that 'x or y' with z? or is that x, or 'y with z'?" the retailer (this was in 1998) assured me that it meant either way. so i made the purchase. my rebate request was summarily rejected because they interpreted their offer as x or 'y with z' and i had gone with 'x or y' with z. the retailer at the time (circuit city) paid out the rebate, without much hassle. kudos to them for that. though that was seven years ago.
In the meantime, yes, multiple rebates are a ripoff. note how they all require you to enclose the original upc, cut out from the box you purchased. ok, so how do i send the one upc on the box to three different addressses to get my rebates?
Finally... how do you use the words "suck it up" and "like a man" with any sense of virility? ok, that last bit was a joke. but the others are valid concerns.
With easy rebates that's as easy as it's gonna get. All online, no UPC cutting or wasting your 37 cents and trip to the mail box.
There's nothing wrong, per se, about rebates. Both you, the consumer, and the company selling the product benefit from the people who fail to turn in their rebate forms. This is essentially a win-win situation (except for people who forget about the rebate). If you don't like the idea of rebates, nobody is forcing you to claim them or to buy products offering them. What is wrong is when the manufacturer fails to pay the rebate when correctly submitted. This violates the stated agreement and amounts to fraud.
if instead of reabate, a retailer reduced price on an item, then the retailer will get flooded with pricematch by those who had bought the item at higher price. There is no rebate match. Second thing is that those who are busy can usually afford more money. Rebate is a good way of asking "are you rich? if so, pay more". Sometimes manufacturer wants to temporarily reduce price to clear inventory. if they reduce the price, it would be hard to increase or retailer may put too much order and manufacturer will have to ration the product. instead they give rebates to consumer. Occassionally manufacturer wants to give discount to retailer for the remaining inventory to take into account the price change. but if they ask retailer about the inventory, they will surely get inflated figure. by introducing rebates, they make sure retailers don't lie. Lastly, this discourages foreigners coming to USA to buy cheap goods!
If you want to give me a lower price, give me a lower price. It should be illegal to advertise the price after rebate more prominently than the price before. I've sent those in once or twice, and each time I do it, I get a complaint that I've made some minor error and I get no rebate check. Largely, I just don't send them in.
I've walked out of a few stores after learning that the advertised price is a rebate price and gone somewhere else and paid more than the before-rebate price simply because that store was at least honest.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Are there other countries doing this? I must admit I haven't been everywhere, but I've been to a quite a few countries, and usually when something is advertised at a price, that's the price it is. You don't have to "earn" your discount by performing some sort of (irritating) action after the purchase.
So is this done anywhere outside of the US? If I suggested this idea to my friends and neighbours they'd probably look at my like I was crazy.
I mean, let's think about the process. The consumer fills in a form, and mails it to the company. The company then has to fill in another form (known as a cheque, or since it is the US I suppose we'd better call it a check), and post it back to the consumer. The consumer then takes the check and posts it to their bank. Their bank then processes, creates additional paperwork and posts it to the company's bank to verify the signature. Presumably at that point the money transfer is done electronically.
Is there something wrong with this? Are not a lot of resources being consumed unnecessarily? Why do they persist with this stupidity? Why don't governments simply pass laws to encourage retailers and manufacturers to deal in a more straightforward way with consumers?
Or am I missing something here?
Well, I do mind paying taxes on the full price, especially if I'm buying a car (in Aus that attracts both GST and state Stamp Duty as % of purchase price).
Not that I buy my cars new or from dealerships, but it strikes me as an obvious downside to "factory cashbacks"
-- All your bass are below two Hz
Naturally, I wasn't going to slack when it came to filling out a $200 rebate. Within a couple days of getting the phone I took an hour off to fill out the rebate form. Only one problem. The box they sent me didn't have the required UPC code. But whatever, I'm sure I could call them to straighten that out.
So I filled out the rest of the sheet and had almost everything together, and then I noticed: You had to wait six months before sending in your rebate. And at the six month period, you had to include your most recent cellphone bill.
What absolute stupidity. I mean, why couldn't they accept the rebate right away and say that you won't get paid for six months, when they do a check to make sure your cellphone account is in good standing? And it gets better. At the end of that six month period, you only have a thirty day window to get your rebate in!
How many consumers are this organized to send in a rebate not earlier than six months after purchase, and not later than seven months? Well, lucky for me, I am. I've made a note on iCal. I've also made a mental note: never purchase anything from Buy.com again.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
It's not like the "media and attorneys general" told me to think any way. I learned exactly how rebates work first hand:
1) You send it in
2) They don't reply
3) You call
4) They fix it and send you the rebate.
They make step 3 so simple you don't even notice that you are doing it, and there is always some reasonable excuse (they don't have enough info, or "But we were gunna send it, give us time!"), but if you don't call you get:
1) You send it in
2) They don't reply
5) Profit!
Now, to hear that the media and attorneys general have come to the same conclusion??? Only evidence that this is not some atypical experience but real.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions.
Bloody corporations
The problem with rebates is that the vendor/retailer is trying to make you think you're a smart customer by saving (belatedly) on some purchase -- let's say a $150 printer with a $60 rebate.
So you can get a printer worth $150 for $90 -- good deal, right? Pretty smart, right?
Except the fact that there's a rebate tells me that the vendor knows damn well that the printer is only worth $90. Why else would they be selling it for $90 after rebate?
Further, accepting that the vendor and I both know damn well the printer is only worth $90, they are asking me to pay an extra $60 (plus tax) up front that I may or may not get back at some time in the future. Why can't the shop grant the rebate on the spot and send whatever info to the vendor?
You're not saving $60 from the rebate, you're 'loaning' $60 to the vendor with basically no guarantee that you'll ever see it again. That doesn't sound very smart at all.
Whenever I'm offered a rebate I tell the salesdrone that they must think I'm stupid. I'm not, and so I avoid rebates whenever possible, making sure to tell the shop why I won't buy anything with a rebate other than instant.
It hasn't yet made any difference.
i've considered sending photocopies of the upc, but was advised not to. i guess i could see the fraud issue happening with copies.
When I am in Compusa or various other electronics stores, and I need to compare I simply ignore products that have have rebates simply because I just don't want to mess with the simple act of mailing.
Call it lazy or what not, but the main goal of rebates is to make money off lazy people who buy it and just can't get the will to mail it in.
So I take this laziness one step further... My mind doesn't want to do the math of the list price vs the retail price so I just look at the products that don't have them.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I've bought 4 computers that had rebates associated with them. I never got around to sending in the first three, but I did the work on the 4th, and got my $150.
The rebate process could be made a lot easier, but I don't think it is in their interest to do that -- their main benefit is being able to advertise a slightly lower price.
It was not that much of a hassle to get the rebate, so I just figured it was worth 15 minutes and 37 cents to do it.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
Corporate social security? In a way it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
I know that we've also been moving toward an online system where rebates can be redeemed directly from our website, so that the customer doesn't even need to send anything in (took long enough though). From what I can tell, it is a pain sending them in but you almost ALWAYS get your check back in the mail. People love telling people about how they got jipped because they charged them money that they promised back and it never got returned to them. This is why you always here these stories about rebates never coming back. However, people don't usually say, "Hey I got my rebate check, it was really fast and everything."
From my experience rebates are made for the customers, and the sellers. It gets people into the store, they save money they'd normally have to spend, and usually the store picks up the lost money on items added on (ie. Extended Warranty, mice, keyboards, cables, mouse pads, webcams, the list goes on and on). But this move to an online system makes me think that the mail-in will soon be on the way out.
$0.02
try { Signature mysig = new CleverAttempt(); } catch(NonCleverSignatureException e) { postanyway(); }
We covered this or a similar story before and already had this debate.
The problem I have, and pointed out last time, is that if the price is due to drop or simply not making units move then the price should be lowered. Years ago when rebates were few and far between I got a nice, unexpected rebate for a Zip drive I bought a month before. The reason: units were moving and the price was due to be discounted because more units were on the way. That is what a rebate used to be about. The price drop couldn't be handled by the retailer because they already bought in high, and sold units, so the company shared their profits (to sell more units no less).
Now rebates are geared towards a few things:
* Getting you in the door. The rebate is great, and the product is nice but right next to it is a better product that you'd much rather get. Door busters are great, I applaud the effort. Sometimes you'd want the rebated product anyways so it works out.
* To get you to buy a package. If it is worth it, go for it. Usually it isn't. Sure you are getting a $150-$200 rebate for a monitor, printer and PC - but is that printer or monitor worth it? Usually I find this deals mismatched. You get an LCD monitor with a year old computer and a printer that isn't worth the ink refills.
* To lock you into buying from a retailer. I just was suckered into buying a hard drive from newegg because they were the only ones offering the rebate. The rebate form (from the hard drive maker) states that the rebate is only valid at newegg, even though newegg isn't the ones writing the check. Often you see this in retail stores to move store favorite or popular PC brands. You just have to shop around before making the jump. Best Buy may offer a $30 rebate for a product when Circuit City has it $20 cheaper. What is worth more to you? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, or is it to you?
* To rip you off. Rebates for $5 or $10 dollars are rarely redeemed, at least on time. You are more likely to submit and follow up when the rebate is worth somewhere near $25 or more. Grocery products are starting to offer $1 or even $5 rebates that are a considerable amount of the price - but people never do all of the steps needed. You need to submit the rebate, then wait 6 weeks for it, and the most important of all cash the rebate check. Who goes to the bank to cash a $1 check? If you had ten or twenty, sure.
Rebates are great - but I'd rather just spend less to walk out the door with an item. Usually it is best to wonder why there is even a rebate on a product. There are those that are genuine, but some are not. They will honor the rebate - but you likely were fooled into buying the product.
Can we get an in-depth economical analysis of why rebates exist?
Get your Unix fortune now!
The only good thing about Best Buy is that they print multiple copies of your receipt for each rebate offer, and only one offer ever seems to need the UPC / bar code. I got a monitor at Office Max once, and I had to make several copies of the rebate and UPC / bar code myself. But still, I figure there's got to be a substantial amount of people who think they're getting a great deal, but forget to mail off the rebates.
Fetch Text URL - Firefox Extension
you are the manufacturers bitch.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Bought a Computer at $800 with $350 of rebates.
Expense $800
Rebate Checks of $350 goto personal account for few weekend dinners
eBay Sucks!
Does anyone really think they won't get their rebates?
Actually, this is true for at least some people: I was reading a study on rebates, and of the (large) test group, 30% of rebates were never recieved (at least as of six months after sending the rebate in).
However, I think that the real problem is, as you pointed out, that retailers attempt to benefit based on the fact that some people will not send the rebate in.
The point is that there is huge benefit to having clear and accurate information available to everyone. It makes it much easier for people to make correct buying decisions given their needs and values. There are essentially no drawbacks to having accurate information on what you are purchasing available. As a result, we have lots of laws to ensure that this happens (food needs to have nutritional information and quantity information measured and presented in a standard format, medical products cannot make bogus medical claims -- if you look at "health drinks" in the US a hundred years ago, you'll note that this was not always the case).
Point being, anything that requires better and more accurate information about a product to be provided is pretty much unilaterally a win.
So rebates are a mechanism that attempts to take advantage of bogus information about a product. At least in the United States (not the case in all countries, as I understand it) it is legal to have a rebate and to then publish the *after rebate* price as the price of the product (I believe that some states may require "after rebate" in the fine print.) In fact, you aren't buying a widget for $N-$rebate. You're buying the choice of a widget at $N or a widget plus some additional work on your part, which you might screw up by damaging the UPC or similar, for $N-$rebate. They eye-catch with (false) low prices and hope that once someone's attention is grabbed or they are in the store or they've purchased the product, that they won't follow through.
This is simply not good.
I'd prefer consumer-level rebates to simply not be allowed -- the manufacturer can always pay the retailer if it wants to simply allow reducing price on existing inventory. That gets rid of the whole mess. If you want to compete on price, compete on price honestly.
If that isn't acceptable, I'd at least prefer that actual prices *must* be listed in the same color as and at least as large as after-rebate prices. Let people buy based on honest information.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I HATE rebates with a passion. The principles behind them piss me off.
1) You have to pay out more upfront, and pay tax on that amount. You don't get back that tax.
2) You might make an error on the form, and not get your money back at all.
3) Since sometimes it takes up to 90 days to get your money back, that's 3 months that you could have been earning intrest on that money.
4) The time spent trying to get your money is annoying.
5) The forms are often SO TINY it's hard to write legibly on them.
Think of all the money those companies get to keep in intrest alone that they make on the rebate money. ARG!
I'd much rather pay a little extra, and not have to deal with rebates. Stupid pricing games.
1) Breakage. Folks forget to mail it in. They win.
2) Bendage. Folks mail it in, then forgot that they mailed it in. Slight problem and,
3) Bondage. You didn't follow fine print item #12. Rebate rejected. They win.
4) Recharacterization. You comply, get rebate. They keep extra markup from sales tax they don't have to report. They win.
Slashmail.org "The Open Source Email Company"
My own personal experience with rebates (particularly from TigerDirect and OfficeMax) is that a certain percentage of the time, the check never arrives, or sometimes you get a BS letter saying that the wrong UPC code was sent, etc. This leads me to ask why the "expert" quoted in TFA states that everyone receives their rebate checks 100% of the time, and that rebates aren't that much of a hassle. The "expert" works for a marketing research company, and rebate forms are a great source of data for marketing research. So it's in the interest of the "expert" to want to keep rebate forms alive in order to keep the data coming in so his company can keep on making money writing marketing reports based on the data. I don't see this "expert" as a credible, unbiased source of information on this topic. If the writer of TFA was a real journalist, he would have interviewed an attourney general for another perspective.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
...I just don't buy products with rebates unless I don't have a good alternative.
I prefer to get a free accessory, though, and preferably selected from a list. For example, my Powerbook came with a free HP color printer, and I needed a new color printer at the time. The HP works great, *AND* I got a big rebate on the 'book on top of that (end of model clearout that I was lying in wait for).
I buy alot of rebate items at Frys Electronics and I have found over the years that...
1) The cashier will give you the wrong rebate form. This was notorious when they had 8 rebates for Seagate drives. The cashier would grab the first one they found. Result. Rebate refused. Note: Fry's now prints the rebates with your receipt, so this happens less.
2) The rebate will require that you include some part of the package that doesn't exist. This is true with memory modules. Read the fine print, and it says to clip the logo and the UPC. Trouble is they gave you a package without the logo or missing the UPC (memory comes from the cage, and may not have a UPC).
3) They refuse your rebate, saying it was late. Now I got copies of everything, including the envelope. How can I prove when I mailed it? Stand in line at the PO and send it registered mail? WTF?
4) The form says to include the original receipt. The cashier says it is OK to send the Rebate Receipt. Wrong.. Rebate receipt is not acceptable, must include the original! Refused.
All of the above have happened, more than once. Worst are the memory rebates. They lie like dogs. They trick you. Anything but play fair.
I agree. I avoid the rebates whenever I can.
Where you live is public information, Just thought you should know.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They do the rebates because your personal information such as address, telephone number, etc is worth more then any rebate they can give you. remember boys and girls that business will not do something out of the goodness of their hearts if there is no profit for them. even when they play nice and give aid and relief for natural disasters or something else they do it because it's great 'advertising' and nothing more.
the problem with rebates is that if it's a store rebate then it's only one per household
Come on - of course this guy is going to be pro-rebates. Newsflash: sharp blow to the head causes injury.
IANAE (I am not an economist), but I vaguely remember my economics professor saying something last semester about why rebates exist.
Something like if a manufacturer wants to stimulate sales, they can't just lower the price they charge retailers. Due to the monopolistically competitive/oligopoly market the retailer participates in, the retailer often can't change the price they sell the product at much, even when they get a much lower price from the manufacturer. Therefore the manufacturer offers a rebate which bypasses the retailer entirely.
I believe it is due to a kinked demand curve (which arises in certain oligopoly models) that essentially gives the retailer the same profit-maximizing price for a range of marginal costs.
This abstract seems to confirm this. I didn't read the paper itself.
Now, in my part of the world we don't have mail-in rebates, so please forgive me for being stupid here.
What is the deal with mail-in rebates? How can a company sell $30 DVD-Rs with a $30 mail-in rebate? I expect they cost money to produce? Of course, some portion of buyers will not send in the coupons to get their money, but then it's the consumer that's being stupid because:
a) (s)he's paying $30 for something that's apparently worth $0.
b) Paying list price for a product that's on sale usually means there's a better offer somewhere else.
So, what is it? Companies producing stuff for free/at a loss or stupid consumers?
In my experience, there's shady dealers like OfficeMax that send e-mail responses to rebate submissions that are something along the lines of "Sorry, you do not qualify for the rebate," despite the fact that everything was filled out according to their directions. That's one of the reasons why I only use mail-in rebates from companies that consistently send them (In my experience, Costco has been good with rebates so far).
Well one big reason is that rebates are typically handled by the manufacturer - HP, DLink, SMC, etc.
If the manufacturer simply lowers the price that it sells to wholesalers/retailers there are several problems:
1. All of their customers get the same (lowered) price. This is not necessarily bad; however, it is nice to have some flexibility to work with certain retailers at certain times on specific co-marketing programs.
2. It is very hard for manufacturers to later bring the price back up. The expectation from retailers (and end-consumers) is that the sale price is the "proper" price. Whereas a rebate is not as strongly associated with permanent price changes.
3. Rebates are more likely to affect the price for the end-consumer. In other words, simply dropping the wholesale price might end up fattening the margins of the retailer w/o increasing sales. This is more important for some products than others. E.g. router sales are highly competitive, so any price break by rebate or price decrease would probably end up at the retail level; whereas, for mid-high end TVs or stereo equipment, there is a greater chance of retailers just pocketing any price reductions.
4. Retailers don't want to drop prices. Markups are how they make money. Period. In a way, offering a rebate can effectively go behind the retailer's back to affect prices offered to the end-consumer.
/. will mention. I'm sure that many of those are valid. But, IMHO, the manufacturer to retailer relationship angle doesn't get enough consideration when it comes to the rebate debate.
There are other rationales and tricks w/rebates that others on
I'd mod you +5
Why do I keep seeing so many posts saying "Waah, I didn't get my rebate and it's too HAAAARD. I can't do it! Why don't they just give me the money off at the register?"
There are two simple reasons that rebates exist, and they're very easy to understand:
1) Money now is worth more than money later
This is always true. Even if they're only gaining a little bit of interest on the $40, a retail chain could sell 1,000 units and earn interest on $40,000. Even if it's a low rate, that's still a few hundred dollars to offset the costs. Furthermore, if they time it right, they can have money in their pocket and look profitable for a little while, send out the rebate checks later, and still end up being profitable because:
2) Rebates are a form of "hurdling". By creating arbitrary hurdles for consumers to overcome to get a price break, they can more effectively address individual demands for a product. Let's say 10,000 people are willing to buy product X at $100 and another 4,000 people are willing to buy product X at $60. By having a mail-in rebate, consumers who don't mind spending ten minutes filling out a rebate form and mailing it in can jump a "hurdle" and get the product at a price that they are willing to pay while many of the 10,000 who would have paid $100 will get the discounted price as well. The ones who don't take the effort to send in the rebate will not get the discounted price, but they were willing to pay in the first place.
Yes, it's annoying when companies have scam rebates and don't send them back. Yes, it can be a lot of work to get your rebates back. My parents have been buying items with rebates for years now and have only failed to receive a few rebates. But there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of "breaking" - if a person figures that it isn't worth their time to send in a rebate, they don't get the discounted price. It's an effective way to price discriminate and sell to different people at different prices, and the net effect is that everyone benefits.
How many employees buy stuff for their company, but then fill the rebate form out so they get the check?
The worst rebate offender has got to be Intuit with Turbo Tax.
They make you fill out a paper rebate form after you purchase a state product online. They could easily have you enter a one time use coupon instead of entering a credit card and doing a paper rebate, but that isn't profitable.
The whole freaking point of the product is to allow you to electronically fill out paper forms. And in order to get the product they promise on the box, you have to fill in THREE SEPARATE PAPER FORMS. AAAARRRRRGGGG!!!!
BRAIN ANEURYSM!!!!
...Perhaps a company who tells viewers on their front page that they "provide the answers to help you understand your customers and your market" might not be completely impartial with respect to the best interests of those same customers.
h tml
"USE THEM OR LOSE THEM: REBATES KEY TO DRIVING TECH SALES"
Indeed, delving a little deeper into the NPD group website, we see that they claim to "provide global consumer and retail information that helps manufacturers and retailers make more informed, fact-based decisions in order to optimize their businesses." One of the ways they do this is by "Optimizing promotional support." Not to imply that this makes them evil or unethical, but it DOES imply that anything they say isn't exactly coming from consumer advocates.
Interestingly, a google search of their website reveals this site: http://www.npd.com/dynamic/releases/press_041227.
While they're not exactly sitting around cackling over the fact that not everyone redeems rebates, they do mention this gem:
"While rebates are very popular, the NPD study indicates the redemption process is still a source of frustration for many consumers. The most commonly cited reason for dissatisfaction with rebate programs was "prefer instant cash" (35 percent). Another 25 percent said rebates are "too much work for the money" and 17 percent said they forgot to mail in or go online to redeem their rebates before the expiration deadlines. Additionally, 15 percent said it was difficult to know what to do to redeem rebates and 13 percent said they didn't have enough time to complete and submit the forms necessary to redeem their rebates."
Depending on whether these are all answers to a single question or not, their research indicates 17-30 percent of rebates aren't redeemed. This isn't exactly lost on manufacturers offering them, I assume.
First, total sales. Rebates allow retailers to inflate total sales, and furthur undermine the ability of the financial market to just the soundness of firms. For instance, the black friday figures are out, but how reliable are they really given that a significant fraction of the money will just have to be returned? Likewise, is the economy really recovering, or is is just that we are slashing prices, with sales and rebates, and therefore moving goods and services at a loss?
Second, credit cards. Most big box stores, those that seem to live and die on rebates, have a credit card. The consumer wil buy a product on the credit card, and then pay it off over time. However, due the fact that the rebate takes 4 or even 8 weeks, the consumer will end up paying some interest, unless he or she pays off the rebate part out of his or her own pocket, thereby incurring an opportunity cost. What will likely happen, through no fault of the retailer, is the consumer will use the rebate as expendable cash, and not pay off the debt. Since CC are increasingly an important profit center, rebates help build the center. However, it also undermines the economy by unneccesarily encouraging the dangerous buildup of debt.
Third, rebates, especially those multiple rebates, makes it difficult to compare prices. This already happens with things like each store having it's own SKU for essentailly the same item, but with the same item one can have manufacturers rebate, store rebates, etc, it is difficult to decide the best value. The rebate allows retailers to claim a lower price than offer, thus further confusing the situation.
In the end, the rebate is still meant to distort the market. I mean if the compute system was free, then were the sales for the day zero? Is the retailer going to claim that product was given away? Is the manufacturer going to claim that they dumpt product? Or will the financial report present a carefully crafted picture, with sales in one account, and rebates in another, that show a record year.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"I had read that retailers like to sell prepaid gift cards, and that they're highly profitable because consumers lose them or let them expire."
Even in California, where it is illegal for a gift card/certificate to expire, these cards are good money makers and in some way take advantage of the customers.
Jack In The Box sees so much revenue potential in the card that they are giving customers 2 free tacos for getting a gift card with $10 or more.
Mickey D's is giving free $1 gift cards with certain purchases, to show off their new gift card system.
Although gift cards are not as bad as rebates, retailers honestly don't have them for our benefit. They have them because market research shows some certain amount of money is never used, meaning easy profit for the store.
Even if more gift cards were redeemed, if you've ever had a business class, you know everything revolves around cash flow, and gift cards are the epitome of cash flow.
In accounting, all anticipated activities that lower a business' accounts (returns, markdowns, losses, etc) should be run contra to the account via allowance method and the account valued at net, not gross. Meaning, if rebates are a significant amount of normal markdowns on sales then the average amount for a period is to be estimated and removed from the sales even if they actual amount will not be known for a month or two.
This is a basic concept in how NOT to put stuff on the books; however, WorldCom showed us that you can simply add an adjusting entry at the end of the period to make the revenue any value you want and people will look the other direction if the company is appears to be making money (which is perverse if you think about it for a second..). No, companies should not be doing rebates to make the numbers look better, and any company doing so could find themselves in hot water real fast if feds find out about it.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
When I buy something tax deductible for my business, like say a new hard drive to replace one that died, I look for the big rebates. If I buy a $120 hard drive with two $40 rebates (like I did this summer) then after deducting it at the full $120 price I have a receipt for, I'm getting paid to take the new drive! Its not a big enough moneymaker given all the hassles of rebates that I'll buy stuff I don't need to do this, but it makes the time spent seem less wasted if I know I'm screwing the government just a little bit!!!
Well gosh, some guy says it's all above board, so it must be okay. 'Cuz he wouldn't lie; that would be wrong.
The reporter is a gullable idiot.
The way this works is that companies specializing in rebates bid to offer rebates. The bid is how much the retailer (say, Best Buy) will pay them. It's a portion of the rebate value. So a rebate company might offer to fulfill a $40 rebate on a video card in exchange for $20 per video card sold. Best Buy gets to claim a $40 discount on the video card, but only pays $20 per card. The rebate company gets $20 per video card. All they have to do is ensure that less than half of eligible buyers claim the rebate and they make money. That's were things get messy. If they misjudge the rebate claim rate (or are just evil and want more money) they have incentive to be hardasses and find minor nits to refuse rebates on. "Oh, you gave your zip code, but not your zip+4. The form said 'Zip+4'. No rebate for you." The even more evil ones will resort to outright tricky. "Ooops, a bunch of mail fell in the garbage." How can you prove you mailed it to them. They can claim you failed to send necessary UPC codes. Again, can you prove you did? Sure, many rebate houses are honest and won't play such games, but not all do. And the sleezy rebate houses can underbid the honest ones.
"But if rebates go away, he says, the savings won't all go toward lower prices. 'Retailers will keep some of that.'" Congratulations Captain Obvious. Fine. I'd rather get $10 off at the register than $20 off after six months and filling out forms and watching to make sure they don't 'lose' my submission.
Rebates are every bit as sinister as you think.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Let me in the same room with this guy and I'll show him some breakage!
*puts coke bottle spectacles back on*
I am sick up and fed with the whole "advertise a bogus price" thing anyway. For my money, show me the price it takes to walk out the door with it. In fact, I would LOVE to circulate petitions for a referendum that would make it illegal to advertise anything else.
There are words for advertisers who promise rebates that never arrive, but my Kids read /.
It's aboutthe stock market.
You tell the SEC you are offering 1.2Billion dollars in rebates. This deduce how much you are expected to earn net.
At the end of the year, only 700 million was sent off.
That means your bottom line is know 500 million dolalrs higher then expected(assuming your other number met expectations). This wikll drive your stock price up.
In the first or second year, TiVo hade been projected to loose 9 million dollars. But do to people not sending in rebates, they only lost 875,000 dollars. This casue there stock to juump, and it probably contribute a lot to there staying in business during those early years.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In all of my marketning classes that I took as a Business Major they all said the same thing. If you can advertise in a way to give the perception that the customer is gaining something of value while not actually having to pay anything out then you should do it. Classic examples are the free gift with purchase offers where you mail in the request and pay the shipping charges. Most of the time the shipping costs so little that the amount charged actually covers the cost of the gift as well.
Much in the same way with rebates, most of the appeal of offering them is the hope that customers will be too lazy to actualy send in the forms. More so there is a tradeoff with making the rebate easy to file and making it hard to file. Obviously with a difficult process to collect on a rebate, less rebates will be paid out. However the customers may grow angry and that could hurt your brand name in addition to lessening the appeal of rebates. So you make the rebate process painless, but still don't pay out the money right away. Also you still make it so that the customer has to do some work like visit a rebate website.
It is obvious that what customers would want most of all is an automatic rebate entering system. Such a system would lessen the appeal of rebates to marketers though and so less rebates would be offered.
i never make purchasing decisions based on rebates, i rather avoid the rebate and find another retail outlet with a lower up-front price even if it means driving a little further or buying another compatible/comparable brand name...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The interviewer from TFA interviewed someone from "The NPD Group" which (from http://www.npd.com/about.profile.html ) "provides global consumer and retail information that helps manufacturers and retailers make more informed, fact-based decisions in order to optimize their businesses". Maybe it's me, but that sounds like a retail industry mouthpiece to me.
You're right, discounting stuff already in the channel is another reason for rebates. But that doesn't apply to ongoing rebate promotions where the rebate is supported for a long period of time for a product that sells well. (The case I cited.)
Rebates are evil, for many reasons covered here.
If a product offers a rebate, I don't buy it. Period. I won't buy it expecting to NOT get the rebate, I won't buy it at all. I'll buy the product that doesn't offer a rebate.
The time involved, remembering to do it and the release of private information, when mixed with a 50/50 chance of getting anything in return, isn't worth it. I've sent them in in the past, *carefully* filled in them, not changed my mailing address in years, and still nothing comes back. Most recently it was Logitech for $20. Never again.
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.
So an industry consultant says that mail-in rebates are used because consumers demand them?
Of course! Me and my friends talk all the time about how we'd rather mail in a proof of purchase than receive a discount at the store. I uncritically accept every word this guy is telling me.
"The big lie that the media and attorneys"
You just know he wanted to say
"The big lie that the LIBERAL media and TRIAL attorneys..." I'm a
Rebates are the tool of the devil. The put them out full well knowing that something like only 40% of rebates are returned. If they actully gave a shit about their customers they would give the break at the register and not put us through this dance.
Oh and interesting how one of the two times I've done rebates in that past Bestbuy screwed me saying I hadn't included something. I can't tell you how many times I've heard of people having the same thing happen to them. I avoid them at all costs.
IMHO they should be 100% illegal. Give us the price at the register or don't advertise it. Or how about this? Say its $100 with a $50 rebate. I'll pay $25 and promise to send you that extra $25 within 4 to 8 weeks.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I suspect that the dollar value and the volume make the difference. A couple ideas:
It's possible with coupons for the retailer to pretend that they've collected coupons from every purchase. With food, the # of transactions is much larger than with electronics. So manufacturers can do basic ratio analysis to catch any stores that try to cheat the system - i.e. if one particular store redeems a coupon 3x more often than the norm, then it's time to send in a mystery shopper. Since the dollar value is higher and the volume is lower with more expensive goods, it's harder to get reasonable auditing of redeemptions. Secondly, perhaps food manufacturers would prefer a rebate program; however, with food, we're usually talking about a dollar or two. For the same amount of work in handling a rebate it just isn't worth it for all parties.
Screwed _once_ out of about $8 when I put a sticker with my P.O. on the ENVELOPE I mailed the rebate in and they held it for way past the promotion (Minnesota redemption center). Other than that, I live within walking distance of a Microcenter and live by the rebate. The more of them you don't remit, the better offers they can give me.
And I _have_ had a $40 dollar one honored in which I did _not_ follow the "must be postmarked within seven days of purchase date" stipulation by about three days.
"...so stop whining -- 'suck it up and accept your rebate check like a man.'"
This guy must be a liberal weenie to think it's okay to pay an excess of sales tax, which is what happens when you are forced to use rebates rather than buy a product at a sale price.
Phuck rebates and the people who endorse them.
In my experience about 3 times out of 4 they will automatically deny every rebate, for bogus reasons.
At that point I begin the process of returning the merchandise back to the store I bought it from.
Typically the manager of the store will refuse to accept it, but will work with you and the vendor to get you your rebate. If they won't give you the rebate, then just return the merchandise. It is fun, try it.
Also send them several emails that you are keeping detailed records and are looking forward to the tripple damages you will be awarded in the upcoming class action law suit. Point out that you are used to their lies and attempts to get out of paying the money they owe you. Tell them that it happens to you constantly and that you are tired of them trying to steal from you. Inform the company that you are contacting your representatives state and federal, your state AG, their state AG, the BBB,
You must always make copies of everything you send in and not on the copy when you mailed the rebate. Feel free to mail this in to them and ask them specifically what you did wrong. If they have already lied and said you didn't send in the UPC, for instance, then ask them what the copy of the UPC is doing in the list of things you sent to them the first time. Ask them how you could have forgotten the UPC when you clearly have a copy of the upc that you sent to them the first time. If they tell you that they can only take the original, not a copy, ask them how you can send the original to them twice?
Rebates are a scam, they work hard to never pay them. They count on you just giving up. Never give up until you get every dime you are owned. Hound them, be insistant and sarcastic, they don't deserve polite, they are stealing from you, they are theives. Be indignant and forceful. You will get the rebate you deserve.
I once bought a Fuji Finepix camera with a $100 rebate, which is excellent when the selling price was $400. I followed all the directions and received the rebate cheque in five days! I couldn't believe it. I bought a second camera with the rebate for my mother at Christmas and received the rebate cheque seven days later, and that was during the Christmas season. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.
On the flip side, against my better judgement my brother bought a stack of CD-Rs on a Boxing Day sale with a $20 rebate (or around there). Months later he still did not receive his rebate so he called and called and went to store and called again. After a months of this and several "told you it would happen" from me I joking mentioned he should take the company to small claims court. Long story short he filed a claim, paid the $100 filing fee and had the company (which luckily was based in the province we lived in otherwise he would not have been able to file a claim to begin with) served with the statement of claim (or whatever they call it in small claims terms). He received a call a few days later from the company which was all apologetic and a cheque for the rebate and the $100 filing fee. All this for $20, but I guess he made his point.
So it can go both ways.
Besides forking out the sales tax for the full amount, so that your state can provide public services to even more illegal aliens, you are also volunteering a whole lot of personal information to the companies. And you allow them to book revenues for the full amount, loan your money - and process rebates as a different item in their accounting - and a quarter late.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
this article is in fact sinister in and of itself. For those who have not already, I would not recommened RTFA - it's a load of faulty logic that doesn't add up and finally culminates with the uninsightful revelation that rebates are the corporate world's gift to mankind and we should show some gratitude to our marketing overlords. WTF?
Rebates work because of breakage and interest made on the delay - they are generally a pain in the ass and are a perversion of the common free market practice of purchasing goods. Sure, if the deal is sweet enough I will succumb, but I (once more) feel like the kid who has to do a little dance to get his stolen lunch back from the bully.
ôó
Best Buy over Thanksgiving weekend:
Norton SystemWorks 2006 = $59.99 No Rebate.
Norton SystemWorks 2006 bundled with Norton Firewall 2006 and Norton AntiSpam = $89.99 with $30 Norton upgrade rebate and $60 Best Buy rebate.
Which would you choose? Think this means Norton SystemWorks is truly worth $0?
A few hours of envelope stuffing sure adds up fast. If your time is worth $50 an hour, then if you spend 6 hours getting your rebates you could buy that stupid computer and Wal-Mart in cash and be done with it.
I've spent 2-3 hours over the course of about 6 months getting one of my rebates. In my life, I've filed 3 rebates and gotten 2 paid. To get them, I spent about 45 minutes making photocopies (4 trips to the library to make photocopies - the forth trip was because I actually had to send them an extra copy), about 2-3 hours on the phone (mostly on hold), another 45 minutes for 4 trips to the post office, and an hour or two filling them out. The extra complexity in my accounting wasn't nice either. (I like to have a nice breakdown of my income and cashflow, and rebates generate a lot of entries, since they fall under accounts receivable and I have to make a provision that some rebates will never be paid - according to my limited experience 33% of rebates receivable less than 8 months outstanding and 100% of rebates over 8 months outstanding seems reasonable). And finally I have to cash the check when it finally does come in (once again, a trip to the bank).
Net result: I make more money working at my job than filing rebates, and my work isn't as tedious either. To that end, I've decided never to bother with a rebate again. Giving away personal info and getting even more junk mail while getting paid around minimum wage for work that isn't very fun at all is a raw deal.
benjamin, Agaric
If you make a purchase where you have to deal with five separate vendors for rebates (as did the person in the article), aside from potentially not getting your refund, you now have FIVE MORE commercial vendors with your name, phone number, and address.
For me peronally, I don't care how much the rebate is...it's just not worth it to prostitute myself like that.
The link is obviously a paid spin article. Even if breakage was zero, the consumer still looses - personal information may be processed by convicted felons (there are no laws preventing the company from farming the work out to a prison, where all your address and contact info can be bought and sold on the cheap). Sure, the practice may be rare, but the privacy concerns are fairly universal with rebates and such.
And give the discount up front unless you *mean* to con them out of money.
Anyone familiar with the 'time value of money' principle will tell you that rebates are not a worthwhile financial investment. You pay $100, and send in your rebate form. 30+ days later you get your rebate, but the company you paid you rebate to has had your money for that time.
'A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow'.
Seems to me that Stephen Baker has an incentive to believe that mail-in rebates aren't just a trick.
Steven Baker's sentence should read: "The big lie is that the media and attorneys general want you to believe that all the retailers and manufacturers are crooked and the reason [they] do rebates is so that it's harder to return broken goods and also be able to promote a lower sale price than the consumer actually gets when they don't turn the rebate in or don't get the rebate back when they actually do send it in.
I mean really. Who's heard of the attorneys general or the media make that big a deal over rebates? I've heard more noise from both groups that aliens do not exist.
Besides, when government isn't in the pocket of big business, it is supposed to be looking out for all of our interests, so when they are at odds whow are you going to believe?
I'm surprised noone's mentioned differential pricing yet.
Companies want to make as much money as possible. (duh)
Lets say person A is willing to buy a particular hard drive for $20.
Person B is willing to spend $25.
If you set the price at $20, you don't make as much money as you could.
If you set the price at $25, you lose a customer.
Ideally, you get each person to pay the most that they're willing to pay.
Rebates help accomplish this. A person who makes a high salary will be willing to pay more for an item, and they'll value their time more. They won't send in the rebate.
A person who values their time less and makes less money will take the time to fill in the rebate.
To put it another way;
When I lived in China, you had to haggle over the price of most goods. If you sat there and haggled for half an hour, you could get the price down. A person who made more money wouldn't see the value in haggling for half an hour for a few quarters of a price reduction, and would pay a higher price just to get the sale done. Rebates accomplish the same thing, without requiring any inefficiency on the part of the seller.
I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but this would seem to be one use for a (deliberately inconvenient) rebate.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
...but i've only gotten checks from about 50% of the rebates i've sent in.
i refuse to deal with them any more.
Considering the time you have to put into filling them out, I'm paid more per-hour than the rebate is worth.
1. Buy envelopes and stamps for your rebates
2. Find rebate on internet
3. Print out rebate
4. Find receipt
5. Print out receipt
6. Fill out rebate
7. Get envelope
8. Get stamp (use two because cardboard can't bend and be sorted like normal mail)
9. Walk to mailbox
Estimating $30 an hour, that rebate better be over $15 for me to waste my time with it.
...I do agree with a lot of it. I have never had a rebate rejected - although all of the rebates I've done in recent memory have been from Circuit City. Maybe their rebate fulfillment centers are more on the ball? Anyway, my last rebate deal was a 120GB hard drive for $50 after two rebates. I got my pre-printed at the register rebate forms (and got copies, just in case), asked them to make a copy of the barcode for me (even two, no problem!) and went home and assembled all the paperwork - after I checked out the drive and made sure it was functional, of course! I mailed in both rebates (including my "junk" email address - the address I give where I don't really care if I get junk mail - on both the forms), and maybe a week later got an unexpected email from Seagate. Your rebate form has been received, and is processing! That was pretty exciting. I had an online tracking thing for Circuit City's rebate, too. I think they may have also sent me an e-mail, but I can't remember. Anyway, I was able to track both rebates, and both companies kept me up-to-date - when it was received, when it was being processed, when it was accepted, and when a check was mailed. Got them both, no problem - and much quicker than the stated 6-8 weeks; I think I had them both 3-5 weeks after I mailed stuff. And except for the emails and web tracking, this is not a new experience for me. Maybe I'm just extra-careful, but I have never had rebate issues. Having also worked in retail, I understand why they need proof of purchase, too - you would not believe the incredible scams people try to pull!! If you can't return the item without the barcode, and if the rebate requires the barcode - well, no double-dipping for you! So anyway, I think it's kind of nice to see a positive spin on rebates for once. To those who whine about "just take the price off at the register already!!" - would you rather just not see those items on sale? Or have less than 15% of the rebate savings taken off at the register instead? i.e. Instead of $100 in rebates, just take $10-$20 off that $600 item? Think about it... :-)
I recently bought some appliances from Best Buy (as much as I don't like the store), and I could actually fill out the rebate application on their website (the rebate was from Best Buy). It was totally painless, and the check arrived within about 3 weeks (and I'm in HI). It was the first time I didn't have the hassle of stamping and mailing...
It could be because UK retailers love their customers so much, but I suspect it's because of some sort of legal bar. Anyone know?
Hopefully this hasn't been mentioned to death and I didn't notice it. Has the topic of gathering and/or selling customer information been breached? I would think the possession of all the intrusive rebate form responses, not to mention the address where the rebate will sent, would be valuable to the companies who receive them.
Rebates are for losers... and I'm a loser.
In October I received notices that two rebates I sent to two different companies were both lacking the receipt.
In one of those cases, this was impossible: The postal address that they used to tell me that I didn't include the receipt was written only on the receipt.
Think about that for a minute....
Rebates are a racket, folks.
40% of purchasers take advantage of rebates? Interesting. That's about the same rate that rebates are declined, too. Amusingly, always because the original receipt is missing. Ask around -- we all experience the same thing.
--Richard
That's interesting because Staples Easyrebates are much better than the competition now. You can submit everything online instead of mailing it in, and the last rebate arrived in less than a month. Compare that to 2-3 months for the legit rebate processors, and a worst case of 7 months for some rebates from a certain crooked processor (stay away from TCA Fulfillment in New Rochelle, NY).
This message brought to you by the American Rebate Assoication.
I assume this article is really an excuse for us all to gripe about our rebate experiences. I sent in a rebate form, original receipt and UPC for a Brother all-in-one machine MFC210C which I bought at Fry's. Guess what? They notified me that the original UPC wasn't included. Then they refused to accept a photocopy (my proof of what I sent them) because only the original UPC (which I sent them) counts. Yep, I feel ripped off. I suppose I could complain to the consumer protection folks at the AG but how do I prove I sent an original UPC? As I recall, it's only $20 which is even too small for a small claims action (filing fees are more!)
Make cheese not war 8:)
report them to the FTC, I did... but the problem is that not enough people report them,
Reading the comments posted here I think anyone can map out the rebate criminal M.O.
Micro Center in team with Hawking Technology used the same excuses I've read others posting here.
If you do report to them to the FTC give a link to this slashdot article.
Check out what happened to stamp duty after a tea party in Boston. Sometimes history needs to repeat.
I used to work for CPG, which is one of the larger rebate processing centers. We did Dell, Whirlpool, Maytag, and Costco -- to name a few.
I can tell you from my own experience, the overall goal was to successfully process 50-60% of the rebates completely. This is how a rebate program was sold to a company or supplier. This percentage comes from a number of factors, including:
People are too lazy or incompetent to fill out the forms and gather the required items in a timely manner -- especially for rebates less than $10.
Once submitted, the information gets lost in the system (ie: mailed to the wrong address, lost by the post office, lost by internal employees), or due to typo's (on the rebate center's part or illegible writing on the consumer's part), the checks are sent to the wrong location. Note that the data entry people are paid on a production basis -- working out of their home, not hourly. For example, you might be able to make $5.00 for every 100 entries you type into the system. Depending on your speed, this could take 1-2 hours. Also, no incentive for accuracy!
Once a check is actually mailed out, it usually has a 45-90 day expiration period. Many people just don't bother to even cash the checks. Sometimes, checks would even be held for 20-30 days onsite, meaning there is now a very short window.
Some research has shown people do actually tend to buy more if a rebate is offered, or may select one brand over another because of a rebate.
You want to know why they don't just "take it off at the register?" See above!
CPG also has a call in center, where the associates are there to help find and recover any typo's, complete inaccurate submissions, or deal with change of address types of issues. If they could find a rebate in the system (big IF), they could also tell you if it was completed and/or mailed out. They also had a fax department, which received 200-300 faxes per day, all handled by one extremely overworked person. Want to take a guess at how many faxes were misplaced or lost?
So what does this all tell you? Do you think rebates actually work? Depends if you are a consumer or a company.
This seems to me like it could be the most important reason for them to to rebates. I'd not considered it before...
Max.
I think there are companies that essentially assume the debt of rebate and then make money on not paying them.
What I mean is, if you are "SuperComputerManufacturer" and offer a rebate of $10 on 1 million items, you now have a liability of $10M dollars.
I think that companies will then bid on the debt to pay the rebate. In otherwords, they'll bid an asking price of $9M. Therefore the manfacturer gets out of $10M of debt for $9M, and the rebate company makes $???? money by assuing they'll only get x% of the rebates properly cashed. So every rebate they deny is essentially their money.
It really makes perfect sense (although this is pure supposition).
And if this turns out to be viable business model, I own the patent.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I ended up buying two because, well, I needed two. I sent out the rebate with the receipt, UPC, rebate form, etc and they sent me a postcard back stating that "You could only claim the rebate on one item". Well no shit, that's what I did to begin with. So basically, because they saw two sticks of ram purchased on the receipt, some jackass decided not to bother counting to 1 to find out how many rebate forms and UPC codes I had put in the envelope. It was a $60.00 rebate too. Needless to say, I will never buy anything from KByte again since THEY were the ones coordinating the rebate.
Rebates I have claimed in the past directly from the manufacturers include: Sony (before $sys$...never again!), PNY, Mag, Nvidia, Creative Labs, Maxtor, Western Digital, Compaq, Garmin, and a few others. KByte is the only one I've ever really had an issue with that I can recall.
I have, however, had great luck with direct Best Buy mail-in rebates. I have never been denied a rebate by Best Buy themselves. In fact, I have three on the way back to me after the after Thanksgiving sale - I bought three 1gb PNY flash drives for $120.00 total, but each with a $20.00 mail in rebate. So I end up paying a total of $60.00 (plus tax on the $120.00) for three 1gb flash drives.
As another poster had said, I really don't like the idea of giving them my address and all that, but of course how else can you get a mail in rebate. I still would rather just get the instant rebate. Yeah, it can be a pain, but I'll jump through the hoops every once in a while for a really really good deal. ;)
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
'suck it up and accept your rebate check like a man.'
How about "Advertise the actual cash price you are willing to sell the merchandise for without requring customers to jump though hoops that you know most *wont* or fuck off and die and I will buy elsewhere", considering that most merchandise sold with rebates isnt usually worth it even if you *could* just directly pay only the price advertised as 'after rebate(s)'.
Never have gotten one back from them. I quit after two.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
What people seem to forget is that these rebates take time. I know I haven't received all of the rebates ASAP, and that's kinda important.
Let's suppose that the seller of a certain laptop wants to earn a bit of money to take an immediate business risk that could pay off immensely.
so, he has a huge rebate on his laptop: in the form of a mail-in rebate.
sales go up.
he invests the money, and gets an immediate MASSIVE return.
then, he mails all of the rebates to his happy consumers.
Quite an ingenious system, with the chance for a real catastrophe if his investment doesn't pay off.
But then he could always just consider the money spent as if it were on advertising.
So I ask you: does this make those rebates sound nifty, or evil?
oh, and JUST analyzing it as a time + money thing, you could say that the corporation could recoup its losses by deliberately delaying the rebates to all be sent out after a few months, and investing the money in a short-term savings account of some kind. Not sure if that's legal though.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I couldn't disagree more with Mr. Baker's viewpoint. Sounds to me like he has never had the privilege of submitting rebates himself! His statement "very few [Rebates] are rejected", is not in touch with what is really going on in the consumer arena.
One example; I have shopped on black Friday for four straight years and out of an average 15 rebates per outing that I've filled out, each time I had three rebated rejected. Three rebates! That's a 20 percent rejection rate! I followed all the guidelines on each rebate too, copied everything, mailed them the day after the purchase, and even went as far as to purchase delivery confirmation on several of the submissions. And still I ended up with rejections! I can't imagine what the average Joe who doesn't have a copy machine and doesn't double check his rebates goes through.
Through lengthy correspondence with the companies and re-submitting the rebates (with copies of the original material I sent), I was able to resolve all but one of the rebate rejections. The one which I never got was *drum roll please* a $20 CompUSA rebate, which by the way, I sent two resubmissions for. Both times I contacted the company a month after I mailed the resubmissions, and both times I was informed that they had never received the letters. When I finally told them I was able to produce delivery confirmation for the last mailing, they said the resubmission deadline was up and to "have a nice day". *click*. I wasn't going to spend $50 to file a claim so I didn't pursue it any further.
This year I did all my shopping at Staples, which, as mentioned, has the "Easy Rebate" system for almost all rebate purchases at the store. It's nice not having to send in forms and UPCs that can get "lost"; now they have no excuse as to why they can't fill my rebate! I advise skipping stores like CompUSA which have shady rebate (and retail!) practices.
Aside from breakage, rebates provide a way to screw investors!
Why do companies make you wait 2-3 months for a rebate? I bet they are trying to inflate their numbers for the current fiscal year by using rebates to increase revenues.... Then they can pay the rebates back during the next fiscal year.
The warranty idea is interesting... I just bought a low-cost LCD monitor with a 3-year service plan from Fry's.... The rebate from the monitor pretty much was offset by the cost of the extended warranty...
Interestingly, the rebate was only allowed at Frys, whereas the warranty was through the manufacturer.
Rebates are taxable income. You do report them on your income tax forms on the rare occasion you actually receive one, right? Most rebate recipients have something in common with Al Capone.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
What is so personal about a hired mail drop and an @yahoo.com email?
I get hundreds of dollars worth of rebates each year (most recently $150 + $50 for a color laser printer) with not much hassle at all.
I don't delude myself that this "hides me", but you are totally out to lunch if you think you can "hide" in this day and age. "They" know damn well who you are.
I find two mailing addresses help sort crap from friends and relatives, but never for one minute do I not think that "the man" has correlated my addresses. Everyone is happy.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I read on the packing slip that came with one of my shipments from TigerDirect that applying for a rebate will prevent me from returning the product in the future. None of the products I purchased at the time had rebates attached, but I'll always remember their warning when I have to choose between items offered with and without rebates. There's a little more to it than profitting from people who forget or are not qualified for the rebate.
More a statement of the US Tax system than anything else.
BTW - you are not screwing the government, you're stealing from your business!
For all you other whiners in this thread - have you declared State "use tax" if applicable to out-of-state purchases (e.g. Internet) which didn't collect your local sales tax? I thought so.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Some of them ARE indeed a scam. For example, a while ago I bought software from Roxio online and I even left a support ticket asking if I could still get the rebate. They said yes. Well obviously they lied! Later, I got a reply card from the org. handling their rebates to tell me I needed to send an original UPC code, which of course I didn't have because I bought it online for download only!
So you lie to your shareholders about your earnings. Why not? The whole deal is a big FU to the customer and the employee.
I know someone who actually worked at a CompUSA and they hated it. They told me the whole place was all about sucking the maximum amount of money from the customer and that it was a miserable place to work. The work was monotonous and management was as abusive to them as they were told to be to the consumers. If you think rebate coupons are rotten on your end, think about the peon on the other side of the register.
This person was amazed when I told them that I had worked at places that actually cared about their customers and tried to get them what they needed instead of what earned the most money in order to build customer loyalty and trust. It was like a culture shock after so many months of abuse.
The whole Wintel group is a kind of anti-company. A company exists for the benefit of three groups: the shareholders, the employees and the customers. No one group should be screwed for the others and any company that does will get around to screwing them all. Microsoft, CompUSA and ComputerWorld all collude to screw people. Microsoft has the upgrade train to move their software and other people's hardware. CompUSA tells you how smart you are to buy into it all, when they are not telling you to suck it up for a "rebate" you may or may not ever receive. When someone tell you to "suck it up", you are in bad company and it's time to go somewhere else.
The whole thing is a huge fraud. Not sending the rebate checks at all is not beneath companies that have paid PR firms to write letters from dead people to congress critters, sued public school systems, operated close to 20 years before paying a dividend and think spyware and popups are part of business as usual. I'd rather spend a few hours making a computer from the garbage work than I would filling out rebate forms with what some dumb slob thinks is valuable marketing data.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yeah, it's published in the phone book along with all the places you shopped last year, your mother's maiden name your city and state, how many hospitals are near you. The normal state of affairs, however, is that none of the information is connected and most people's private lives are just that. The database nation phone book links all of it together, along with lists of what you buy. It's more invasive than your most paranoid fantasies.
Am I paranoid? Not enough to have dreamed up Microsoft and the whole Wintel nighmare.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A lot of places contract out the rebate process. Various companies will make a bid and the lowest bidder gets the contract.
So let's say that I want to do the work of sending back rebates on a video card that Office Max sells. I figure out how many people will probably send in for a rebate, how much it will cost me in labor, postage and everything else. Then I add in a profit margin and submit my bid.
If I get the contract the company offering the rebate will pay me up front. The fewer people who I pay the rebate to the more profit I get. If too many people request rebates I could even lose money.
So if I'm unscrupulous I delay paying and maybe only pay off to people who take additional steps like complaining about not getting their money.
Not all "rebate companies" do this but it seems to me that a lot of them do.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Mail-in rebates only work for one kind of person, someone not too busy and never lazy... ergo, nobody.
I thought Fry's (fried) Electronics was the Walmart of the tech industry. I never go there for high end senstive electronic parts (cpu, mobo, etc). The only thing I buy there are items that are cheap, simple, and hard to damage. This is mainly because so much of their stuff is from manufacturers with low reputations and cheap stuff, futher, when an item is returned, its often miss-handled by the return counter people. I once saw a custmer returning a suposedly dead CPU, the return counter rep opened the box, took out the CPU, handled it (while wearing a flease sweeter), then put it back in the box and put it right back on the shelf to sell again. Further, the place carries everything under the sun from P_0_rn0 mags to electronics of all types to guns in some stores. If thats not an electronics version of Walmart then I don't know what is. BTW: their online store is www.outpost.com for those who dont know.
Wanna stop them? Make them post the BEFORE rebate price in a larger font than the after price. I hate rebates and frankly think they are way overused in this market segment. As for sucking it up and getting over it, how about just selling it at the price you have advertised? YOU suck it, Mr. Baker. You lure me into a store with this big $99.99 sticker price and wonder why I walk out when I find out my out of pocket expense is $159.00.
Only the manufacturer does. The store printing up the rebate forms and helping you consolidate the forms and receipts is as a convienience to the consumer. The manufacturer who does the rebate deals is the one who profits from the rebate process (i.e. people not turning them in due to forgetfulness or lost receipts).
/. has declined quite a bit in the past month or so.
I don't even understand the point of the article. Sounds like a cheap submarine advertisement for companies that do rebates to justify their business model. The quality of articles here on
Of course people want to save money, but that doesn't mean that the process isn't a little bit dishonest.
That is actually the most sensible explanation I have *ever* seen or expect to see regarding rebates.
The only one in fact that requires neither malevolence nor stupidity, and doing so while still making sense is impressive.
Also much more likely to be accepted that outright variable pricing(if you have more money you pay more because you're expected to... something nonspecific.)
Bravo to your logic. Or research.
First off, back before I started my career in the IT world, I was stuck working at office stores. (staples, circuit city, office depot) and they all had rebates, and they all had MANY customers coming in screaming that they never got their rebates. With that being said... Here is why they want you to do the rebate crap. Cut the UPC off the box, and send in your reciept.... Product breaks 2 days later, good luck returning that product to the store with a cut up box!!! Now your forced to deal with the manufacturors warranty (aka, send it in, and you may recieve it back in 3 to 6 years) THAT, in my opinions, is why rebates exist... to keep the average Joe from returning products to the store they bought it from.
Do NOT goto this URL http://www.forthesims.com
The article explains that while companies may not necessarily be going out of their way to make rebates difficult, they're also not doing anything to make them easier and they love the fact that they're not easy. Some retailers are trying to make it easier, but it's a lame half-way answer.
The rebate solution I want is simple: if Best Buy is selling something that retails for $100 and there's a $25 rebate, they charge me $75 and take the $25 rebate themselves. The first store that does that will win a lot of business.
(And no, none of them will...time value of money and all that).
Advice: on VPS providers
Rebates are clearly a way of allowing poor students (and the like) buy electronics cheaply, while making it unattractive to, say, businesses who value things higher and don't like waiting in line at 5am and don't have time to fill in forms.
It's like the airline industry: tickets are much cheaper to buy a long way in advance. Airlines would like to offer reasonable prices to tourists, while at the same time forcing business travellers to pay a high price.
In both cases, the sellers are lowering the quality of their customer experience purely to provide incentives for those who value their products highly to pay a high price.
So you don't like rebates? Here's what you should do.
Go to the store and take the flyer showing the rebated price in big letters (and the real price in teeny letters) with you, pick the item up off the shelf and take it to the counter. When the sales-droid rings up your purchase and tells you the price tell them they're wrong and show them the ad. When they point out the fine print, point out the big print and tell them that's what you're going to pay. Argue with them for a bit. When they won't give you the advertised price call the manager over. Argue with him for a bit. When he won't give you the advertised price leave the item on the counter and walk out.
The retailer will hate this, you've caused a scene in their store, delayed the cashier from ringing through purchases, annoyed other customers and they've lost a sale. If just a couple of people did this per store per day rebates would end in no time.
If you're really keen, after this file a complaint with the consumer protection department of your local government (don't bother with the BBB) claiming "bait and switch", unethical business practices and deceptive advertising.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
So I should trust rebates to work, despite class action lawsuits against Sony, Best Buy, Comp USA, Dell, and others for failing to pay?
That said, I have had good experiences with small ($5-$20) manufacturer rebates in the past. Retailer rebates have earned their foul reputation, and now even the good ones are paying the price for the unscrupulous ones. If only there were some way of lowering prices ahead of time, taking the intent of the rebate into account... Nah, can't be done!
Ah, but I actively avoid anything with a rebate attached, because a rebate is really saying "Hey, this is priced too high."
So I'd buy from another store instead, or buy a different product.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It's called theft by deception. It's nearly impossible to hold the middle people responsible for paying out the "rebate". There is no accountability in a system that is obfuscated and convoluted. A solution: Give the sale + rebate price at the counter and let the store collect the real money from the rebate demons. Then we will see how truly accountable these folks are at kicking back 100% of legitimate "rebates" It's a sham. Don't believe the propaganda the author of this article is puking. Not getting your money back from a rebate? Why do they have your money in the first place? Because you gave it to them. Let you be the one...
"Worse, I can't return the router without the reciept."
Yes, the stores and manufactures rely on people not submitting the rebates. Yes the stores and manufacturers rely on "loosing" or denying rebates for added profit, but in the end, even in a best case scenerio, you loose the right to return the product. So, when the product does not meet the specs on the box. Too bad. If the product dies three days after you bought it, you have to go through the expense and hassle of returning the product to the manufacturer. This is something that they know many people won't do.
The quote in the summary is bad enough, but if you follow the link, this Stephen Baker character actually has the nerve to say that "very few [rebates] are rejected". I fill out my forms to perfection, and they're routinely rejected. Most often, they claim I didn't include the UPC. When I call them and tell them I did, and that I have photocopied proof, they'll reverse themselves... when I can be bothered to call.
Oh, and how about that absurd multi-month processing delay? It seems calculated to be just long enough to make you forget that you ever sent anything in. What really gets me is this typical* email from Parago: "Please allow 8 weeks from the postmark date of your submission for processing your rebate." This is four days after I sent it in. They already entered my email address and name, at least, correctly into their database. So what do they need the other seven and a half weeks for?
* I say "typical", but of course it's even more typical to hear nothing until the check arrives, if it ever does.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Last year they promised a $100 rebate on a laptop computer. I circled the appropriate lines on the email receipt, filled out the form, printed everything out, made copies of the UPC codes and mailed everything in. They wrote back saying the store I bought it from didn't participate in the rebate, but I bought it from their own web site where the rebate was advertised!
Congratulations, Circuit City, you got my $100 but have lost all sales since then.
HP ran a promo in Australia where, if you proved you had purchased 20 ink cartridges for their printers, they'd send you a free digital camera.
... Profit".
:-).
So I dutifully bought one ink cartridge and used my HP printer to print an almost-identical receipt (font available on web) for 20 of them, changing certain details such as receipt number and so on.
Then the camera arrived, it went straight up on ebay and, "Step 3
Boy, am I ever under-handed
All the crap about accounting and marketing advantage and blah, blah, blah--it's all bullshit, and it's an insult to intelligent consumers, of which there are apparently few. Give me the straight price at the store and I buy it or I don't. That's it.
The big lie that the media and attorneys general want you to believe is that all the retailers and manufacturers are crooked and the reason [they] do rebates is breakage, which is people not turning them in.
No, the real reason is...INTEREST. That extra time that they are holding on to your money, they have it in the bank, which means they are collecting interest on it.
Imagine asking your billionaire friend to loan you $100,000,000 for four months. You put it in the bank, do nothing, and once your time is up, give it back... Now suddenly you have $4 million bucks and he hasn't lost a dime... well except for the interest that HE sould have been making.
THAT is the point of mail-in rebates.
Shockingly, Rite-Aid has the best rebate policy I've ever seen. When you buy an item with a rebate, your receipt has a code on it. You enter the code online, and, once a month, they send you a rebate check for all the codes that you entered. You could still enter the codes by mail if you wanted. Also, it was the fastest rebate I've ever received - about 3 weeks.
The only mail-in rebate I have sent in for and not received after a year plus is the Microsoft class-action suit rebate...
Tech Public Policy stuff
I think mail-in rebates (along with not including tax in the sticker price - that is a *ludicrous* US practice!) are one of the biggest cons for US purchasers ever. In the UK, customers simply wouldn't put up with it, asking the logical question "why isn't the rebate taken off when I buy the goods?".
The answer is indeed that vendors are hoping that the hassle of having to send back rebate coupons via snail mail would put off enough customers for them to claw back some money - there can be no other reason for mail-in rebates surely?
Even online stores seem to follow this practice when selling to US customers - I believe Dell US has mail-in rebates, but I've never seen Dell UK's site do it. Why don't US consumers complain about mail-in rebates to the appropriate authorities and get some sort of bill to ban them? It seems that without some sort of legal enforcement, US companies are going to continue this somewhat shady and unethical practice.
when almost 14% of my salary is paid into social security, and then I get a measly benefit back, that isn't exactly welfare for me.
If that's welfare, let me keep my 14% and they won't have to pay me anything when I retire. That way you can knock me off the welfare rolls in advance.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
If the purpose of rebates isn't to con a certain percent of people who won't turn them in, then let's do this: all unclaimed rebates escheat (legal term that means property without an owner reverting to the state). We do this with unclaimed bank accounts where the owner can't be found, so it isn't a radical step. Plus, if the legit rebate holder ever comes forward with a claim, the state can hand it over.
I'm betting that rebates would suddenly disappear from the face of the earth.
If you buy for a business, the rebate is kickback. After all, it doesn't show up on the receipt. A slick buyer can purchase the items with the best rebates and pocket the rebate.
"You would no this if you weren't a fucking liar"
You can't get mad at people like this. They are a constant source of entertainment.
The simple reason rebates and coupons exist is that they allow price discrimination. They are a way of offering a price reduction to those customers who want it. If they didn't exist, the seller would have to discount the price for everyone. I myself live in Europe, but occasionally buy electronics and other things when in the US. I get rebates but often don't bother sending them in - often because of the hassle (US addresses only, and so on), but also because the price already is significantly lower in Europe and I just want the product. I can easily imagine rich and busy Americans buying things and just forgetting about the rebate - which means that the seller gets more revenue. Price discrimination works to the benefit of both the spendthrift and the miser: The former gets the product he wants at a price he is willing to pay. This allows the seller to increase the amount on the rebate, making it cheaper for the miser, who is willing to spend the time and do the paperwork. For those of you carping about the 60% fulfillment rate: If all rebate coupons were redeemed, the rebates wouldn't be so good. So keep quiet and keep filling in those forms.
Espen
It took 1 year to receive the cheque for a Dell $200 rebate for an Inspiron 8200. Filled rebate coupon autumn 2002, received rebate autumn 2003.
That included several emails to inquire about the status of the rebate including a final one where I expressed my deep disappointment at not receiving the rebate. One year!
Next time the rebate had better be instantaneous or I will seriously think twice before buying into a Dell deal!
I bought an emachine at Best Buy over a year ago. It had something like 5 rebates. Monitor, Computer, Printer manufacturers, Best Buy, the whole nine yards. I just wanted a cheap computer to do some testing with. It took me something like 30 minutes to get all the envelopes stuffed with all the junk, go out to the mail box, and drop them in. To top it off every rebate was processed and back to me within weeks, rather than months. It was silly, but in the end I was able to give my wife (girlfriend at the time) a printer for free, a friend a monitor he desperately needed to replace something that (its a slight exageration) reminded me of a monochrome CRT, and use the PC myself. Could I complain? Not really. Sure, it was silly to have to fill that all out to get the money back, but they handed me EVERYTHING I needed at the register, I walked out with a stack of receipts, receipt copies, rebate forms printed out on receipt paper. Everything. The store definately made it clear cut, painless, hid nothing, and created NO loopholes. It did NOT seem like they were trying to hide anything from anyone.
You saw me most frequently on the forums of qb45.com posting by my given name "Robert Claypool"
Gift cards are a terrible gift. Think about it. You give a friend a $25 gift card to "Best City", a local big-box electronics chain.
So you're saying "I'm giving you cash, but I've decided what store you can spend it in". Gee, thanks. Just give me cash.
Its pretty obvious why retailers like you to prespend your money with them. But why do consumers like them? It's puzzling.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Agreed. And here's why.
I was at the bank the other day. I walk up to the teller to take care of my transactions and, after she accesses my account, she says,"Oh. You live at such-and-such address? I used to live in that building as well."
WAIT.
How much do I want unprivileged people (bank tellers, rebate processors, anyone) to know where I live? I don't know where they live. Lord only knows who works in those institutions.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I once bought a game with a rebate offer that required writing on a plastic laminated form that had very small spaces available for the required info. The requirement also stated it be in ink. After failed testing with a fine point ballpoint pen I filled it out with a fine point Sharpie writing very small and cramped. I waited half an hour for it to dry before touching it and still I feared that the writing wouldn't be legible enough.
But how many people would have gone through all that? How many had a fine point Sharpie (or other marker) handy? How many could write that small while avoiding hopelessly smudging the form?
I eventually recieved my check but the entire experience left a bad taste in my mouth concerning rebates.
'Intellectual Properties' are uncontrollable in the wild. To base an economy on them is just stupid.
You buy an item for $100, with a $20 rebate. In effect, you are loaning them $20 for a few weeks/months. Multiply that $20 by a few tens of thousands of people, compund interest for a coupla months and poof, free money. Add to that the people who forget, or are refused for whatever reason, and even more free money.
If Samsung, Inc. called and asked you to loan them $20, obviously you wouldn't do it. They are a billion dollar megacorp, and you are just a poor individual shopper. Wrap it in effective marketing, and people line up for hours begging to loan them $20 each.
...with all the negativity going on here. Being a deal hunter, I've done several hundred rebates ranging from $2 to $500 over the past few years and at least 90% of them arrive as promised within a couple of months with no issues. Another 8% required me to call or email because they made some claim about not having the right form or other reason for not paying immediately, but they ultimately paid. Only 2% of my rebates were ultimately never paid (usually because I neglected to follow up in a reasonable timeframe and sometimes due to perceived duplicate rebates because two separate items used the same form and stupid things like that) and they were all low amounts ($5-$20) and never any of the large rebates ($50, $150, $300, $500).
These companies will not pay if they can avoid it, but there's no trickery going on - they simply pay you if you did all the steps right and don't go out of their way to pay if you screwed up on any little thing (and no, they don't go for stupid technicalities like misspellings or anything like that.)
btw, these statistics come from my tracking spreadsheet, which is an essential tool if you're doing as many of these things as I do. Also, a tip for everyone is MAKE COPIES OF EVERYTHING and don't send original UPCs or receipts unless the form absolutely requires it - many will allow receipt copies and a few will allow UPC copies as well. Keep the originals in case you ever need to resubmit.
I'm really glad this mail-in rebate stuff is uncommon over here in the UK. Of course, it helps that there's a single sales tax rate for the whole country and it's already included in the price.
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:
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...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
If you take what I and my employer put into social security and then run the numbers (the magic of compound interest), I should have at least $1M in the bank when I retire.
So people always claim its a good deal because I'll probably get 1/3th that, and technically less, because I can't get a lump-sum payoff, *AND* I have to pay taxes on money that I've already paid taxes on. Wonderful.
We'd be better off if you forced people to contribute to their own savings account, same percent as we pay now, and then when we retire, take a flat 10% of the balance to pay for all the widows and orphans. They'd have more money and I'd have more money.
And I wasn't trolling with my original post .
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
For example, I recently bought two 512MB RAM sticks, but only one qualified for the rebate. Besides explaining in part why 40% of the rebates go unclaimed, this establishes a market differentiation: home users get a rebate (eventually), while businesses are effectively shut out of the sale price. Like the $5 turkey sale before Thanksgiving, it benefits the home cook without attracting buyers from the local restaurant.
was far less than the supply, it seemed
grr... That should read 'far greater' not 'far less.'
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
This guy is full of it. Sometimes you get lucky, but way too many times the rebate gets processed incorrectly or never at all. I've had to contest 4 (non-computer) rebates this year alone: (1) Glidden Paint, (2) Behr Paint, (3) RIData, (4) Home Depot/Clopay. One is still unresolved.
. html
I guess this guy has also never heard of CYBERREBATE.COM -- the ultimate scam. Some people are still in court over this one. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/cyberrebate