Best Buy Working Towards Ending Mail-in Rebates

chibbie writes "Best Buy is finally working towards ending mail-in rebates by 2007. Rebates will still be around, but you will be able to file them online, and receive your check much quicker. I guess this means Best Buy doesn't hate their customers after all."

Comments

I don't think so.

[ScrewMaster]

guess this means Best Buy doesn't hate their customers after all.

Sure they do.

Re:I don't think so.

[bfdhud]

Agreed. I still remember the letter they sent out to the xbox 360 customers about the launch day fiasco. And there is still the specific market targetted stores. Those alone will impulse buy me into the poor house. Anyone need a roommate?

Re:I don't think so.

[Achoi77]

They just makes it easier to keep track of people who flub up their rebate submissions. Mix up a rebate tracker number (or whatever it's called), or make a typo in your receipt number- and your rebate is invalid. BAM - there goes $60 you're never going to see. Perhaps you caught your mistake, and you want to resubmit it with the correct number; the computer will catch you resubmitting, and will consider you trying to dupe your rebate submission (you know, to 'catch' all those evil-doers that are trying to cheat the system by submitting over and over again *yeah right*) and will void your rebate. By having it all computerized, you remove the human element (i.e. the people that are paid to process your rebate forms via mail, and have them verify that the rebate is not void), and they save money by not having to hire people to process the mail-in rebates, AND accurately keep statistical analysis of the percentage of failed submissions to notify the accountants how much Best Buy has *saved* by not having to honor your rebate. Most of the time people won't care, since they will be able to do it right the first time, but if you mess up - poor internet connection, or cat jumped on keyboard and pressed enter or even just a typo or mixup- it just gives bestbuy a reason not to honor that rebate check.

Best Buy doesn't hate customers, they just hate customers that are trying to nickle and dime them - and that includes everybody that shops with rebates in mind.

Re:I don't think so.

[anagama]

My last purchase at Worst Buy was about two years ago. I bought a HD that should have been $60 after rebate. My local store had the same HD for sale at $70 ... no rebate, no gimmicks, just $70. Long story short, I decided to "save" the $10 and go to Worst Buy. Well, I never got the $40 rebate and I paid $100 for the HD. So I lost $30 and Worst Buy lost a customer for life. Mind you, that wasn't the only rebate I got screwed out of -- just the last one.

Re:I don't think so.

[jbrader]

Maybe...

Will you share your impulse buys?

Re:I don't think so.

[Skater]

It's funny - I always hear these stories about people never getting their rebate, but I've probably done 50 of them over the last 8 years and have always received the rebate. Large or small amount, it doesn't matter who the vendor was, etc. I've always gotten them.

The one time I had a problem was a free computer game offer, but even that arrived eventually (it might've been 6 months, but I did eventually receive it, and when I called to check on it after waiting 6-8 weeks, they explained the delay and gave me a new expected ship date).

Personally I don't have a major problem with Best Buy. I generally don't go to them for computer hardware, though; I've got a Microcenter nearby for that. :)

Re:I don't think so.

[nazsco]

now, instead of having the mail co involved, they will have a website that you will only be able to log in in low traffic hours, with latest IE, latest windows service pack, and latest flash plugin.

Re:I don't think so.

[virtualchoirboy]

...OR....

They are just trying to catch up with PriceCostco. They've been doing this for at least two years now. You buy a product with a rebate, go to the Costco web site, fill in your receipt number and mail to address and get your rebate in 7-10 days.

Painless, easy and fast.

Re:I don't think so.

[keraneuology]

Many (most?) Costco rebates are done over the web. If you flub up a number then it says "Sorry, you flubbed up a number - care to try again?" and has you repeatedly try until you get it right.

Re:I don't think so.

[Professor_UNIX]

Mix up a rebate tracker number (or whatever it's called), or make a typo in your receipt number- and your rebate is invalid.

I think you're being just a little bit unfair to Best Buy here. Staples has had "Easy Rebates" for awhile now and they really are a hell of a lot easier. Go to their website, type in the number on your receipt, and receive your rebate check two weeks later. Simple. If you can't type in a stupid number on a receipt then something is really wrong with you. I'd rather check a number a few times on a receipt than home some minimum wage monkey can read my chicken scratch when I hand-write a rebate onto those little receipt rebate forms.

Re:I don't think so.

[Bloke down the pub]

I think you're being just a little bit unfair to Best Buy here. Staples has had "Easy Rebates" for awhile now and they really are a hell of a lot easier.

Someone says Best Buy's rebate system is crap, and you counter by saying that someone else's is OK?

Re:I don't think so.

[poddys]

When you think of how much it costs to process a mail in rebate it doesn't make sense - after all they have to have a huge number of people to process the claims sent in, then to process the checks sent out, then in accounting to reconcile the differences since the checks barely last 90 days. For the most part the cost of processing far exceeds the rebate amount. So what's the point? It can only be to con the consumer into buying something at a lower price, knowing that a good proportion of consumers will futz up their rebates or forget about them until it's too late. So does that make it ethical? Are they deliberately offering rebates hoping that most of the consumers who buy the product are stupid? There is no other explanation is there.... I would much rather have a lower rebate and make it instant. But I guess that would hurt the unemployment rate in places like Young America, MN (is there such a place?) where many of the rebates end up being sent.

Re:I don't think so.

[rapidweather]

I went in Compusa a few years ago, and in the checkout lane the person ahead of me was buying a new Compaq pc. When the clerk asked for $600.00 or whatever the gross price was before rebates, the person cancelled the sale, and walked out. Apparently thinking that the price was $350, as advertised in the bold print in the flyer.
The clerk was somewhat upset, and forgot to tear off the register receipt for the cancelled sale, and I wound up with it when I bought my box of floppies. The person was elderly, and perhaps took the advertisement at face value, without reading the tiny (excuse me, small) print.
Later, I read the Compusa got in trouble with the FTC for not paying the rebates.
Good to hear that Best Buy is working on ending the rebate program sometime in 2007. Why not put that on a fasttrack, and get it done before "Black Friday", 2006?
I do like to shop at Office Depot also, and I wish they would get out of the rebate business too.
We are just lending them money for the time between when they get our money, and the time the rebate is cashed and hits their bank. Walmart does not use rebates, so their flyers reflect the real price of the item, honest and upfront I say. Everyone knows you get no support at the point of sale at Walmart. When I went to Office Depot to buy a new hard drive, the clerk that opened the display case for me said, "ha ha don't ask me any questions about that, I don't know anything..."
I didn't expect them to do something like give me a free floppy with tomrtbt linux on it to aid in partitioning my new drive, or anything like that. I didn't ask any questions, assuming that part of the price was for the brick and mortar impulse-buy convenience, and not for some sort of "value-added support".
I do wish that Walmart would use locked display cases on expensive computer parts like graphics cards and hard drives, to keep the boxes in a more or less pristine condition before I take one home. They do have lots of friendly, helpful staff on the floor that would gladly unlock the case for a serious buyer. I do like Walmart, and wish I could spend money there more often.

Re:I don't think so.

[ShnowDoggie]

I have had a few problems with rebates. Usually its a letter stating that I did not buy the correct product or set of products. There is a number I can call to correct any errors. I have called to correct, but I needed my receipt, which could have been easily lost. I too have always received the rebate in end. But what a pain. So I never look at the after mail-in-rebate price when I shop. And I do think the mail in rebates are somewhat a sham.
PS: I have done, maybe, 16 mail-in rebates over the last 8 years. A bit less than your 50....

Re:I don't think so.

[gravyface]

I'm not an accountant (shit, I can hardly count without ++) but perhaps getting full price upfront and deferring the discount to a later quarter, may make some beanie's Quarterly Report X look shiny.

Re:I don't think so.

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

I've used Staples online rebates for a year and a half, and it is much better than mailing them in. You also have proof that you sent in the rebate, and you don't have to cut out the barcode from the package (which makes it better as a gift).

Re:I don't think so.

[commanderfoxtrot]

In the UK, rebates are very rare. Personally, I think it's better just to have a simpler price structure- the infrastructure must cost at least 10 dollars per successfully claimed rebate.

Re:I don't think so.

[emmaussmith]

But I guess that would hurt the unemployment rate in places like Young America, MN (is there such a place?) where many of the rebates end up being sent.

Young America is the name of a promotions company that does many things other than just rebates. I've noticed many, many things that go there. The drink cap offers Pepsi had, sweepstakes entries, and lots of other promotional things. Just look at all they say they offer.

Re:I don't think so.

[Skater]

If you're accusing me of astroturfing for Best Buy, let me say that no one pays me money or any other compensation for any comment I make on Slashdot or anywhere else on the internet. (Just because someone says something you disagree with doesn't mean they're astroturfing.)

My experience has been that I've have good luck with rebates, from Best Buy as well as plenty of other retailers, both online and off. I'm not a huge fan of Best Buy; as I mentioned I avoid buying computer parts there, and after the people in appliances totally ignored me when I wanted to buy a dishwasher, I go elsewhere for appliances, too. I did buy a PS2 controller there recently, though.

Where will I be if I start not getting rebates? I'll be fine. As I mentioned, I don't buy stuff based on the rebate price; I consider it a bonus.

It'd be interesting to see how many people really do get rebates. Naturally the people most vocal about it are the ones that haven't received them; but I wonder what percentage of people that apply for the rebates don't get them.

Re:I don't think so.

[jd_esguerra]

I have received all of my BBuy rebate checks. But I almost screwed myself once. A lot of the computer product rebate offers are actually the sum of TWO rebates: One from Best Buy and one from the manufacturer. Well, when they only give you one rebate form, it isn't intuitive that you have to hunt for a second one to get the full rebate. (They are usually on the wall near the exit, or near the product on the shelf.) They have improved recently (I guess); now they give you multiple receipts and both rebate forms at the checkout. Still, if you don't read carefully, it can appear that they gave you two copies of the same form, when in fact they have to be mailed to two different addresses (which are usually printed near the bottom.)

Re:I don't think so.

[Professor_UNIX]

Someone says Best Buy's rebate system is crap, and you counter by saying that someone else's is OK?

No, I said he's being unfair to Best Buy by pre-emptively saying their online rebate system is going to suck as much as their mail-in system. The only company I have experience with that has an online rebate system similar to what Best Buy wants to introduce is Staples, thus I used them as an example of a system that works well with online rebates. I, personally, have never had an issue with mail-in rebates with Best Buy (when I remember to send them in before the postmark date!) but I much prefer a system where I don't have to juggle paper and send in my original barcodes while waiting 8 weeks for a check that I've forgotten about to come for $10.

Re:I don't think so.

[cdeobald]

Two weeks? You're lucky. I submitted a Staples online rebate in November - still haven't received it. Easier than mail-in rebates, yes. Faster, NO.

Re:I don't think so.

[ScrewMaster]

I don't. Got burned one too many times and decided to shop elsewhere.

Re:I don't think so.

[Kastigador]

Rebates are a mix of creative retail economics. First off, everyone needs to differentiate between rebates from manufacturers and rebates from the retail store. Best Buy likes to often times supplement mfg rebates to create really good deals(after rebate). This is where the problems start. Mfg rebates are absolutely terrible. The manufacturer themselves generally outsource the whole entire rebate process to a 3rd party. The manufacturer pays a set amount for a company to take care of cashing in all the rebates. This amount is conjured from various metrics, but the point is that it's a set amount and the manufacturers are released of these complicated financial obligations with a one time charge. Now the 3rd party has this set amount paid to them by the manufacturer and is effectively obligated to fulfill rebates. The mfg's have therefore washed their hands and this obscure 3rd party has nothing to lose by f'ing up rebates(oops, lost it... or, misread the postmark date? we're human, it happens.) Every dime they don't dish is more money for them. Meanwhile, Best Buy gets most the angry customers(not the mfg). Just try contacting the third party rebate cashiers sometime. You're in for some serious frustration if you can actually figure out how to get a hold of a human being. On the other hand, Best Buy does a hell of a good job honoring rebates. Even in my experience, I've even gotten back a number of rebates that are sent out past the postmark date before. They have a real reason to care about keeping their customers happy. This new system is just them making it even easier to fulfill these. The problem is, it's not going to fix the manfuacturers rebate problem. Theres too many party involved to pin blame on any of them, and since the retail joints inevitably get the angry customers and class-action lawsuits, what do these mfg's care? Rebates aren't going anywhere. They're great for profit-now-expense-later creative accounting/financials for all of these publicly traded companies.

It's Not Enough

[Al Mutasim]

Why not just deduct the rebate at the cash register? We all know that's doable. No, their dream is to extract from each customer the maximum personal price. Those willing to pay full price do, and those only willing to pay a lower price get it. Willingness to do senseless work determines who falls in what camp--it's just like coupon clipping.

Re:It's Not Enough

[tommers]

In a sense that seems totally reasonable. Capitalism generally doesn't have the benefits of an auction model where the people who really value a product (or have a lot of money/resources) can subsidize the experience for those who don't. So for people who really wish things are cheaper, they can get things for a lower price at the expense of those who are more indifferent and won't go through the hassle of mailing in a coupon for $30.

Re:It's Not Enough

[ejdmoo]

They can do that, but then you'll simply see less rebates, because then all rebates would get honored, not just some.

Thanks to mail-in rebates, those of us who aren't too lazy or stupid to fill them out will save more than everyone else.

Re:It's Not Enough

[TubeSteak]

Willingness to do senseless work determines who falls in what camp--it's just like coupon clipping.

You only knock coupon clipping because you don't do it.

I can't imagine that anyone about to spend over a thousand dollars on a TV or computer @ Best-buy would turn down a 10%, 15%, or 20% off coupon.

My mother regularly saves 30%~50% on groceries because she clips coupons and uses her frequent shopper card. She saves the reciepts to show me and everytime, I ask her when the supermarkets will just start giving her food for free.

Rebates and coupons have low redemption rates, which is why bargain hunters spend much less on the same things you and I buy every day. If rebates were rung up at the register, the savings offered would drop like a rock as the rate of redemption headed for 100%.

Re:It's Not Enough

[DerekLyons]

Why not just deduct the rebate at the cash register? We all know that's doable. No, their dream is to extract from each customer the maximum personal price. Those willing to pay full price do, and those only willing to pay a lower price get it. Willingness to do senseless work determines who falls in what camp--it's just like coupon clipping.

Money saved via rebates on a new (2wks old today) computer system, games, and other software: $500

Time to fill out rebate forms: 15 mins

Senseless?: No.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Nick Kirven]

I'm still waiting on my rebate from my Voodoo3 2000 card. Yeah, I'm lazy and stupid. Or, I was lied to. Since I don't have my rebate cheque, despite filling in and mailing the form, you decide.

Re:It's Not Enough

[evilviper]

My mother regularly saves 30%~50% on groceries because she clips coupons and uses her frequent shopper card.

All stores lie to their customers to PRETEND they're getting a discount.

The other day I was in a store and saw a sign for Levi's 501s for $38, MSRP $42. Then I went to the store next door and saw a similar sign: Levi's 501s for $34, MSRP $38. There isn't any way to reconcile this, other than realizing that stores are lying through their teeth.

Back to the point, I also saw a documentary a few months ago about shopping clubs. They went to a city with two supermarkets with shopping clubs and bought a good list of various items with their club cards. Then they went to a neighboring city, bought the same items from a similar supermarket with no shopping club, and the non-discounted items without a card were a LOT cheaper.

The moral of this story... Stores are lying to you. Shopping clubs only pretend to save you money. You have to compare not to the non-discounted price at the same store, but to the normal price at a non-shopping club store. Club cards are only useful if you can't chose to shop elsewhere.

Besides, the customer tracking is completely unacceptable. It only serves to find out how to squeeze more money out of you. Just think about it, they can find out what products are selling in aggregate without tracking each buyer. They only need per-buyer info to figure out how to make their store less attractive to customers who aren't making them much money. Club cards don't magically make it cheaper for the supermarket to buy that head of lettuce, or can of soup.

Re:It's Not Enough

[smeenz]

Rebates must be an American thing... In NZ, I've never heard of this sort of craziness. If the vendor is offering a discount on their product, they do it through the retailer, like you suggest. It seems that for some reason, Americans accept the idea that they should pay full price to a retailer, and then snail mail in a piece of paper to get a cheque back in the mail that they can then cash ? I can only imagine how much paperwork and paper handling has to occur to complete that process. I never use cheques in this country, and I don't know many people who do, because everyone here accepts eftpos or direct deposits into their bank account. I guess I'm just used to avoiding paperwork.

Re:It's Not Enough

[EvanED]

You have to compare not to the non-discounted price at the same store, but to the normal price at a non-shopping club store

With rebates often it works out that the rebates are cheaper though. I've seen some rebated stuff at stores that are far cheaper than any online price. They tend to be small things (a spindle of CD-Rs or similar), but occasionally you see a jackpot. I saw a 120 GB hard drive for I think around $50. Pricewatch puts a similar drive at $55. A similar drive from Segate (which was the sale item) is $67. The cheapest such item that has "retail" in the description is $98. Rebates on a 19" LCD put the price on par with online. (Both of these were during the discounts shortly after Christmas.) In both cases you don't have to worry about the product getting damaged in shipment, waiting for it to arrive, giving out CC number over the internet, etc.

Club cards are only useful if you can't chose to shop elsewhere.

Which often is the case. There are I think four places to do grocery shopping around here: Giant, Weis, Wegman's, and Wal-Mart. The first three are all shoppers' club stores, and there's no way I'd do more shopping at Wal-Mart than I have to.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Chosen Reject]

It's not just shopping clubs. I used to always buy corn flakes at a wal-mart for $1.17 per box. Did it for several months. One day I walk in and suddenly it's on sale...for $1.17. The sign said it was normally $1.33.

Re:It's Not Enough

[jimboisbored]

Yes, online rebates is definately the answer. Just like the two I didn't get from Tigerdirect. I bought stuff and there were 3 rebates to enter. I entered all 3 on there onrebate.com website. I received one and the other two came back saying something about the address information not matching. Funny, because I filled ALL 3 OUT THE SAME and got one back. I kept emailing them, getting very pissed and they just wouldnt do anything about it. Just the other day I got a card from Pioneer for a $20 rebate on a DVD burner saying in was invalid due to invalid purchase location (bought this at best buy) When I go to the website to check the status it say's it's in the final stages and will be sent off soon. Fuck MIR's.

Re:It's Not Enough

[evilviper]

Club cards are only useful if you can't chose to shop elsewhere.

Which often is the case.

Which is why I said it...

Actually, I don't think it's OFTEN the case. Depending on where you are and what stores are around, driving 50 miles out of your way might actually save you a lot of money, and allow you to maintain some privacy as well. I'm not in a big city, but it's still only a 15 mile drive to get to a much better supermarket than the 2 around here.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Achoi77]

It's a marketing tactic, look up Loss Leader for example.

Tactics like this are used to entice foot traffic; they bring in customers into the store. Of course, once they are in, customers tend to purchase other goods along with the 'discounted goods,' and hopefully profit will ensue to the business. It also employs another important strategy: It prevents the customer from going to the competitor's establishment to spend their money. Most of the time loss leader goods are cooperative strategies employed by both the retail establishment and the goods manufacturer/supplier. The manufacturer receives brand visibility and the the local Best Buy gets 20% more people wanting to shop there in hopes of getting the goods at the discounted price as advertised.

The downside to tactics like this (from the retail side) is that diligent customers that purchase only loss leader goods results in the net loss of profit. In order to curb that loss of profit, Best Buy will do whatever it takes (in a legal sense) to prevent you from receiving that rebate check; make it a hassle with all the paperwork in order to submit that rebate form by mail, or void any rebate submissions (and future submission opportunities) they see legally fit when you fail to follow their 'guidelines.'

Well, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. :-P

Re:It's Not Enough

[aywwts4]

No shit Sherlock.

Re:It's Not Enough

[bigdavex]

My mother regularly saves 30%~50% on groceries because she clips coupons and uses her frequent shopper card. She saves the reciepts to show me and everytime, I ask her when the supermarkets will just start giving her food for free.

She's not saving more than I am by going to the Low Bill or the Aldi and buying generics. The receipts only prove that she would've been screwed if she bought brand names at full price.

Re:It's Not Enough

[91degrees]

It is senseless. You gave them $500 for them to give back to you to get it at the price it would have been if there were no rebates.

Re:It's Not Enough

[damsa]

Isn't what you describing what they call price discrimination in economics and when doing so means an abuse of monopoly power?

Re:It's Not Enough

[damsa]

Loss leader is also closely related to bait and switch. People come to get that hard drive for free after rebate, but the store only has five, since you need a hard drive anyways, you see a hard drive at 10% off, so you pick up the more expensive hard drive at a discount.

Re:It's Not Enough

[bm_luethke]

"My mother regularly saves 30%~50% on groceries because she clips coupons and uses her frequent shopper card. She saves the reciepts to show me and everytime, I ask her when the supermarkets will just start giving her food for free."

Food city already does this. Every month thier card holders get a coupon book. Much of it is just regular type coupons (a common one is 2 dollars off 10 dollars of some type of meat). Between 1/4 and 1/2 of the book is free food. Most of it isn't stuff I would buy any way - free cheap sardines isn't a good deal if I don't like expensive high class sardines (assuming there is such a thing :) ).

For example, this month has a free bunch of carrots and a free can of decent beef stew (I don't recall the brand, but it's one of the ones I will sometimes purchase anyway). It has much more, but these were the two I was asked if I wanted to use today. There have been a handful of things we now use because of it, though most of it "free" is too expensive.

Re:It's Not Enough

[hairyfeet]

Which is why I love the way staples set up their online rebates.It took me less than 40 minutes and got the checks in 40 days-No hassles.And their black friday sale was not only sweet,But was run like a swiss watch.

You got in a single file line,Told them what you wanted at the first desk,Had it ready for you at the second desk which pointed you straight to the checkout.Ours is across the street from Wal Mart and we all laughed at they way the crowds fought like animals.Plus you can't beat 200 gig hard drives for $30 and 16 speed +/- dual layer burners for $20!

And I don't know about other places but here they go out of there way to help folks.When some of the older folks said they didn't have internet and could they get the rebates one of the sales people sat them down and help them fill it out on the stores connection! Now that's the way to treat folks.After that I buy all my blanks and little gadgets from them.

If these companies that try to rip folks off would just realize that a little kindness and consideration goes a long way when it comes to repeat business we'd all be better off.After all,Their friendly treatment of everybody got me to spend nearly $200 instead of the $60 or so that I'd originally planned to spend at staples.Treat folks right and they'll be happy to bring repeat business to your store.

Re:It's Not Enough

[drgonzo59]

This is not new and is an old marketing trick. The store I know that does this the most is Macy's. My brother worked for them and their pricing works something like this: there are always 3 prices for each item: the retail price, which is an artificially high price that no items will ever be sold at, then there is the actual price of the item that it is selling now at, then there is the sale price. The discount for the sale price is calculated from the inflated retail price. So if you go their store and see a sofa that supposedly used to cost $2000 and not after the magic 50% sale, it costs only $1000, don't reach for the wallet just yet, because no one has ever sold that sofa for $2000 dollars. You can probably buy it at another store for $800. And the sale is there only to make you feel like you are getting a deal.

Re:It's Not Enough

[TERdON]

Why not just deduct the rebate at the cash register? We all know that's doable. No, their dream is to extract from each customer the maximum personal price. Those willing to pay full price do, and those only willing to pay a lower price get it. Willingness to do senseless work determines who falls in what camp--it's just like coupon clipping.

This is exactly how it works in Sweden already. If there's a rebate, you give the rebate coupon to the cashier, and you get the price deduction immediately.

The only company NOT doing like that, that I can think of, is Apple, normally with iPod + computer campaigns. They demand mail-in coupons, and people have had quite some problem getting their money from them as well, at least from a Swede's view (with their dumb policy that the rebate should be mailed in within 30 days from order, including EAN code from the package, you're asking for trouble when the company often can't deliver in 30 days...).

Oh, there are some more examples - the stores that just don't bother with rebates at all, and just lower the prices (although they sometimes set a limit on purchased items at the low price per customer)...

Re:It's Not Enough

[aichpvee]

Wait until someone else (Staples maybe?) starts doing that and they'll switch over to all instant rebates. The only reason they're dropping mail-in is because other retailers have and they're scared.

They already seem to be doing more instant rebates anyway. The final price is usually a bit higher than with the mail-in rebate though.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Jarnis]

In sane, civilized countries, like Finland for example, this practice is blatantly illegal.

Over here you cannot advertise a discount, unless it is based on an actual retail price that the product has actually been sold for prior to the discount in the same store. Failure to follow the law carries steep fines.

Yes, there are ways to 'milk' this as well - say, sell some product for a few weeks for an inflated price, then drop it to a 'big' discount, but in general scams like the one you describe do not happen over here. Mostly discounts are 'real' discounts - companies clearing out excess stock to make room for new stuff. Or just outright advertising stuff cheap *without* silly '50% off' stickers. You can sell cheap to pull in people, you just can't claim it's 50% off some imaginary 'retail' price that has no basis in reality.

Re:It's Not Enough

[h3llfish]

I agree with everything you said, but I think there is an important difference. With a conventional coupon, the comsumer can be quite certain before hand which camp he belongs to, and what price he will pay. But with a rebate, the whole point is that many people will delude themselves into thinking that they will jump through the hoops and get the money, when in fact they will not put in the time and effort.

So no falsehood is told to the consumer by the firms selling the product, but the firms count on a lie that the consumer tells himself. It's not illegal, but it's evil in my book.

It seems that a huge portion of business today is based on the concept of telling the literal truth, and counting on the consumer to form a false impression. It's easy to think of it as a "stupid tax", and tell yourself that only morons fall for the advertising hype. And yet I'd be willing to bet that almost every person on slashdot has failed to fill out a rebate form or two at some point, or in some other way fallen for this particular brand of BS.

And it's tough to do anything about it, since the whole point of the deception is that no one ever lied to you. No laws were broken. They counted on you, the consumer, to be stupid, or lazy, or naive, or that you would just let your hope for a better life cloud your reason.

Someday, this mountain of bullshit has to come crashing down on us.

Re:It's Not Enough

[cymen]

Tivo made 4 million dollars because rebate submissions were 50% of potential.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Tim C]

They already seem to be doing more instant rebates anyway. The final price is usually a bit higher than with the mail-in rebate though.

Of course it is - more people actually get the rebate, thus the average price of the time goes down, thus they have to make the saving smaller to make the same amount of money.

Re:It's Not Enough

[drgonzo59]

I bet there you don't enter into a store and almost everything, at all times is on sale. "WOW! 30% discount -- I gotta get this deal" All that and combined with strict deadlines ("Quick the sale ends tomorrow!") seems to work wonders for the American department stores.

Re:It's Not Enough

[itsmekirby]

Yes, coupons, rebates, matinee movies, senior discounts are all examples of price discrimination.

Price discrimination only "works" on monopolistic situations because of the downward sloping demand curve (they face the entire buyer's market, unlike competitive markets which are price takers) When this happened, they increase their revenues by pushing their revenue area (Price X Quantity) higher up into what some consumers are willing to pay but otherwise keep because of standard prices (consumer surplus, aka "warm fuzzy feeling")

Abuse of monopoly power, I'm not so sure. I am definitely against rebates because for many of them you don't get to read their conditions until after you have bought your item. You know its there when you buy it but don't know how much of a pain in the ass it will be (depending on the conditions).

Personally, I buy things assuming I'm not going to get any money back.

Re:It's Not Enough

[SurgeonGeneral]

You are right, mail in rebates are definately a tactic that companies like Best Buy use to get people in the door, but there is another reason to use mail in rebates that most people probably dont realize.

When you deal with mass quantities of sales like Best Buy does, a lot of money flows in and out the doors. Keeping the money in the door for as long as possible before it has to flow back out allows for the corporation to maximize its use of the money while it has it.

If it takes a minimum of, say, 40 days to process a mail in rebate, thats about 30 days that Best Buy gets to hang on to your money. More correctly though, thats 30 days that it gets to USE your money. With the massive amounts of small purchases that come in, this really adds up, and the interest obtained from holding that money for those 30 days is a valuable source of income for Best Buy. Further to this, when you get a large cash float income for reinvestment like Best Buy can obtain through this process, the interest payments and investment returns go way, way up. I can gaurentee you that this is a revenue stream that Best Buy tries to maximize.

Re:It's Not Enough

[MichaelSmith]

Rebates must be an American thing... In NZ, I've never heard of this sort of craziness.

Here in .au we get a bit of it. You can pay $800 for a laptop by paying $1000 up front and writing in for $200 back.

My wife bought a Brother fax machine from officeworks which came with a free MP3 player. You had to write in for it but the documentation didn't come with the unit. I emailed the sales staff and they sorted it out with the retailer. Some people wouldn't have bothered.

What we got was a 256 MB MP3 player/USB key preloaded with some crap music. I thought that this unit might sell for $30 at a swap meet. Later I saw it on sale at a retailer for $100. I suppose it will make money for somebody that way.

Re:It's Not Enough

[gchang6]

manufacturer's coupons are not necessarily a cheaper way to shop at local supermarkets; I have found that that extra 30 cents off on a bottle of detergent is definitely not worth the money and effort. It is better to buy generic. You constantly save over 50% of the national brands. Not only you save more by buying generic, you save the indignity of showing wads of coupons in front of a long line of inpatient shoppers. I agree with the shopper's club card though. I would use that extra hour saved from clipping the stupid coupons by going to jogging, to burn off those extra cookies.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Tony Hoyle]

Same in the UK, but there's a hole in the law - the item must have been sold at the higher price for 30 days previously but only in that chain, not in that particular store.

This leads to 'was prices', which are similar to what the USians are talking about, except in the small print at the bottom it'll say 'previously sold at backstreet branch, scunthorpe for the higher price' - so one store gets the hit, and they carry on lying as normal.

Re:It's Not Enough

[charliebear]

Generic is great.... until you realize that your clothes aren't as clean with supr-wash detergent as they were with Tide, etc. Or the suds you get with cleans-a-lot dish soap don't last as long as Dawn, etc. Sometimes it is worth it to pay a premium for a premium product.

Re:It's Not Enough

[anthony_dipierro]

Isn't what you describing what they call price discrimination in economics and when doing so means an abuse of monopoly power?

You're half right. It's called price discrimination, but doing so is rarely an abuse of monopoly power. Where it becomes illegal is when a monopoly manufacturer engages in price discrimination between different distributors - this is a form of collusion.

The term "price discrimination" sounds like it might have a negative connotation, but it really doesn't have one among economists.

Re:It's Not Enough

[anthony_dipierro]

If there were no rebates, the price would be higher.

Re:It's Not Enough

[anthony_dipierro]

Why not just deduct the rebate at the cash register?

You mentioned one reason - it allows different people to pay different prices. Another reason is that it gives the company a short-term loan. But probably the most important reason for traditional rebates (complete with cutting and sending in the UPC code), is that it stops most resellers from coming in, buying the product at the low price, and then reselling it at a profit (some will just sell the item without packaging or without the UPC code, but there is a much smaller market for this).

To a lesser extent, and a situation which is still available with online rebates, it allows the store to enforce quantity limits more strictly. With an instant rebate, you can just pay cash and buy at least as many items as there are store clerks to sell them to you (and probably more considering that many clerks won't remember you or care). Considering the number of Best Buys within a few miles of my house, this could easily turn a quantity limit of 1 into a limit of 20. Combine that with reselling on ebay, and you've got a fairly useless discount system. In fact, this is already done quite a bit - take a look at the DVD sales at Best Buy each week and then look over the next week at what's getting sold on eBay.

Much of this could be accomplished through a store loyalty card, though.

Re:It's Not Enough

[anthony_dipierro]

I've seen some rebated stuff at stores that are far cheaper than any online price. They tend to be small things (a spindle of CD-Rs or similar)

I've learned the hard way never to buy spindles of write-once media through a rebate. Bought a bunch of DVD-Rs, cut the UPC code, started using them, and about 50% are defective. The store won't take them back, because I cut the UPC.

Re:It's Not Enough

[anthony_dipierro]

Shopping clubs only pretend to save you money. You have to compare not to the non-discounted price at the same store, but to the normal price at a non-shopping club store.

Shopping clubs with an annual membership fee often are able to give discounts compared to non-club stores. This can be true for the average shopper even when the membership fee is factored in, because the guaranteed revenues make it cheaper to raise working capital.

They went to a city with two supermarkets with shopping clubs and bought a good list of various items with their club cards. Then they went to a neighboring city, bought the same items from a similar supermarket with no shopping club, and the non-discounted items without a card were a LOT cheaper.

That's not really a very good study. The prices of different items in different cities is often going to be different, and often for legitimate reasons (higher distribution costs, higher employee salaries, higher real estate prices, etc).

They only need per-buyer info to figure out how to make their store less attractive to customers who aren't making them much money.

Or maybe it's to make their store more attractive to customers who are making them the most money.

Club cards don't magically make it cheaper for the supermarket to buy that head of lettuce, or can of soup.

Then why do they have them?

Re:It's Not Enough

[sasdrtx]

Your mom is certainly buying some products that she would not without the coupons. Therefore, the coupon-issuer scores a little more profit than without. In particular, they prevented a sale to smaller, cheaper brands that can't afford coupon advertising.

Re:It's Not Enough

[bsartist]

Besides, the customer tracking is completely unacceptable.

Start a card-swapping club at work or with a few friends. Every week, all of you throw your cards into a hat and draw them at random. You won't get targeted coupons that way, though, because "your" buying history is pretty much gibberish after a while.

Re:It's Not Enough

[sk999]

At my local grocery store (an independent, no less) at checkout the clerks always ask if I have a frequent shopper card. When I say no, they go ahead and swipe their own card. BINGO! instant savings anyway.

Re:It's Not Enough

[tehlinux]

They give you a price break and all you have to do is give them an interest free loan. Sounds pretty sensible to me.

Re:It's Not Enough

[SilverspurG]

Whenever I see rebates I think to myself,"There's a scam here. I don't know what it is but I know it's here."

Whether it's a scam with the personal data that you submit, or if the scam is in what they do with the money before they give it back, or if the scam is hidden even deeper. There's a scam and I have no interest in participating.

Re:It's Not Enough

[eh2o]

There is also an increasing trend among some distributors / manufacturers of publishing false whole sale prices for the purpose of helping retailers fight downward price pressure. (Generally this is with respect to more expensive items than groceries...)

Re:It's Not Enough

[IdleTime]

I agree with you. Here is what I do:

- I shop at let's say Winn-Dixie, I don't have a shopping card, but want the discount.
- I have friends or co-workers who do have the card.
- At the register: "I've forgotten my card at home, my phone # is (xxx)-yyy-zzzz (friend or co-worker with card's phone #)
- -Discount and no tracking or annoying spam in my mail-box.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Jeian]

My mother regularly saves 30%~50% on groceries because she clips coupons

And I can guarantee that the cashiers at your local grocery all hate your mother. :P

Re:It's Not Enough

[asynchronous13]

I love the fact that if you 'forget' your club card, you can type in your phone number at the thouchpad. So far, every club store I've been to has accepted 123-456-7890 as a valid phone number for some account, and I get their "discounts".

Re:It's Not Enough

[NutscrapeSucks]

When he said "no one has ever sold that sofa for $2000 dollars", he's exaggerating a bit. You certainly could go into Macy's and buy that sofa for $2000, but why would you when there's a similar one for $800 next to it? The price structure exists because there's a tiny portion of the market that is not price-sensitive, once they've reaped that market, it becomes an issue of "clearing out old stock".

The other thing is that furniture prices are negotiable -- similar to automobiles. A Chevy might list at $30K, but 99% of the buyers will negotiate that price down.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Registered Coward v2]

Why not just deduct the rebate at the cash register? We all know that's doable. No, their dream is to extract from each customer the maximum personal price. Those willing to pay full price do, and those only willing to pay a lower price get it. Willingness to do senseless work determines who falls in what camp--it's just like coupon clipping.

Becasue that would hurt their revenue number - instead of $100 of reevnue they'd book $60 - and stores what to keep revenue growing because that's one thing Wall Street watches.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Bloke down the pub]

Expecting businesses to tell the truth. Hmm... sounds dangerously close to communism. Thought I'd say it before this asshat says it (and means it).

Re:It's Not Enough

[Registered Coward v2]

All stores lie to their customers to PRETEND they're getting a discount.

The other day I was in a store and saw a sign for Levi's 501s for $38, MSRP $42. Then I went to the store next door and saw a similar sign: Levi's 501s for $34, MSRP $38. There isn't any way to reconcile this, other than realizing that stores are lying through their teeth.


You're assuming that those are the same product - Levi (and other manufacturers)routinely SKU things differently so they are not the same product although they may appear such to teh consumer; Levi use to and still may have different color tags for the their jeans (the little pocket tab) to differentiate discount product from high end retailer's product.

While I agree MSRP is a game to get peopel to buy more; varying MSRP's is not necessarily a lie.

Re:It's Not Enough

[DarkFencer]

It depends on how you shop. If you're my wife, who consistently buys the same stuff every week (or almost all the same), then the store without the club card is better for her. The price of non-discounted goods is better.

If you're someone like me who could care less about the brand name, or who looks at the unit price when buying something, the club cards (at least at my local card using supermarket) can be a great deal. I buy my stuff for the week based on what is on sale and know for a fact (compared to other stores) that I am saving a good deal. These stores count on people buying a lot of things from the non-sale list to make up for their sales. I buy little from those lists.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Easy2RememberNick]

Who is your Nero?

Re:It's Not Enough

[QuietLagoon]

Why not just deduct the rebate at the cash register?

Because then the vendor does not benefit from the "breakage", i.e., those who never apply for the rebate.

Re:It's Not Enough

[tonymus]

My mother regularly saves 30%~50% on groceries because she clips coupons and uses her frequent shopper card. She saves the reciepts to show me and everytime, I ask her when the supermarkets will just start giving her food for free.

With all due respect to your Mom, did it occur to either of you that the reason she saves 30-50% on her food purchases is because she's buying items she didn't go into the store for in the first place? When the wife or kids tell me something is 30% off, I let them know it is 100% off if they don't need it and don't buy it.

Also, prices are definitely adjusted upwards during sales (especially with meat prices, where supermarkets really can price the stuff at whatever they want). A local supermarket routinely prices meats high per pound prior to their "Buy One, Get One (or Two) Free!"

Re:It's Not Enough

[Clock Nova]

I really like the way it's done in Connecticut. After-sale rebates are illegal there, and all rebates are applied instantly to the in-store price. So a $150 hard drive with a $50 mail-in rebate costs you. . . $50, right there in the store. Amazing.

Re:It's Not Enough

[aetherspoon]

5 for 9 is a normal price of those frozen dinners, even at that brand. Without that brand though, the same TV dinner costs less.
Half gallon of Orange Juice for 2.25 USD? Drop the brand and you'll find a gallon for 1 USD - less if you live in a citrus state.
Shredded cheese (assuming Cheddar): I think I've seen 4 USD before in normal grocery stores not on sale. Of course, it was a different brand...

The 'brand consciousness' of the US Public is disturbing to me, to say the least. On some things, it matters - toilet paper is actually different from brand to brand, as an example. On things like cheese and orange juice though? Doesn't matter at all.

Re:It's Not Enough

[nelsonal]

It's actually somewhat rational, like the old why does third class suck so badly on the train arguement (the train isn't trying to hose third class, they are scaring second class into paying for second class). Store brands used to be terrible quality which kept most folk (except the most price sensitive) buying brand names which had some level of quality. Places like Aldi and much improved store brands are changing this, but that change will require a long time before the culture shifts. Incidentally Wal-Mart was one of the major factors in this change, as Wal-Mart is seen as implying a certain level of quality by stocking an item (which gives more information to consumers than a brand). So consumers become less sensitive to brand names.

Re:It's Not Enough

[nelsonal]

At current interest rates 30 days float is worth beans. Even if you assume that they have 100 million in recipts payable they are only making $3 million/year on that money. Rebates are used because they don't get filed all that frequently but lots of sales happen because people plan to file the rebate.

Re:It's Not Enough

[aetherspoon]

Ah, except for commodity products like, using the example, orange juice. Yes, the juice can come from a lot of different types of oranges, and can have pulp or no pulp, or can have additives and such... but if you squeeze a Valencia orange, you get orange juice with pulp - regardless of who does it.
As no one would want to be seen as sabotaging the standard no-brand juice, they just dress up the higher priced ones, adding in things that don't really matter, changing the color slightly to look better, having a fancy bottle and label, et cetra - all things that don't really make a bit of difference. You still have orange juice.

Re:It's Not Enough

[reaktor]

If there were no rebates, the price would be higher.

This is what they want you to think.
Rebates are a scam. It is all a ploy to make you think you are getting a good deal, and to come in and buy. Just like the supermarket saver cards, as the other posters have mentioned. You think 'gosh, I saved $xxxx by using my SIP card!' Don't be a sucker.

Re:It's Not Enough

[c6gunner]

What's evil about it? You're telling me it's Evil to offer a rebate to someone while knowing that they probably won't take it?

So if I offer my guest a drink knowing he'll probably refuse, I'm evil? Man oh man, I'm going straight to hell.

The companies are offering you a deal. If you're too lazy to get off your fat ass and send them a letter, that's your problem, not theirs. What's with western society and the expectation of instant gratification? Very few things in this world will come to you without any effort.

Re:It's Not Enough

[nolife]

Maybe some people do not notice a difference or care if there even is a difference.
I've been buying the super sized buckets of laundry soap and automatic dish washer detergent, and the gallon size bottles of liquid dish soap from Costco and Sams for years. I have no complaints at all.

Re:It's Not Enough

[nolife]

BB uses that practice more then any retailer I have ever seen. You can always tell what is/was on sale at a BB buy walking down the aisle and looking for empty spots. Why take a 50% of the front page of your weekly ad to advertise something that you only have a minimum of 5 per store. They claim minimum but they should really be saying maximum because that stuff is gone by 11am Sunday morning and there is little to no chance it will be back in stock before the sale is over. The reason for those sales and limited stock on hand is exactly what you stated, a scam to get you in the store. Even Sears offers a comparable discount on comparable merchandise if they run OOS of the sale item. Most other retailers seem to attempt to meet the expected demand, not BB though.
This is one of the many reasons I only give BB foot traffic. I use them when I need to do a hands on compare of products then I specifically buy it somewhere else. I wouldn't be surprised if they have some system in the works to ban people from entering the store that do not purchase something after 10 visits. Their shady practices WILL eventually catch up with them and I hope they die a quick death when it does.

Re:It's Not Enough

[solios]

Club cards are only useful if you can't chose to shop elsewhere.

Yup.

Try shopping for food in Pittsburgh. Just about every one of our balkanized little neighborhoods has a Giant Eagle, a store that does the "$store Card" thing. I've got three options in this part of town - Pay GE prices (and put up with the hyperghetto genetic waste that gluts the place like a herd of flabby sheep), Pay slightly less at the store eight blocks further away for a selection that's essentially "nothing you want, ever." or diner food.

There are a couple of Sam's Club (another card store but the gimmick is VOLUME, yay!) and Wal Mart Supercenters floating around suburbia, but a forty minute bus ride one way + shop time + forty minutes back (if you're lucky) does not compare favorably to getting it over and done with in under 30 minutes. :P

Stores do shit like $store Card because they know they're the most convenient game in town. :|

Re:It's Not Enough

[solios]

The American masses aren't exactly world-renowned for their intelligence. Ever watch the crowd at an American football game? They make the rowdiest Rugby crowd look like a group of nuclear physicists on muscle relaxants.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Servants]

Exactly. It's a mistake to think of unredeemed rebates as "free money" for a company; the expected non-redemption rate gets factored into the price.

Suppose Best Buy sells a drive for $100, with a $50 rebate that half their customers send in. Then they take in $75 per sale, on average.

Alternatively, they could sell it to everybody for $75 in the first place, with no rebates.

Or, they could implement an online rebate system. If this leads 3/4 of their customers to get the rebate, the offered rebate could only be $33 instead of $50 to get the same average revenue per system.

It's an empirical question for the company which setup will allow them to make the most sales. (Note that this is somewhat independent from the base amount of profit they make per unit; if they decided a drive only needed to sell for $60 on average, they'd still be faced with the same set of choices.) It's a separate question which system an individual buyer prefers. If you're allergic to rebate checks, or if your time is extremely valuable, you'd prefer #2. If you just want the best price, it's in your interest to have a system like #1 where few other people bother to obtain the rebate, allowing the company to make the discount quite large.

One conclusion you could draw from this plan, then, is that Best Buy has decided to cater more toward relatively well-off customers who value their time highly, and less toward customers who shop on price.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Servants]

Price discrimination only "works" on monopolistic situations

That's a bit too strong! It works anytime there's some incentive not to just go to another store to find a lower price, right? While this could be because few alternative stores exist, it's more likely to be because you don't really want to bother driving to a different supermarket or movie theater. Or because you don't really know the difference in value (to you) between the cheap and expensive versions of an item.

Re:It's Not Enough

[JahToasted]

An economist might not protest over price discrimination in general, but would over this particular form of it. Basically you are wasting the time of most customers just so that you can charge a little more to the people who aren't willing to waste their time.

Every time there's a virus there's always a big number shown for the amount of money it cost due to lost productivity. I wonder how much lost productivity there is due to rebates (both applying for them and processing them)?

Re:It's Not Enough

[Deadstick]

So a $150 hard drive with a $50 mail-in rebate costs you. . . $50, right there in the store.

Looks like they sold out all their calculators.

rj

Re:It's Not Enough

[itsmekirby]

The situations you are describing are all possible because they bring out a degree of monopoly. There is no such thing as a perfectly competitive market, it only exists in theory. Therefore, many markets fall somewhere between perfect competition and complete monopoly. Those that are more competitive are less likely to do rebates because firms in all markets have some degree of the ability to set prices. In a fish market, however (for example), you are very unlikely to find rebates or coupons. We assume free information and homogeneous products. People represent a very very small percentage of the total market, and buy or sell by the going rate. If your price is below the market price, you will stand to gain profit. If your price is above the market price, you will sell absolutely nothing. Everybody has a single price at the going rate. In perfect competition, you "see" only a very very very small quantity of the demand curve, so it appears horizontal, or perfectly elastic. You either sell everything or nothing. In this case, price discrimination would never work because there is no point in setting two different prices.

But I think you proved that my statement was very dumb, although correct. While its true that price discrimination only works in monopolistic situations, almost every situation we deal with has some form of monopoly. As you stated, driving represents a barrier which can segment markets and gives each firm their own "turf" on which they can set prices.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Main Gauche]

"In sane, civilized countries, like Finland for example, this practice is blatantly illegal. Over here you cannot advertise a discount, unless it is based on an actual retail price"

Meanwhile, in insane, uncivilized countries like the US, people are forced to ask themselves whether a product is actually worth the price being asked. The horror.

Store A advertises a sofa for $1000.
Store B advertises the exact same sofa for 50% off the price of $2000 (which comes out to $1000).

No matter which store I'm in, I ask myself whether the sofa is worth $1000 to me. I really don't care what its historic price was. I don't care if they did or didn't charge $2000 for it in the past. Or $5000. It costs $1000 now. Do I want it or not? It's as simple as that.

Now I admit, many people are not this rational. Or perhaps some people spent their entire lives in the US without noticing that stores do this sort of thing. So perhaps we do need yet another law to protect the stupid. But in that case please distinguish between two things: being proud to have such a law, vs. being proud to need one.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Clock Nova]

Yep. Ooops. Typing too fast. You know what I mean.

Re:It's Not Enough

[clodney]

In the huge majority of the cases, Best Buy isn't getting the float, the manufacturer is. In fact, I think every time I have seen a store rebate at BB it has been of the instant variety - markdown taken at register, no float involved.

I used to work for a software company that sold at retail, and we routinely had $30 rebates. There were a few reasons for that:

1. Rebate submissions ran about 30% of total sales. If everyone submitted the rebate it wouldn't have been that big.
2. Rebates were a way to lower the retail price without lowering the distributor price. We controlled the rebate, but the big software resellers had too much pricing clout to let us raise and lower the distributor price at will. If we changed the distributor price there was no guarantee that the street price would change accordingly.
3. If you sell goods to the government you are subject to GSA pricing rules. Rebates let you drop the street price without affecting GSA price.

We used a 3rd party to process rebate fulfillment. There was no attempt to make the rebates hard to get, the sales group could predict the actual response rates pretty well and set the prices accordingly.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Igmuth]

So, instead of just the store lying, Levis creates meaningless distinctions bettween two otherwise identical products, to allow the stores accomplish the same thing.

Re:It's Not Enough

[GlassUser]

Start a card-swapping club at work or with a few friends. Every week, all of you throw your cards into a hat and draw them at random. You won't get targeted coupons that way, though, because "your" buying history is pretty much gibberish after a while.

What some of my friends did was get one in the group who had a "platinum" discount (10% off store brands, the best we could find), and we made copies of the UPC on the back of his card and stuck them on ours. We have a HUGE buying history (gives us discounts on gas too) and there's no tracking (the address and number where he registered no longer work).

Re:It's Not Enough

[JonahDark1]

IANA-Accountant but I suspect that stores are also able to count the full price of the item as a sale, so on their balance sheet it looks good that they just sold you the item with a 40% margin. They put the cost of the rebate down as a marketing expense.

If someone knows if this is true please reply.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Suriken]

go to dick smith and buy a laptop gotta mail in the rebate to australia damn acer

Re:It's Not Enough

[smeenz]

Erk. You're right.

I hope this is not a sign of things to come.

Re:It's Not Enough

[ScrewMaster]

once they've reaped that market

You misspelled "raped".

Re:It's Not Enough

[erick99]

There is a similar law where I live in Maryland. I think there are a few other states with laws that require that a certain amount of sales have to be made at the list or retail price before you can use it for the basis of a sale price.

Re:It's Not Enough

[CommiePuddin]

This is the SOP in jewelery stores across the United States. There is the "regular" price, then the price it's being sold for. Any "n percent off" sales come off the "regular" price, which means you'll do no better than the current price.

But the coupon gets you in the store. Bait and switch.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Donniedarkness]

You're absolutely right. My father works for a furniture store, and they have gigantic "sales" all the time. All they do is write the MSRP up higher, and the price you pay stays the same.

This has always disgusted me.

Re:It's Not Enough

[bnenning]

Senseless?: No.

Yes. You spend time doing paperwork, they spend time processing paperwork, and the result is a transfer with a net benefit of zero. They benefit from price discrimination, but consumers collectively lose more.

Re:It's Not Enough

[h3llfish]

So at your parties, do you offer the drinks with numerous byzantine qualifications? Or do you simply offer the drink? Because to carry your analogy to it's logical conclusion, to simply offer the drink would be more like an ordinary sale - I'll sell you a product at a somewhat lower price than usual, without any fine print. My entire point, which you seem to have missed, is that this is not what a rebate is.

If I attended a party at your house, and you offered me a drink on the condition that I jumped through hoops A, B, C and D, I'd surely refuse. I expect that some guests would jump through the hoops, then accept the drink, in order to throw it back in your face. I guess you could call that behavior rude, but I think that a certain amount of rudeness in response to rudeness is a forgiveable transgression.

What I'm trying to say is, rebates are evil, in my humble opinion, because they amount to meaningless hoop-jumping. They serve no productive purpose. If these firms were really so un-evil, they would simply offer a lower price.

What really puzzles me is, what sort of person leaps to the defense of corporate busywork? Then I noticed your screen name. If I'm interpreting it correctly, you're claiming to be, or at least expressing admiration for, a person in the Canadian military who operates a machine gun. Correct me if I'm wrong, I only know what I learned when conducting a search on the term. But if that is indeed what you mean, then I guess I have an answer to the question I just posed.

Re:It's Not Enough

[EnglishDude]

It's interesting really, I've heard a *lot* about rebates from the US, but I've never ever seen *anything* like rebates here in the UK - the prices you see is what you pay, you don't have to claim a portion back. To be honest, the rebate idea all sounds insane - giving the shop more money than the product is worth and getting it back later on. Right.

Anyway. Why is the rebate system rampant in the US (I think so anyway) while it doesn't exist at all in the UK?

Re:It's Not Enough

[evilviper]

You're assuming that those are the same product - Levi (and other manufacturers)routinely SKU things differently so they are not the same product

Levi's 501s haven't changed in the past 100 years or so. If the only thing different is a single number on them, it's still a fraud.

Re:It's Not Enough

[nelsonal]

Yeah but if you buy half spoiled or underripe oranges for half the price of good ones the orange juice will not be the same as the firm that chooses the better ones. Until about 10 years ago store brands tended to err on the side of cheap, now stores realize that they make about twice the margin on store branded items so they the major retailers have done a better job promoting quality.
In my opinion Aldi kicks the quality up a notch or two on most national brands (their fruit pies, frozen pizzas, chocolate, and produce are generally better than I can get from anyone else in the area (NoVA). They don't advertise and so have more flexibility than a retailer who is spending 10% of sales on marketing). Costco does similar things with their store brands, I think of Aldi as Costco for singles.

Re:It's Not Enough

[operagost]

Half gallon of Orange Juice for 2.25 USD? Drop the brand and you'll find a gallon for 1 USD - less if you live in a citrus state.

That's a good one. First of all, in Philly the regular price of a half-gallon of brand name OJ is $3.50-$4, not $2.25. Second, the generic stuff is still $2. Third, the generic stuff is NOT equivalent-- it is invariably made from conentrate and tastes noticably inferior. Don't think your example is a good one.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Registered Coward v2]

You're assuming that those are the same product - Levi (and other manufacturers)routinely SKU things differently so they are not the same product

Levi's 501s haven't changed in the past 100 years or so. If the only thing different is a single number on them, it's still a fraud.

Fraud? Hardly - they're simply selling into different market segments at prices the consumer is willing to pay. Nothing new or fraudulent there.They may be the exact same jeans, but they're priced and packaged differently based on the market they target.

Sometimes manufacturers have different model numbers to prevent price competition as well - Store A nd B may offer to match prices; but A has a model 400K TV and store B a model 400H - so they are not the same model. Of course, the real reason is for price matching is not to lower prices but to keep them higher than they would be if stores didn't have that policy.

Re:It's Not Enough

[Registered Coward v2]

So, instead of just the store lying, Levis creates meaningless distinctions bettween two otherwise identical products, to allow the stores accomplish the same thing.

It's called segmenting a market; and there may or may not be any differences - sometimes a product will have higher tolerances for faults in stitching, sizing, color, etc to keep the cost down and support a lower price. Sometimes they create different brand names to differentiate the products in the market, sometimes they cripple a feature; others they just give it a different model number but the end goal is the same - sell as much as possible into different markets at the maximum price each consumer is willing to pay.

Re:It's Not Enough

[anthony_dipierro]

If there were no rebates, the price would be higher.

This is what they want you to think.

Yes, but it's also the truth. For instance (though this is only one factor), if 50% of people don't even cash in the rebate, then the store can afford to set the rebate price at a higher value. As long as you aren't one of those suckers who doesn't turn in the rebate, you save.

Re:It's Not Enough

[anthony_dipierro]

Every time there's a virus there's always a big number shown for the amount of money it cost due to lost productivity.

And that number is always complete bullshit.

Re:It's Not Enough

[evilviper]

Fraud? Hardly - they're simply selling into different market segments at prices the consumer is willing to pay. Nothing new or fraudulent there.

It's nothing new, but it certainly is a fraud.

Re:It's Not Enough

[jsiren]

No matter which store I'm in, I ask myself whether the sofa is worth $1000 to me. I really don't care what its historic price was. I don't care if they did or didn't charge $2000 for it in the past. Or $5000. It costs $1000 now. Do I want it or not? It's as simple as that.

That's a decision to be made whenever purchasing something, whether or not you have discounts, coupons, rebates, negotiable prices, a friendly, smiling salesperson, who will offer a "special price just for you", or an infomercial host(ess) flirting at you. (Not with you, (s)he's on TV.)

The particular piece of Finnish law is one of a number of laws whose goal is to promote transparent and understandable retail pricing, and make it feasible for the consumer to make the previously mentioned decision (is this item worth this much to me?) It exists to prohibit e.g. things like taking a gizmo usually sold for 20 e and claiming "it's a high-end premium hundred-euro gizmo, but you can have it for ONLY 50 e!", which is the effect of a permanent "discount", or a case when the "discount" price is calculated from some imaginary "list" price that has no bearing on reality.

Of course, nothing prevents a store from selling a 20 euro gizmo with the claim "it's a high-end premium gizmo, and you can have it for ONLY 100 e!" as long as they don't claim it's discounted from 200 e when it's not...

At 70% off,
--js--

BTW, to the grandparent post: Should we, in a moment of clarity, happen to be sane and civilized, let us display it, not declare it.
--ibid., from Turku--

Re:It's Not Enough

[waynegoode]

Why not just deduct the rebate at the cash register?

One reason I can think of is that it is the best way to limit the number of discounts per person. Otherwise, a person could go through the line many times or go to different stores. I think a lot of "Free After Rebate" promotions are to get a certain number of units of a product out there. The manufacturer of the product wants to get these "promotional" items to as many people as possible, not just a few to get a lot each.

The old reason of "slippage", not having to pay all the rebates, would be much less significant for this new method.

BTW, Rite-Aid does this know. Just enter the receipt number at the website and it finds all the rebate products on the receipt.

Incidentally, if you don't think it is fair, or a good deal, then don't buy it. Don't try to make illegal just because you don't like it.

Re:It's Not Enough

[ePhil_One]

There is a similar law where I live in Maryland. I think there are a few other states with laws that require that a certain amount of sales have to be made at the list or retail price before you can use it for the basis of a sale price.

I don't believe that any have to be SOLD at that price, just that it was offered for sale at that price. I would imagine its the same in Finland, and even if sales were required it would just create a pocket industry of people who buy at the inflated price at the request of the store (then return it later, or put it back into manufacturers stock, etc)

onrebate

[Anonymous Coward]

Why assume that Best Buy is trying to help out the customer? Maybe they're trying to make it more efficient for themselves to eat your money.

Has anyone else had any experience with the online rebate firm onrebate.com? They ate my rebate claiming insufficient documentation (which I know is wrong...), but the worst part is they will not even allow me to resubmit anything to them. After waiting on hold for 30 minutes, the nice customer service representative explained how their decision was final, with no option for recourse whatsoever. Then she even transferred me to her manager, a filled-up voicemail box. Emails have gone unanswered for a month. Apparently they're affiliated with tigerdirect.com, which I understand has equally craptastic customer service. At this point, I'm gonna go to Fry's and try to get them to fulfill the rebate they promised me, as the rebate firm is effectively impossible to contact.

Personally, I think it's safe to assume that Best Buy is no different, and unless they prove otherwise, I'll assume that they "hate their customers after all."

Re:onrebate

[Fulcrum of Evil]

After waiting on hold for 30 minutes, the nice customer service representative explained how their decision was final, with no option for recourse whatsoever.

I guess there's always small claims court.

Re:onrebate

[loraksus]

Tigerdirect has had problems with rebates in the past has a unsatisfactory BBB record due to a pattern of customer complaints.
Their new "rebate guarantee" is bullshit. It has you shell out $5 for certified mail for a $8 rebate (on a lot of items, the "rebate price" is broken up into several rebates, each going to a different address).

Don't believe me? Click here for the BBB report.
They have also settled (we know what that means) with the FTC for doing shady stuff with "warranties" on the products they sell.
They are fucking scumbags, they don't even answer most of their complaints, pure and simple.

As for your situation, try filing a complaint with the BBB, the FTC and possibly with the Attorney General for your state. When the mouthbreathers in the call center "cannot do anything more for you", that is your next step. Except in cases like the shitbags above, you will generally get a reasonable person calling you within a few days and your problem will be taken care of.
Good luck

Re:onrebate

[camperslo]

Tigerdirect has had problems with rebates in the past has a unsatisfactory BBB record due to a pattern of customer complaints. Their new "rebate guarantee" is bullshit.

I agree with you 100% I bought a drive from them last fall. The drive was shown in stock, and with the rebate the price was attractive. The "rebate form download link" wasn't for a rebate form at all. It took me to another site where I was to fill out an online application to have the rebate form mailed to me. The form asked for all sorts of personal data. The terms were complex, with a relatively short time limit to get the materials returned to them. The terms also included a clause where the company processing the rebates (I'm sure it was another company tied to the Tigerdirect people - they were able to see data from my invoice number when I called) would get to keep the rebate if the check wasn't cashed on time, or anything else went wrong. The web site for applying for the rebate form to be mailed did not work with Firefox or Safari. I had to called them on the phone and only after being very persistent did they agree to enter the information manually. As you mentioned for any guarantee for the rebate to apply I would have had to use costly certified mailing. They also were pushing a faster response time and use of first class mail in exchange for an additional fee. I didn't opt to do either. After all of that, I go to check the status, and my in-stock order had changed to backordered. The projected time was such that I'd no longer be sure of getting the item soon enough to be able to turn around and submit the rebate materials in time. The "purchase date", which could not be changed, was based on when I made the online order. All of that info was submitted in advance and was to come back already entered on the rebate application to be mailed to me. I called up and raised hell with both the rebate people and Tigerdirect, saying I wanted to cancel the order. They acted like they couldn't make any changes once it was in the system. The order did ship a couple of days later however. I submitted the rebate materials and eventually got an email saying the rebate was being sent out first class mail. Several more weeks went by and it showed up. Total time must have been about two months. Although I did get my rebate, it was an exercise in frustration. It was clearly a process designed for me to fail. Had I not been so persistent I certain I wouldn't have received the rebate.

Oh, the day after I had phoned in the rebate info I started getting lots of scam spam on an email account I hadn't used for anything else. So either they were spamming me, or sold my info to a spammer. No doubt the other personal info I submitted is making the rounds somewhere too. These folks really are scum. Except for the basic contact info, I'd suggest always using random junk responses for field of work etc questions.

I had much better results with a rebate from a Staples purchase (info submitted online). I'm generally very careful about opting-out of default mailing requests when submitting info, but I was getting spammed from them afterwards (at least it was only from them). It took several calls to their customer service number before the spam stopped (the first two times they said it was handled, but it kept coming)

Re:onrebate

[camperslo]

no companies would screw their customers if they wanted to stay in business

If they can get away with it, some companies will have screwing their customers as part of their business model.

just keep in mind that there's already too much government regulation of business

There may be many regulations, but it still seems that many businesses are not treating customers ethically.
For example the government seems to be doing a poor job of insuring truth in advertising.
Perhaps the problem isn't too many regulations, but too much corruption in the legislative and regulatory processes.

Re:onrebate

[loraksus]

I agree with you 100% I bought a drive from them last fall.
You're not alone. But clearly some companies don't care about having a bad rep. Now, this isn't to say that some people have had good experiences with them, but I hear a lot more horror stories than good ones.


I had much better results with a rebate from a Staples purchase (info submitted online). I'm generally very careful about opting-out of default mailing requests when submitting info, but I was getting spammed from them afterwards (at least it was only from them). It took several calls to their customer service number before the spam stopped (the first two times they said it was handled, but it kept coming)

I've been pimping staples in a couple other responses (while being, heheh, as you've seen, not so nice to some other companies). They were the first retailer that I've seen that has done a good job with rebates (ok, maybe costco as well, but are they really a retailer?), and they are generally customer friendly, so I'm sort of surprised about the spam thing.

BTW, Staples is probably the only company I don't mind receiving spam for because often they throw a decent coupon code in every few emails, instead of the standard "look what we have on special" garbage. Heck, if you're strapped for cash, you can even sell the coupon code on ebay for $4ish (seriously, check it out, it is pretty funny).
A $30 off $150 code is a nice thing to stack onto an order where you pricematched something, got their low price guarantee, have a rebate on that something and also got a couple percent back by using their business account (in addition to cashback on your credit card.)
If you do it right, you can easily make money by buying there - to hit the $150 limit, buy norton and symantec av, use the upgrader rebate on each to get both for free (send in symantec manual to norton and vice versa) and then add a few bucks of stuff :) They sometimes have some decent, but cheap furniture from time to time as well.
If you check out the fatwallet.com forums, you'll see some pretty good examples where people are making a fair bit of money on an order.

Re:onrebate

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Ooops. Is the libertarian dream not working here?

Seems to be working fine here, in fact. A number of people spread the word about their shitty experiences with tigerdirect. Others see it and avoid tigerdirect in the future. I bet this thread that is now modded up to 5 is going to cost tigerdirect more than a complaint to the FTC will.

And by the way, libertarians don't support theft and scams like you're trying to imply. If someone (individual or company) said they'd give you something for a certain price, you pay the price, and they don't give it to you, any libertarian would agree there should be legal recourse.

Re:onrebate

[hevenor]

I've used tigerdirect rebates before but I'm not sure if I had to go through the online system or if it was a mail in. (it's been a while) I did just use the online rebate process from Staples and my cheque arrived within the week. It was pretty amazing.

What I'm confused about is that I assumed that rebates were set knowing an expected value of the number of rebates they would give based on the pain-in-the-ass factor of mailing? If your promotion budget is still $X and the online rebate submission is easier then wouldn't it follow that the rebate sizes will decrease?

My hope is that the cost savings of automating the process negate that and hopefully they can make the rebates bigger. We'll see I guess.

The moderators think I'm number one! (They it put beside every one of my posts )

Re:onrebate

[dfenstrate]

Why is this modded funny?
You could go to your local small claims court, sue them for the rebate+court costs+your time in the matter @$60/ hour and it still wouldn't amount to enough money to make it worth sending a lawyer, so you'd likely win by default- just show the judge you did everything correctly.

I just glanced over a staples rebate form I have here, and there's no attempt to limit jurisdiction for lawsuits. YMMV by retailer, and such attempts to limit jurisdiction may or may not hold water.

For the record, I submitted my staples online rebates for a $600 printer and got $200 back in a month, and every best buy rebate I've submitted I eventually recieved back. I don't watch the calender on such things, but the checks do come.

Re:onrebate

[ratbert6]

Fry's will do nothing to help with a rebate. All they did for me was regurgitate the response I'd originally gotten from the firm handling the rebate, which was bogus.

I had very clearly met the terms of the rebate exactly. On the phone the rebate firm was very polite admitting that it sounded like I did indeed meet the conditions and they would have me resubmit the claim.

It was rejected 3 times with the same vague excuse until the forth time they rejected it without evening opening the envelope because the rebate had expired.

Best price wins my business - rebates are not even considered...

Re:onrebate

[froschmann]

Been there. Tigerdirect rebates through onrebate.com are hell. I got ripped off one time and haven't shopped there since. Basically, I waited 8 weeks, called onrebate, waited on hold, talked to an Indian who said my rebate was in the mail, and never recieved it. After 2 hours trying to get a 30 dollar rebate, I said fuck it and gave up. This is how they make money.

i don't believe they don't hate their customers

[macadamia_harold]

Best Buy is finally working towards ending mail-in rebates by 2007. Rebates will still be around, but you will be able to file them online, and receive your check much quicker.

My guess is, the vast majority of Best Buy customers aren't really the net-savvy types (i.e., everyone I know buys computer equipment at Newegg, not best buy or the like). So this is merely an effort to combat the increasing amounts of people redeeming these rebates by mail.

This is the cynic in me talking, yes.

Re:i don't believe they don't hate their customers

[lowid (24) _________]

Online rebates really do make the rebate process much much easier. Of all my black friday purchases this year, I only had one that required a mail-in rebate (some batteries from circuit city) and it was the only one I didn't get around to filling in. Just doesn't take nearly as long online. CompUSA had a really cool thing where you just enter in a couple numbers from your receipt and your address, and all three of the things I bought were automatically filled in and ready to go. Staples was really easy too (they had online rebates in 2004 as well), and they sent my rebate checks very quickly.

I *am* the slashdot type, so maybe there are other people who would much rather fill out forms and mail them in. For me, though, the online rebates were done in 5 minutes and completely painless.

P.

Re:i don't believe they don't hate their customers

[Firehed]

I buy all my hardware at Newegg too, but there are some things you need really quick without paying the extra for shipping, and cheap stuff in general. I definately try to avoid anything that requires a MIR on the rare occasions that I am in there actaully buying stuff (I'll go in once and a while just to harass the ignorant salespeople), because usually it's cheaper online at the normal price than Best Buy's MIR price, minus the six-week wait. Don't get me wrong, if I have to fill them out I will (especially when it's manufacturer-based - I recently bought a gigabit switch at newegg, and there was a $10 MIR on it, funnily enough the rebate is invalid at all the chain stores).

You're quite right though. People picking up a laptop or desktop at Best Buy aren't really the geeky type. But that's about 95% ignorance, 5% thinking building a computer is actually difficult (or even thought-requiring). Of course with laptops you're fairly limited even if you do know what you're doing, just due to lack of whitebox notebook availability in general.

So, basically, the end result is that they still get to make interest off of you having paid too much, it just increases customer satisfaction in that regard. Most people don't care how they save that $20, as long as they end up getting it back. And in most people's minds (at least the Best Buy-types), $199.99 - $30 MIR looks better than $169.99. The higher starting price seems to make people think it's a better product to start. It's still overpriced, it just looks better. It just translates to "they're trying to help me out!", not "well, it's not as overpriced as it was..."

Come back when every rebate is instant, or just "Always low prices" a la WalMart. I used to think the idea of buying blank media online is dumb; it seems like Dell printer ink that you'd have to order online every time. Then I looked at prices: 100pk DVD-R is ~$80 in a chain store, ~$35 online. Unless I'm totally out and need one *that day*, I'd definately buy online. Of course I try to make sure I'm never in that situation, but that's aside the point. I'd bet that they make more of a killing on those "cheap items" and "accessories" than on anything else. All the chain stores have the same prices, more or less, and that's generally how far people go when comparison-shopping.

Re:i don't believe they don't hate their customers

[anthony_dipierro]

You're quite right though. People picking up a laptop or desktop at Best Buy aren't really the geeky type. But that's about 95% ignorance, 5% thinking building a computer is actually difficult (or even thought-requiring).

For me it's ignorance. I've had too many bad experiences with buying things over the Internet. I'll still do it from time to time, if I can get a really good deal and want to potentially go through the hassle of online returns, but I try tend to shy away from it otherwise. I bought my wife her desktop computer from one of those chain stores, I think it was CompUSA. I probably could have saved $50 online through some store I've never heard of or $100 building my own from parts from stores I've never heard of, but it would have been much more hassle, and in the case of building my own it probably wouldn't have been as nice looking or had the nice extras like USB, firewire, and camera card ports in the front. I did wind up replacing the 256mb memory with a gig, which I also picked up at CompUSA for $60 (no mail-in rebates) on black friday.

Anyway, I'll check out newegg. It seems like people have had good experiences with them, and maybe they'll have better prices than the retail stores. I'm actually in the market for a new computer for myself right now. My laptop is dying, and I'm not sure if I'm going to replace it with a laptop or a desktop. 19" LCD monitor $229.99 after $40.00 Mail-In Rebate, not bad if I go with the desktop.

They still hate us...

[Fallen Kell]

They just want our email addresses now so they can sell to every spam company in existance, that is all. I mean, its a great plan. They know for a fact that everyone has access to mail, but not everyone has access to the web. I think the only real good thing about this now is that we will no longer need to send in the UPC code which may get "lost" and deny you the rebate.

Re:They still hate us...

[ClamIAm]

How many Best Buy shoppers don't have some kind of web access? It's most likely less than the general population.

Corporate Spin

[Tadrith]

The idea that Best Buy actually cares about their customers boggles the mind.

This has absolutely nothing to do with that. The fact is, Best Buy is running scared since the FTC recently made CompUSA responsible for the rebates they had offered. They were required to put out a good sum of money to make good on those rebates.

From http://www.twice.com/article/CA6301701.html:

"Best Buy announced in April 2005 that it intended to eliminate mail-in rebates from its portfolio within two years in an effort to improve customers' experience. The announcement also followed a warning from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in March 2005 that retailers will be held accountable for all rebates they advertise, including those sponsored by vendors. The edict came after the FTC ordered CompUSA to make good on hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid rebate claims."

Re:Corporate Spin

[Tadrith]

Hmm... linked worked from Google, but not from here. If anyone is truly interested, I found it with this Google search.

Re:Corporate Spin

[Unknown_monkey]

Yup. that's why COMPUsa now has many of their rebates for online filing. And Best Buy is just catching up to CUSA and CCity and Staples.

Re:Corporate Spin

[Nova1313]

Note: I worked there previously and I left because I got a better job full time.

I noticed while there that it wasn't so much the best buy rebates that people had problems with. I worked customer service and we regularly offered to fix a problem with a rebate right there in front of you if you had a problem and recieved a rejection letter from best buy.

However the big problem was the 3rd party rebates. (AKA when you have more then one rebate for a product). The rebates that went through individual companies usually seemed to come back unfullfilled. So while everyone gets upset at the company the problem exists all over. These third party rebates are often given at all retailers and aren't exclusive. Best Buy won't honor them because they are not theirs.

I don't see how they will fix the third party rebates. As long as the companies offering them don't care then it's going to be a problem.

I know the store I worked in went out of it's way to make the customer happy as long as oyu didn't jump down a rep's throat (because it's obviously their fault *sarcasm*) the moment you step up to the counter. The reason was we wanted return customers. Often there were times that people walked out screaming they would never shop here again to cause a scene. Next week I'd see them back and have to help them again and they were quiet as could be (kinda amusing to me). So while people say they will stop shopping at a store I find not many hold themselves to that.

Re:Corporate Spin

[sahrss]

For every 1 person who walks out of the store screaming to make a scene, there are 5 of us who quietly never return.

For what it's worth...

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked as a contractor to establish this system for Best Buy. The end goal is that eventually they'll be able to submit rebate information directly at checkout and skip the process of mail-in forms or going online.

Re:For what it's worth...

[iplayfast]

How do they handle the taxes. If I'm buying something that is essentially on sale, do I still pay tax on the full ticket?

Re:For what it's worth...

[PopeOptimusPrime]

Yea, you pay the tax on the full ticket.

Actually, it makes for an interesting tax loophole, since one can, in theory, purchase something as a business expense or whatever, write it off his taxes, then recoup the money in rebate form. That'd take some hardcore auditing to be found out, and as far as I know, it's not even illegal. (I'm not an expert on tax law and this should not be considered legal advice.)

Re:For what it's worth...

[FLEB]

If that's the case, you might have to declare the rebate as income, though.

(I, as well, am nothing even approximating a tax lawyer. Lovely day, isn't it?)

Re:For what it's worth...

[noidentity]

Wow, maybe they can streamline it more in the future. I'm thinking of a system like this (just an idea; don't attack me if I've oversimplified it):

1. Cashier scans item
2. Terminal looks up price
3. Customer pays that amount

Re:For what it's worth...

[Ossifer]

No doubt the information you supply, such as home address and telephone number, will be used by Best Buy's advertising department for direct marketing.

That's why my email address is bestbuyspam@...com, and my phone number is 415-611-1234. (Most computer systems are programmed to recognize that 611 is not a valid prefix.)

Re:For what it's worth...

[anthony_dipierro]

It's not really much of a loophole. If you're on a cash basis (small businesses usually are) then you get the full price as an expense (or basis for depreciation) and you declare the rebate as revenue (actually I'm not sure if that's technically correct for a depreciable asset, though I can't imagine a rebate for which the error in that treatment would be material). So if the rebate comes the next year at best you get to postpone taxes by a year. If you're on an accrual basis (like large businesses are), then the rebate comes in as an asset from day one, and you can't deduct it ever.

Now if you're going to commit tax evasion and not declare the rebate, it's a whole different story. You'll probably get away with it if it's a small amount, because most people don't get audited. But if you do get audited, you might very well get caught. AFAIK, your receipt is usually going to mention the rebate, so if the receipt is examined in the audit that would raise a red flag. Otherwise, you might still get caught if you deposit the rebate check into a bank account that is part of the audit. When you reconcile the bank account to your books, you've gotta include the rebate somewhere. Maybe if you cash the check and distribute the cash in some way that it all stays off the books you could get away with it, but frankly if you want to commit tax evasion there are much easier ways to do it.

Re:For what it's worth...

[Aladrin]

You forgot:

4. ???
5. Profit!

Oh wait. That happens anyhow, doesn't it? Man, that's a messed up scheme. You should restructure it so there are steps nobody understands before they can make a profit. Then copyright the process and sue all the retailers out there for using it. Since they don't understand it, they can't prove they don't use it.

Re:For what it's worth...

[dfenstrate]

Someone already pointed out that the rebates serve two purposes:
1. Sell items at a reduced cost to drive foot traffic or move merchandise
2. Limit the volume of merchandise sold to an individual so those same items don't end up on ebay or a local retailer competing with later, undiscounted items sold from the rebate-offering retailer.

Re:For what it's worth...

[mcelrath]

Rebates and coupons are a scam and should be illegal. It's a form of false advertising.

Re:For what it's worth...

[cosmic_gravy]

"5, Informative" It should have been "5, Funny".

opt-in

[TubeSteak]

guess this means Best Buy doesn't hate their customers after all.

Sure they do.

Best-Buy is computerizing their "Who to Hate" process.

The best part is that it's opt-in.

When you file a rebate, you opt-in!

Re:opt-in

[sanguisdev]

hate is a strong word, I believe it is more a cost cutting effort, cat the papper that is used, and cut the heads off any one who uses the rebates

Still good business sense

[satcomdaddy1]

Companies offering (presumably manufacturers') rebates are not looking to decrease their bottom line by offering them at the point of sale. They shouldn't even consider it!
We all know that rebates are a 'bait-and-wait' scam where the manufacturers lure customers to products with big dollar rebates, and then bet on the fact that only a small percentage will ever claim them.
As far as the ones that get their boxtops but never pay up, there should be a special level of hell for.

The type of rebates I like best

[rolfwind]

are the ones that they subtract right at the register. No fuss, no muss, no bother.

This happened several times to me at Costco. Is it a Costco thing or something else?

Of all the rebates I had to mail in, from experience, I figure I only have a 50/50 chance of actually getting the money (back).

Re:The type of rebates I like best

[mr_walrus]

Costco Canada has done the at-register rebate for me
for a spindle of 100 dvd-r blanks.

i've not seen at-register rebates at any other retailer in my
wee corner of Ontario.

    -k

This is great for accountability.

[WoTG]

For me, the biggest "risk" with rebates was that the company handling the rebate could claim that they never received the rebate forms -- there is no way to prove that they aren't lying.

So, web based filing would be great. Staples and their "EasyRebate" works online now. I've used it once. The way they prevent cheating is that they link their sales database to the rebates database, thereby making sure that a rebate on a single sale is never claimed more than once -- which really was the whole point of the UPC code clipping portion of a rebate.

Re:This is great for accountability.

[TubeSteak]

Registered/Certified mail is one way to prove that they got your rebate. Always use one of those options for anything important or valuable.

http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm100/adding.htm

The mail-in rebate is a temporary soluion...

[dimension6]

Mail-in rebates supposedly help the customer by giving (or creating the impression of) lower prices. They help businesses because people tend to be too lazy/busy/forgetful to fill the things out, and end up paying far too much for a product (I'm guilty of this). Because I have, due to laziness/business/forgetting, not tended to fill rebates out in the past, I no longer bother with mail-in rebate products (I'd rather pay a slightly higher cost and not deal with the hassle). If more people are in the same boat as me, then this system really serves as a temporary solution on the part of the corporation (do it until the lazy consumers learn). I would, however, be willing to fill out the forms online (it's really the whole snail mail process that gets in the way), and have done so in the past (with Best Buy; it worked flawlessly and I had my check within a couple weeks). Because the online rebate forms take so much less time to fill out (they do in my exp.), failure rate due to laziness and being too busy will decrease, thus requiring Best Buy to hope people will just forget about the rebate. Therefore, we'll probably start to see slightly smaller rebates in the future.

Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[iplayfast]

Think about it. You buy a $1000 item for $800, but you are taxed on $1000. I hate rebates and will pay extra to avoid them. The only rebates are the ones on stuff thats being thrown out for next to nothing. Sometimes you can actually make money on those :0

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[bm_luethke]

While to some extent what you say is true - you are paying extra taxes than if you simply got the money off - your remedy is cutting of your nose to spite your face.

Lets use your example at my local best buy. Our tax rate (Knoxville, Tennessee) is 9.25%. So on the 1000 dollar order we are paying 1092.5 dollars for the final product. A tax of 92.5 dollars. With the said 200 dollar rebate I will pay 892.5 dollars, which in my book is less than 1092.5 dollars. Now, you say you will pay more to avoid this so lets assume you are not paying 1001.00 dollars to avoid a 200 dollar rebate you are paying a final amount of 1093.5 dollars. In some form or fasion you equate the 1093.5 as being cheaper than the 892.5 dollars, however I suspect that more retail stores would like the general populace to use that math than the one usually used by consumers. Maybe if your time was worth more than the "200 dollars/time spent filling out the forms" would I agree. Otherwise you are simply paying more.

Yep, you stuck it to The Man. By paying 201 more dollars you have showed him! No longer will rebates be usable after your stand against tyrrany! You can sleep peacfully at night and be assured that those of us that sent the rabate in are endlessly regretting that check for X amount of money we recieved in the mail, or better yet the ones taken off at the register as some places now do.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[magicchex]

Maybe what he means is instead of buying it for $800 after rebate, he'd rather buy it for $850 straight up, paying a total of $928.63 as opposed to $892.50, but avoiding the hassles of filling out the rebates as well as any other motives.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[bm_luethke]

Umm, isn't that the same thing I said? You just used a different set of numbers. No matter what you are saying you are willing to pay a premium to not have to fill out rebate paperwork. Again - I'm sure many companies out there wish you would stick it to the man. However, I'll tend to try and purchase the most for the least amount that I can.

If you want to spend more than you need too, more power to you. Especially if it makes you feel better in some fashion, people used to keep the price tags on their shoes to see who payed the most when I was in middle school also. I didn't understand it then and I still do not understand how spending more for the same thing is in someway better.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

If you are interested in the item that's for sale, and the rebate is an issue... depending on how expensive the product is, the person working the cash register may be able to take the rebate off, and give you the "advertised" price right there. No paperwork, no nothing. Just say something like "It's $X? The price tag says $Y." They'll come back with "After the rebate." all you have to do is say "Well, if I can't get it for $Y right now, I don't want it." and they'll USUALLY give it to you for the "After Rebate" price.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[magicchex]

There are various reasons to pay more. I changed the numbers because I feel mine were more realistic. I assume you are the type of person who shops at Walmart (correct me if I'm wrong, no offense meant).

For instance, I choose to buy coffee from my local fair trade/farm aid coffeeshop instead of from a Starbuck's. Yes it's expensive, but I want to support the local. There are various other reasons not to always go for the lowest price. If you're buying a product that might fail, paying a bit more in exchange for a better return policy is completely valid.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[Jeff Molby]

the first thing I thought when I saw the $100 rebate was "woo hoo, untracable income"

Unless you get audited. It's unlikely, but if you do, it won't be hard for them to see the $100 deposit in your bank account and get curious.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[PuppetMasteX]

Actually, Sweden happens to have 25% sales tax.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[SMS_Design]

No, here's how it works. You buy the $1000 item with, say, a local sales tax of $1083.75. That's $83.75 in taxes, as opposed to the $67.00(Hmm. Awfully even for multiplying by 0.08375) you would pay on the $800. $16.75 difference. If you know how to handle taxes, almost anything at Best Buy can be a write-off. If my tax rate is 20%, that's a tax savings of $200 on the $1000 purchase, where as on an $800 purchase, I would only be saving $160 in income tax.

End result? Save more money on the $1000 w/ $200 mail-in. A wee-bit iffy on the tax law, but you'll never be busted for something stupid like that. Our tax system is crazy.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[labratuk]

Ah yeah - it just sends shivers down my spine to think that evil federal government is getting a higher proportion of my money, even if I'm paying out less. I mean, what has the damn government ever done for me?

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[slashkitty]

That's sort of hard to believe.. especially because you could still file the rebate on it! You must have some dumb clerks where you are.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[whoop]

At least with computer hardware, you can many times find it for sale from an internet shop for cheaper or similar amounts than the rebated price. The difference is in timing, have the item in a week for $200, or have it now for $250 and wait 6-12 weeks/months for the $50 rebate.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

No, because it doesn't go in as an item with a rebate. It goes in as an item for a certain price. You clearly have no idea how a cash register works.

They can use the same method they use to price-match to do this.

You, sir, are a Nub.

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[slashkitty]

Haha. Well, I don't shop at freaking best buy, but I bet it depends on the rebate. Some rebates just require a receipt and a upc. Or, haven't you ever seen that type?

Re:Rebates mean you pay extra taxes

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Not at Best Buy. They have a form that's printed for you to fill out. Just to make sure that there are tons of reasons for them to reject your MiR.

I have an easier way

[davmoo]

There is a way to get your rebates from Best Buy even faster...shop somewhere else.

I have a simple policy. If I'm going to buy something from your store, you're going to give me your best price right there. If I have to deal with a rebate, that removes the incentive to shop locally, and I'll just go mail order. 99 times out of a hundred the mail order price, thanks to sites like pricewatch, is going to be less than the Best Buy price even less the rebate...and that takes in to account the shipping charges.

Best Buy and places like that use rebates for one simple reason...us stupid consumers put up with it and still buy their products. If everyone would simply quit doing that, rebate crap would disappear next week.

Re:I have an easier way

[Sparkle]

Maybe BB heard the ruckus I caused several years ago getting the promised $40 rebate on my Acer USB CD burner. Only took 18 months and many calls to get it. To this day I rarely set foot in BB and I always remember this when looking at Acer/BENQ merchandise.

My policy is as follows: Once your rebate is delinquent, I terminate shopping in your store until I get it. Several times I have gone without shopping in Frys for weeks because of this. I go in and explain and seek help. Usually after a month or two of delinquency the check shows up.

Re:I have an easier way

[rusty0101]

I think it is flame bait in an effort to get it below the threshold of visibility for someone. They could have selected trol or over-rated just as effectively. Also since it may be interpreted as advocating an illegal activity, which I attempted to indicate the activity would be and tried to disuade people from, which might have been interpreted as insighting an illegal activity which may have brought about a lot more responses of a flaming nature.

In any case, if the UPC in question is the manufacturer's upc, then that bar code is nearly always the same across sales venus. If you buy a model 1001 tv made by xyz company, the upc will be the same at both Circuit City as it is at Best Buy.

Some retailers have their own UPC bar codes that get printed and stuck over the manufacturer's UPC. I have seen something like this at both CompUSA and MicroCenter. If the rebate is associated with the store rather than the manufacturer, then the mail-in form may be looking for that code.

Another method of protecting against this sort of fraud would be to use the serial number. At MicroCenter devices like Hard Drives and other higher end products get scanned for both their UPC and their Serial number. That SN gets printed on the receipt, so if you return the device the store knows it is the correct device. Likewise if you attemptd to perpitrate the fraud I described, the SN of the device you attempted to get the rebate on would be different from the one on the receipt. Sending in the wrong SN would be an issue. However it would be potentially easier to perpitrate the fraud online as you would simply re-enter the SN from the receipt.

If the SN was not on the receipt, it would still be part of the tracking information that the manufacturer maintained regarding sales channels. I.e. If you attempted to use the SN of a product purchased online as part of a Best Buy rebate program, the manufacturer would be able to say that the SN of the device in question was not distributed to Best Buy.

How a rebate handler would deal with the rebate request may be situation dependent. The three methods I can think of are to honor the rebate as least expensive, check with the distribution channels in question and send your rebate request to some law enforcement agency, or they could simply reject the rebate.

In any case having a mind that can envision a criminal activity is the first step in finding a way to prevent people from doing that type of activity.

Satan says

[gwayne]

"Brrrrrr, It's kinda chilly today..."

Cynical me.

[loraksus]

chibbie writes "Best Buy is finally working towards ending mail-in rebates by 2007. Rebates will still be around, but you will be able to file them online, and receive your check much quicker. I guess this means Best Buy doesn't hate their customers after all."

Bullshit. Filing rebates online eliminates a paper trail, which will allow them to sit back and say, "whoops, you entered a number wrong, you don't get your rebate" or "whoops, you didn't submit on time, sorry, no rebate", or even "whoops, we never got your submission, sorry."
The rebate companies hate the fact that customers keep copies of their rebate submissions - especially if they have delivery confirmation numbers that prove that they are lying.
A copy with a delivery confirmation number is damn near irrefutable evidence in small claims court, even though collecting from some of the clearing houses is nearly impossible because they move around, change their names, etc so much.
This might be a slightly cynical response, but really, how many of the people here haven't had to put up with bullshit (defined as the rebate company lying) when trying to get a rebate in the past?
Of course, the only punishment companies get is a small fine and a "warning" from the FTC. Fraud on such a scale should be punished by jail time of executives, but, of course, that won't happen.
And yes, boys and girls, sending out thousands of postcards stating "sorry, you didn't send your submission by the postmark date" when they know that you did, is fraud. Not paying out the rebate even when you send in proof / give them the tracking number that clearly states that it was mailed and delivered on x dates, is something else.

(I'm looking at you logitech, you fuckers still owe me $20)

Re:Cynical me.

[DavidD_CA]

Assuming that you have a printer, couldn't you just Print Screen for your "paper trail"?

So if you file your online rebate, print the screen, and don't get it in 6-8 weeks you now have your proof.

Why are people so negative about rebates on /.? Sure it's a gimmick to get you to buy something and forget to claim your rebate, but that's *your* fault, not the retailer's.

I've never had a problem with any rebate I've ever submitted, and lately I'm getting them back faster than ever.

Re:Cynical me.

[loraksus]

Why are people so negative about rebates on /.?
Because I have caught rebate companies lying to my face more times than I can remember. As have many, many others.
Did you miss the BBB link where hundreds of people filed complaints against TigerDirect, primarily for rebate problems? Did you not see how TigerDirect simply ignored those complaints?
It isn't just them - CompUSA got kicked out of the BBB for rebate (and other) "issues" (not just an unsatisfactory rating) a while back and there are tens of thousands of people who have taken the time to find the corporate office of a company, find the regional BBB office responsible for that region and filed a complaint. That usually takes a half hour - at least - to do - and most people don't spend the time to do it.
CompUSA even had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in rebate claims.


Sure it's a gimmick to get you to buy something and forget to claim your rebate, but that's *your* fault, not the retailer's.

Claiming that something wasn't received by X date when you have the usps delivery confirmation tracking screen on your monitor stating that it was isn't anyone's "fault", it is criminal behavior, especially when you add in the fact that they aren't sending you a check even though you jumped through their hoops.


I've never had a problem with any rebate I've ever submitted, and lately I'm getting them back faster than ever.
I guess you're lucky then. I have to admit, a lot of companies have started to get their act together, I even got a best buy rebate about 4 months ago (and they screwed me on several rebates before that). Seagate got their shit together when it came to rebates about 6 months ago (apparently a system upgrade was a dismal failure, but they overcame it) and a lot of other companies have started to realize that the negative pr isn't worth it.
Still, it is pretty common to not get a rebate check in 6-8 weeks as promised, but in 9 or 10. To me (and I realize that this isn't how the legal community generally views it) even something as simple as this is a breach of contract and should be punished accordingly.
Maybe I'm just simple or something and just expect that if they say "if you do this and this, we will send you this" they actually intend to do it. I think the shady rebate houses will die off soon - mainly because the stores face liability for the behavior of the rebate houses due to the FTC ruling - either that or get their act together, but the entire industry is built on corruption. It seems inevitable that unethical people will try to get into this industry in the future. That said, you have been fortunate, a lot of people have had much worse experiences.

Re:Cynical me.

[YrWrstNtmr]

Why negative on rebates? Because they are underhanded.

They can obviously afford to sell the item at the after rebate price. So why not just sell it at that price to begin with?

a) The percentage of people who do not get their rebates is free money to them.
- either the customer doesn't send it in, or
- the retailer doesn't send it out
b) The interest they gain on the loan of that money during the rebate period. I have no interest in loaning a billion dollar company money, so that THEY can gain 60 days of interest on it.I wouldn't have really made any interest on $30 for that period, but in aggregate, they do. Screw that. I am not a bank.

Just sell me the item at your best price. If it's a good price, I'll buy it.
Just leave off the "Loan us $30, and we'll (probably) give it back to you in a month or two."

Re:Cynical me.

[DavidD_CA]

> They can obviously afford to sell the item at the after rebate price. So why not just sell it at that price to begin with?

Do you *really* think that?

Do you honestly think that Product X can sell for $10-100 off the retail price and the company will still make money?

I'm afraid that you're over simplifying a very complicated marketing concept. I guarantee you that if 100% of buyers started completing their rebates, there would be no more rebates.

A $50 USB stick with a $25 rebate absolutely *cannot* just be sold for $25.

Re:Cynical me.

[dfenstrate]

Filing rebates online eliminates a paper trail, which will allow them to sit back and say, "whoops, you entered a number wrong, you don't get your rebate" or "whoops, you didn't submit on time, sorry, no rebate", or even "whoops, we never got your submission, sorry."

The only trouble I ever had with rebates was with sprint and their new phone discounts every 18 months- and I sorted that out with a phone call or two. Of course, since i was a regular customer of theirs, it was in their interest to keep me happy.

I've always gotten my best buy and staples rebates. YMMV with smaller outfits who don't worry about their reputation

Just don't fuck up the forms- really, they aren't all that complex, are they? And how hard is it to sit down for five minutes when you get home, address an envelope or two, fill out the slip on the reciept, cut out the UPC and drop it all in the mail?

If my experience with a couple dozen best buy and staples rebates is any indication, most of the people bitching about their rebates here are either:
1. Sloppy
2. Procrastinators
or both.

Honestly I don't have much sympathy for dumb, lazy shits. Do you?

Those are the only companies I have a body of experience with, so I can't really say anything about the honesty of other rebate places.

Re:Cynical me.

[loraksus]

Just don't fuck up the forms- really, they aren't all that complex, are they? And how hard is it to sit down for five minutes when you get home, address an envelope or two, fill out the slip on the reciept, cut out the UPC and drop it all in the mail?
If my experience with a couple dozen best buy and staples rebates is any indication, most of the people bitching about their rebates here are either:
1. Sloppy
2. Procrastinators


So I guess that all the people who spent the time to find the head office of the particular store who didn't send them their rebate, spent the time to find out out which regional BBB office is responsible for them and then file a BBB claim are just slackers.
And hey, there can't be all that many of them - it isn't as if some companies have hundreds of BBB complaints againt them (because of rebate issues) or that compusa got kicked out of the bbb a few years ago or anything.
Nah, everything is fine, clearly the only people who don't get rebates are sloppy procrastinators.

Optimism

[Guppy06]

"I guess this means Best Buy doesn't hate their customers after all."

No, it means they can harvest (and sell) your address and contact info without having to pay for the envelope opener and data-entry team. That, and the cookies (oh, the cookies).

Re:Optimism

[magicchex]

You'd think they'd be happier with their Reward Zone, where you pay THEM to harvest your info. Why lose that extra profit?

Re:Optimism

[gwayne]

You mean the "daTe-entery Deem", don't you, as in a flock of chickens randomly pecking at keyboards...

Rebate idea for charities

[Audacious]

I had an idea once for charities. Here it is:

You know at Christmas time there are people standing around outside of various places with a pot where you can put your change in, get a smile, maybe a wave, and you feel good. Well, why not put a large box outside where people can drop their rebate offers. The person standing there can have a box cutter to get the barcode off of the box and the charity can then send in the rebate coupon.

Unfortunately, in our world today the box cutter guy would be taken for a terrorist and hauled off in handcuffs probably.

Still, it could mean millions for charities and no one would have to shell out a dime since these are rebates.

Re:Rebate idea for charities

[FLEB]

"Limit 1 per household."

Re:Rebate idea for charities

[Audacious]

Well, I thought the charities could get together with the business (in this case Best Buy) and play "Let's make a deal!" along with the companies which are giving out the rebates.

It's not a perfect plan - but it might help out some charities.

Re:Rebate idea for charities

[FLEB]

Oh, sure, burst my pessimistic naysaying bubble with reason and forethought, why don't you.

Re:Rebate idea for charities

[Audacious]

Hah! :-P That almost made me fall out of my chair! :-)

Staples has been doing that...

[DraconPern]

Staples has been doing the online rebate thing for a really long time. They call it 'Easy Rebate', and it really is easy. And it is going to take BestBuy 2 years to implement it? Give me a break. They are just trying to appease the FTC.

Re:Staples has been doing that...

[loraksus]

It should be added that Staples is one of the (if not the) most customer friendly box stores out there.
Although I suppose it depends on the manager, I've never had a problem doing a pricematch and using one of their coupons (if you sign up for their catalog, you get a $30 off $150 coupon every month) and you can also save a couple percent if you use their business card (you get a check at the end of every quarter for 2% (or something) of your purchases). Also, I'm pretty sure that their free shipping if you buy $X doesn't exclude everything and their in-store clearance deals are usually really good (I got a zip drive with 5 zip disks for $20 and a $50 rebate printed out (so -$30 total price) when zip drives were still worth something)

In the rare case that one of the chat CSRs decline a pricematch, you can always try again and you'll get a friendly CSR that does. Or be nice when you call in and you'll be given the pricematch.
That said, when they switched to a different rebate house (a few months back) I had to call in and get my rebates shipped, but the person who I spoke with spoke english without an accent and was very pleasant to deal with and I've never had to lift a finger after doing the online submission again. If you think I'm shilling, take a look at my posting history, I'm highly critical of dishonest retailers (and don't mince words).
It is a shame that they don't sell more tech stuff, it would be nice to deal with them more often.

Re:Staples has been doing that...

[mkiwi]

I have to confirm that CompUSA does it too. I filed a rebate 6 months ago and have never seen a check. Sure it might come later, but currently my $40 is unaccounted for. Out of 6 rebates I have applied for, I have only gotten a check for two- not a very good record.

One reason I did not get a rebate was because I "Did not send the UPC, please send the UPC." Well the problem is you have to cut out the UPC and place it in an envelope for God knows where and you never see it again. Basically I did everything correctly but the company I wanted my rebate from said too bad, we're taking your money and your UPC so there's nothing you can do about it.

Now, there are exceptions: Seagate Technologies company rebates are fairly reliable and get done in a timely manner. So far, I have not had a problem with any Seagate purchases.

Re:Staples has been doing that...

[Jilly Jelly Roll]

Another cool thing about Staples - if you want to buy a large item but you don't want to carry it home, or if they don't have the item in stock and you don't want to come back for it later, you can order it online there at one of the computer terminals. Then you go to the register, pay for the item there, and they ship it to your house for free. So no need to hit the $50 mark for free shipping (like you do online).

Re:Staples has been doing that...

[loraksus]

If you have their rewards card (free to sign up), you get free shipping on anything as well.

"Just enter this 72-digit code to get your rebate"

[Animats]

Somehow, I suspect that getting a rebate online will be made as difficult as possible. And then you'll get it as a store credit.

Ever had to mail a rebate from a Costco purchase?

[Hamster Lover]

Didn't think so. As much as I can recall, all their rebates are applied when you check out. Why do it any other way? Costco has to be one of the most stress free places to shop: they pay and treat their employees well, they sell high quality products at low prices and they have sane, consumer friendly policies.

I used to work in electronics retail, home of the never-to-be-seen-again-mail-in-rebate. I know from my experience there that the only ones really pushing for rebates are the retailers since the cost of rebate is born by the manufacturer and the retailer can advertise the rebated price and still sell the product at full price. Yes, there are some retailer initiated rebates but they're pretty rare. The pressure from retailers pushing for rebates seems to have lead to manufacturers farming out their rebates to fulfilment centres with the intent on honoring as few as possible.

I wish the Competition Bureau in Canada had the balls that the FTC has and made retailers responsible for rebates who would then pursue the rebate from the manufacturer in case of unfulfilment. Score one for the USA!

Re:Ever had to mail a rebate from a Costco purchas

[Travoltus]

"Didn't think so. As much as I can recall, all their rebates are applied when you check out. Why do it any other way? Costco has to be one of the most stress free places to shop: they pay and treat their employees well, they sell high quality products at low prices and they have sane, consumer friendly policies."

Stress-free? I dunno about that. Those long lines are heck to wait in. But yeah, I am a member, and I have a relative who LOVES working there. Their prices rock, and their stuff is better quality.

BTW Costco also donates to the Democratic Party... I bet that's a surprise to some... :D

Rebates suck

[CoolVC]

As soon as I read this I realized I forgot to send in the form for the $100 rebate for the last computer I bought at Best Buy. When I bought it, I asked them if there was any mail-in rebates. I was just hoping they'd say no.

Staples

[mastakuno]

Staples already has online "easy rebates." However, they still about 4-6 weeks to come.

Re:Staples

[oneiron]

Staples did away with vendor sponsored mail-in rebates, also? Somehow, I doubt it.

Re:Staples

[kalidasa]

Staples uses mostly on-line rebates, and I have never had a problem with a Staples rebate. https://www.stapleseasyrebates.com/

Re:Staples

[oneiron]

Not sure about this, but I think best buy already has an online rebate redemption thing going, also... I know compusa does, and I think I've done some best buy rebates online as well. The point of this article isn't partial-online....it's total-online. Personally, I've never had a problem with _any_ rebate (except the time I threw the box away and needed the UPC...bastards).

Rebates just suck for consumers, in general. There's absolutely no reason the stores shouldn't be able to offer instant rebates at the time of purchase with today's technology. This becomes particularly obvious when best buy starts setting up an electronic infrastructure to support online rebates. They claim to be doing it to "help the customer", but in reality...they just know there's no excuse for forcing the snail-mail issue any longer.

Taking it even further, the only>/b> arguement for online rebates vs. instant rebates is that best buy depends on a certain level of "breakage", as they call it in the marketing biz. Without that breakage, rebates wouldn't be profitable anymore. They know they're going to lose some of the breakage without the snail-mail crutch, so you should expect less rebates...or less lucrative rebates. Yay for slimy corporate bastards trying to squeeze every last cent possible out of their customers... Hey, at least the diligent customers can still benefit from it. Oh well...

They've already done it on laptops

[Hexum2600]

BBY has already eliminated the rebates on notebooks / laptops. Instead of having mail in rebates for the sale, the notebooks price is instantly reduced at the register. You only pay tax on the reduced price. That means no mail in or online submission rebates at all to deal with. Just the discounted price.

Re:They've already done it on laptops

[Hexum2600]

Oh, and I guess I should add in that they also have managed to get Gateway to do the instant rebate thing with their desktops... so all notebooks and Gateway desktops have all been moved to instant (not online!) rebates already.

Re:They've already done it on laptops

[Hexum2600]

Actually thats a whole lot longer story than just "Its Gateways doing..." ... but its not relevent. You're right in that Gateway didn't offer any of their own mail in rebates on the product, but when retailers picked them up there was nothing in that agreement about not offering their own rebates. This rebate elimination has been in the works for a lot longer than anyone talks about; new product lines like Insignia and Init don't do mail in rebates on their products either.

Second Link

[evilviper]

From the second link:

"the customer is always right"

Why do people say that so often? It's obvious that nobody understands what it means.

It doesn't mean the customer can do no wrong, or that they should get whatever they want. It means you don't make an issue out of something that really doesn't matter. When they say they want a better pair of speakers for their Panasony stereo surround-sound system, you don't tell them the speakers that came with it are as good at it gets, you don't tell them that they've confused the brand name, and you don't tell them that stereo isn't surround-sound. You just let them go right along being right, and sell them the fancy looking expensive speakers. THAT is what "the customer is always right" really means.

They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts. They load up on "loss leaders," severely discounted merchandise designed to boost store traffic, then flip the goods at a profit on eBay. They slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge.

It really pisses me off that he groups those together, like people who bought a discounted computer are just as bad as those who are getting rebate checks from items they've already returned to the store. It also pisses me off that they are angry that some customers are forcing them to really honor the terms THEY MADE UP about price matching... if you don't like it, change your policy. Either way, accept the consequences of your own terms and shut up. Hell, the customers are forced to accept the terms even if they don't want to, why shouldn't Best Buy?

Re:Second Link

[loraksus]

It really pisses me off that he groups those together, like people who bought a discounted computer are just as bad as those who are getting rebate checks from items they've already returned to the store.

Absolutely. The head of Best Buy has an "interesting viewpoint" on the people who support his stores.
I won't mince words, he goes on batshit insane rants about his customers pretty often, and seems to think that he is entitled to make profit (and as such, anyone who costs him profit by using a coupon, pricematching, etc is stealing directly from him), but that really isn't the issue.
I have no problem with them validating rebates and punishing people who submit rebates and then return a product. Shit, if it becomes a pattern, take them to court or even have the DA file charges, but as you said, there is a difference between someone who engages in fraud and someone who wants to get a good deal and uses a pricematch and a coupon on an item that also has a rebate.

Speaking of which - they already have a computerized validation system for rebates that apparently takes data from their POS system, if you return something, your rebate submission will be rejected. The 2 year timeline is completely unrealistic and is, quite frankly bullshit (many others have pointed this out)

It also pisses me off that they are angry that some customers are forcing them to really honor the terms THEY MADE UP about price matching...

Oh. My. FSM.
Pricematching at Best Buy is like dealing with a schizophrenic. You never know what is allowed and what isn't. Sometimes you can use a coupon with a pricematch, sometimes you can't, sometimes the coupon price is subtracted from the pricematch, sometimes the after rebate price is used - it goes on and on and is really annoying.
Even the stuff on the "pricematching sign" can be completely ignored by the managers. Managers will just shrug their shoulders when you read the sign to them and say something like "Well, that's how it is" as if you are in an episode of the Sopranos.

To their credit, they have been cementing their position on several issues, although virtually every single policy change that they have set in stone has been hostile to their customers. Many of their rebates now specifically state that the rebate is not valid if a pricematch is performed on the item (terms like this were on the WD HDD rebate I filed about 6 months ago) and there are other examples.
I really don't care, their prices aren't competitive on the items that I purchase (techie stuff) and the hassle isn't worth it either. To say nothing of the fact that a lot of items that they have good prices on are on perpetual backorder or are cancelled with no explanation given (During the black friday weekend, they cancelled several of my orders - a laptop, a Radeon X700 and something else, but they charged my card as soon as I placed the order, and didn't refund it until several days later)

Re:Second Link

[loraksus]

The best is stores that won't match prices with their own online prices. "Oh, our webstore is a different division, and we don't pricematch with them.

I'm pretty sure Best Buy does this. And yes, it is really annoying.

Re:Second Link

[shumacher]

Best Buy's website will also display in-store pricing when it detects an in-store kiosk is browsing the site.

Re:Second Link

[Captain Chaos]

My sister and I had this problem with them a couple years ago when buying a digital camera for our mother at Best Buy. They were running a deal online where you would get a $50 gift card with purchase of a digital camera and I asked the salesman in that department if they would honor that in store also and was told that it wouldn't be a problem. The next day my sister met me at the store near me and that salesman wasn't working, so the one who got the camera out of the case told us to go up to customer service. I went up there and was very rudely informed that they don't match online prices. I told the girl that it was their website and one of their employees in that department said it wouldn't be a problem. She continued acting very rudely to me while I was trying to remain calm and polite. She kept using that excuse that they are different divisions and keep different inventory so it wasn't possible. I asked her if that was the case how come I could order it online, get the deal and choose in store pickup, thus taking it out of their store inventory. I finally asked to speak to her manager and when he came over and I explained the situation, he said it wouldn't be a problem and apologized for the misunderstanding. I ended up getting the gift card after he intervened and then used it five minutes later to buy a SD card for the camera. I also got quite the dirty look from the clerk since I went over her head, but with that attitude of hers it shocked me they would even let her work customer service. Usually it is the customer that can get quite rude and they should be able to deal with that, not be rude to a customer that is being polite, especially when we were also buying their extended warrenty since our mom had a habit of dropping cameras.

I try not to buy as much from Best Buy these days because of their policies, their prices really aren't the best and they have the absolute worst staff of any retail establishment I have ever set foot in. It's rather convenient that a Circuit City opened up next door to my local Best Buy so I usually shop there and mostly use Newegg for hardware purchases. Not once have I had a problem with a Circuit City employee and generally on the products I am after the prices are better also. I used to consider Best Buy my favorite store years ago and have spent a lot of money there, but the way they treat their customers has turned them more into a window shopping store for me now. Many of my trips in there are to look at something in person and then I end up buying elsewhere.

Re:Second Link

[evilviper]

I try not to buy as much from Best Buy these days because of their policies, their prices really aren't the best and they have the absolute worst staff of any retail establishment I have ever set foot in.

Never set-foot in a Walmart? Best Buy is very, very terrible, but Walmart is still worse.

Not once have I had a problem with a Circuit City employee and generally on the products I am after the prices are better also.

Yeah I've had similar experiences. They do website price matching without any arguments; it's explicitly in their terms. In my experience they seem to have more reliable merchandise, so after a couple Best Buy MAG monitors died right out of warranty, I went to Circuit City, got an even cheaper (but better looking) monitor, and it's been working for about 3 years now... And they have some really interesting cheap stuff now. Search their website for "nexxtech" which makes things like decent $10 digital cameras, $10 (analog-tuned, digital-display) shortwave radios, etc.

Re:Second Link

[Captain Chaos]

"Never set-foot in a Walmart? Best Buy is very, very terrible, but Walmart is still worse."

Actually I have, but I think I could count on one hand the number of times they got any of my money and it was very little when they did. That is one store that I would rank much lower overall than Best Buy, but I can't comment too much on their service since I try to never even set foot in one. I will say though that they need more checkouts open there from what I have seen and heard. My mother was there once to get an item she couldn't find elsewhere and it took her almost 45 minutes to check out in an express lane. I'd hate to see how long it would have taken in a normal checkout. The only problem with my boycott is I am a member of Sam's Club, though I generally don't seem to spend more than a few hundred a year there tops so I'm not helping Walmart grow much.

"They do website price matching without any arguments; it's explicitly in their terms."

I first tried that there with a printout from Walmart's website for the Two Towers box set and it was a piece of cake. The clerk wasn't aware they did that so made a quick call to her manager who said yes. I wasn't even sure myself if they would do it as I don't recall seeing it in the policy back then. She rang me up and then said she was going to end up doing the same thing since with the 10% difference it was cheaper than buying it with her employee discount. I love Circuit City's price matching, I have yet to have any hassles with them and they make it a lot faster process than Best Buy since it doesn't require special receipts that they have to write on and Circuit City also has their big competitors in a list to select from so the clerk doesn't have to type it in. I can usually have a pricematch completed there before a clerk at Best Buy could even pull out the special reciept to get started. The only real complaint I do have is their POS systems are a bit sluggish if you aren't paying with cash. I have looked at their display of those gadgets a few times, but have yet to try any of them. A few looked interesting so maybe I will give them a try.

Woah woah woah

[iamdrscience]

I guess this means Best Buy doesn't hate their customers after all.

Not so fast, there's no need to jump to any crazy conclusions here.

staples?

[insomniac8400]

Doesn't staples already do this?

customer tracking...

[dwater]

> Besides, the customer tracking is completely unacceptable.

Actually, I wouldn't be so against it if they made my information available to me too. I would very much value the record of what I buy when, and to have it categorized nicely and in a format I can use in some financial s/w would be awesome for making future budgets.

If one store did this, it would pretty much guarantee I bought as much from that store as possible. It's in their interest too as far as I can tell.

BJ's Wholesale Club does this now.

[Mike_ya]

Bought some dvd-r's that had a $5 mail in rebate. Logged into BJ's website, entered the code off the receipt and received the check about 4 weeks later. Not sure when they started this, but it is a really nice service.

Just abuse the system

[Kanabis]

I didn't see anyone mention the need to keep records. When these companies try to tell you they didn't get the upc or crap like that. Mention the fact that you have copies and you can fax them if necessary. After that the check always magically arrives in a couple days. Somebody said they could reach the company who made the rebate. This has never happened to me. If it did I'd just check Fatwallet's site which has extensive info on the actual centers that fill the rebates. Also find exploits..err 'hot deals.' Nothing like getting over on Circuit City who sponsors the site.

not nessicarily a scam, but watch out

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at a company that processes mail-in rebates for various companies. I can tell you that at least from my POV that if you follow all the instructions on the form and meet all the terms exactly you will get your rebate: i.e. they're not being deliberately disqualified, thrown in the trash, etc. However the companies we work for can ratchet up or down how forgiving we can be about mistakes and resubmissions: e.g. some vendors don't want to give their consumers any trouble, while others are clearly looking to disqualify people on technicalities. If you use common sense you can probably guess which are which.

I doubt online submission will get you your rebate any more often: you'll just know whether you've been qualified or disqualified faster. If they want to hold you to some technicality they will either way.

Waste of time.

[mattite]

Rebates are a waste of time because you still pay sales tax for the full amount at the register. i personally refuse to buy something just because it has a rebate. Of course it's better than nothing.

Great...

[monkaduck]

This may be cool and all, but shouldn't they use their resources for something infinetly better, like say... making sure their online store and their physical stores' inventories are in snyc? I recently tried to purcahse some RAM from them, only to get runaround because, while their online store listed it as instock at the store, the store didn't have one single stick (I purchased online). That to me is more important to fix than a different way to deal with rebates.

Re:Do you have the documentation?

[loraksus]

Good luck collecting, even if you do win. A win in small claims court does not mean that you will get your money.
You can also file a BBB and a FTC complaint. Once you do that, you will usually get a call in a few days from someone who isn't one of the mouthbreathers in their call center.

Staples Business Depot/Bureau en Gros

[10101001011]

Staples Business Depot/Bureau en Gros have been doing this for months already....

RAM

[Aqua OS X]

Dude, Paying twice as much for RAM is a good deal. Paying more means it's good.

Staples

[kaotic]

I have worked for staples for the past 6 months roughly, they have been already doing this for as long as I have been working. there Best Buy must have got the idea from them.

You have every right to be a cynic.

[ChrisKnight]

Like a damn papertrail matters...

I recently purchased an item from Fry's that had a rebate. Fry's prints you a custom rebate receipt that is part receipt, part rebate form. I fill it out and send it in. IU get a letter a few weeks later that says that although I provided my UPC code I failed to provide my receipt so they are rejecting my rebate. The receipt and the form were combined; if they got my address to write me back they got the damn receipt, and they proved it by writing me.

Screw rebates. I just order from NewEgg now.

-Chris

Re:You have every right to be a cynic.

[ChrisKnight]

The form and the receipt were the SAME piece of paper. That is how the Fry's special rebate receipts are printed.

-Chris

Old news - Staples.onlinerebates.ca

[seifried]

I just did a rebate from Staples for $30, online via http://staples.onlinerebates.ca/ (Canada). The person at the store claims it takes about half the time and you get a confirmation right away so you can be somewhat sure it actually went through. Still a great scam though, getting people to pony up money you sit on and earn money with until you give it away to someone else.

MOD PARENT UP

[magicchex]

Oh do I wish I had some mod points for you... hopefully someone else does.

Re:Ever had to mail a rebate from a Costco purchas

[Ossifer]

Costco has to be one of the most stress free places to shop

Sure, if you can even get to the parking lot past all the people idling their cars in line for an hour to save 3 cents a gallon on gas. Then the product you want only comes in a 50 gal. drum. Then you take your jumbo cart to the check out line of death (from starvation). Finally there's the legal body cavity search at the exit (legal because you agreed to it in your membership contract).

At least at Best Buy or Fry's I can simply say "No!" and stride past the door nazis when they request to check my bag and receipt.

Re:Do you have the documentation?

[loraksus]

Easy to collect.

You can ask the court to sieze the company's assets to pay you. This is usually in the form of a county sherrif going to the corporation's nearest office, padlocking the doors, and auctioning off the property. Usually this gets the company to pay rather quickly.

True, but the cost for the sherrif to do this usually exceeds the size of the award (the ones near here charge you to do it, I'm sort of assuming the same thing happens in the rest of the country). I don't believe that I've ever heard of a rebate case brought by a single person that has resulted in punitive damages - and only 1 or 2 cases where the judge awarded the rebate amount plus court fees, etc. If anyone knows of any such cases, please post below.

If I feel especially vengeful, one day, I might actually do something like you suggest, even if it costs me some money >:)

interest free loan

[boinx]

... i wish i had thought of that.

heres something worth $10, please buy it for $50 and ill give you $10 back.

nice.

the solution is to...

[3seas]

report problems to the FTC.

make it a point to focus on the techniques used by the rebate middle party to avoid paying you.

Since the FTC and the likes seem to be so focused on the wrong information (which advertisers and manufactures are invilved) instead of the tactics being applied to increase the appearance of customer failure, the tactics are not being addressed of which the middle party is applying.

The crime is many, from mail fraud to bait and switch.

the middle party fullfillment companies are the ones applying these consmer deception.

I don't know what the fuck is wrong with the FTCs failuer to properly addressing this, rather then themselves looking for excuses. Maybe they need some help....who all might help? Your local congressmen??

Thieft by deception is criminally wrong.

Rebates = Misleading Price

[KeiichiMorisato]

What I hate about rebates is the pricing they advertise.

For Example:
An item worth $299.99 with a mail-in rebate of $100.

They would advertise it for $199.99 after mail in rebate. However that's not really true because what really happens is that you get the $100 back after you pay taxes on $299.99.

Where I live, there's a 14% tax on top of purchases so the calculations actually are
299.99 x 1.14 = 342 - 100 = 242.
While their advertised price would lead me to believe that it's
199.99 x 1.14 = 228

242-228 = 14 dollar difference (basically the tax on the rebate amount).

Sure, $14 doesn't seem like much, but when you're shopping for deals, and you go in with an expected cost and during the point of sale, the real cost shows up, it can be a bad surprise. Also, on more expensive purchases, the "surprise" cost can be quite a shock.

Re:Rebates = Misleading Price

[RickySan]

They would advertise it for $199.99 after mail in rebate. However that's not really true because what really happens is that you get the $100 back after you pay taxes on $299.99.
North america should really switch to the system we have here in europe, include tax in the price that's displayed, you pay what you see, no surprises at the till

As a former Best Buy employee...

[magicchex]

I'm AMAZED I haven't seen anyone post a link to the great experiences of former (and current) Best Buy employees and customers.

That being said, I hated that job. I was in customer service and it was my job to try to explain draconian policies to customers (although our store was fairly liberal with return policies and so on). Apparently, the kid behind the counter getting paid $8.XX is the one who makes up the rules.

Every person I've talked to that used to work there and no longer does has hated it and were happy to get out. And sure, there's no commission, BUT they definitely keep track of PRP and PSP numbers as well as those MASSIVELY annoying EW/SI "free" magazine offers. If you don't sell enough of them, don't expect too many hours next week. But, since the managers get bonuses and trips and so on for having high numbers, who can blame them? *SARCASM*

Felt good to get that shit off my back. Best Buy is fairly good at screwing over their employees and their customers.

Gift Cards

[aznedy]

Best Buy may start offering more store gift cards instead of a rebates. During last holiday season Best Buy offered a $50 gift card w/ the purchase of an MP3 palayer worth $299 or more. Target routinely offers gift cards w/ the purchase of media & electronics purchases. A small $5 or $10 gift card is great for their business, because it encourages you to spend more money. When a new DVD costs $20 dollars they can bet on you spending another $10 - $15 on another movie or game. At Best Buy, with rebates on big ticket items like HDTVs & large appliances, they could bet on you spending hundreds or even thousands more!

Hold on a second

[TallMatthew]

Read these from TFA:

Retailer Best Buy said this week that it will electronically process rebates for notebook PCs and PC accessories, eliminating the mail-in rebate.

the electronic rebate program for laptops will apply just to rebates Best Buy itself offers, and not third-party suppliers.

By the end of the two years, the retailer hopes to eliminate all mail-in rebates within its store

In the first week of February, the online rebates will be extended to a range of computer accessories

Over time, Best Buy will ask third-party vendors to get on board with Best Buy's electronic rebate system. However, the ability of Best Buy to process rebates from third-party vendors will vary by vendor

Is it just me or is every one of these statements contradicted in part by another statement in the article?

The Better Business Bureau

[peterfa]

The Better Business Bureau has a record of Best Buy.

Apparently, two states sued Best Buy on the grounds of false advertizing. I present a quote from the BBC:

In May 2005, the Attorney General of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit against Best Buy Company. The lawsuit alleges that Best Buy engaged in a pattern of unfair and deceptive acts and practices including: Representations related to promised rebates, extended service plans, supplement magazine subscriptions, the return and exchange policies and restocking fees, gift cards and "Reward Zone Points". The matter is currently pending. Consumers can read the formal complaint at: www.doj.state.wi.us

Consider checking out the BBC before you consider purchases, and be sure the file a complaint if you get screwed.

Re:The Better Business Bureau

[peterfa]

Er, excuse me. Everywhere in this previous post that I said "BBC" I actually ment "BBB." Silly me. :P

Total Dupe

[shadow demon]

I really don't want to be pointing this out, but Zonk posted an article on this back in April when Best Buy announced this. See:http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/02/06 17234

Re:Total Dupe

[Lxy]

Shut up. Seriously.

The article you link to was the announcement that the change was coming. This article (written 2 days ago) states that Best Buy is finally starting the process. Same topic, but different articles.

If Linus announced that "kernel 2.8 is coming", then a year later said "2.8 has come", that would be a dupe in your flawed logic.

checks ? by snail mail ?

[stud9920]

Do they get delivered by horse ? I hear in Yu-rope, they have those fancy electronick moeny transfers...

Good

[Sv-Manowar]

They always used rebates knowing that a good percentage would never go through the hassle of the mailing process, I guess this shows good faith that they are now making it easier and I wouldn't be suprised if they saw more sales because of it. Good work Best Buy.

Use the "F" word: Fraud.

[Futurepower(R)]

Use the "F" word: Fraud. Every time an employee quits, it costs the rebate company a lot to hire and train someone new. Minimum wage people don't like to think they are helping break the law. Ask the employee how she or he can justify working for a dishonest company. Tell the employee he or she has the worst job in the world.

Call the manager of the store where you bought the rebate item. Use the "F" word again. Managers have a special number. The rebate company will listen to them. Store managers don't like the word fraud applied to their store; that could cost them hundreds of thousands, if the word gets around. If you don't get satisfaction from the store manager, get his or her name and call the store's main office. The people who work in main offices don't want fraud calls; and they definitely don't like fraud calls in which the name of a store manager is mentioned.

Never let them steal from you. If you ever accept that once, they will know they can do it again. Remember, there are a limited number of rebate companies, and they keep databases on those who apply for rebates.

Apparently almost all rebate companies are involved in fraud. They try to concentrate on the customers that will accept excuses. The stores will tell you they know nothing about the fraud, but that is not true; they know very well.

Be sure to tell the rebate company that you will file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and with your state's consumer fraud department, and do it. Tell the store that sold the rebate item the same thing, and do it.

Stay away from stores that hate their customers. My experience with Best Buy has been very negative.

Stay away from stores that offer big rebates on items that have defects that aren't obvious.

It has been my experience that Netgear is by far the worst in failing to send rebates. We have had bad experiences with Netgear equipment being buggy, too. Maybe there are companies who can only stay in business because they fail to sent rebates.

Always be kind and gentle with rebate company employees, but very firm. Remember, the employee is not getting any of the stolen money.

Always keep copies of everything you sent when you apply for a rebate. The rebate companies will exploit any weakness they find.

Remember, if you let them steal from you once, you will be in the database as someone who accepts abuse.

I got a Sony rebate 1 1/2 years after it was denied. I would never buy anything from Sony again, of course, even though I eventually got the rebate. Generally, companies that are abusive in one way are abusive in others. Generally, abuse is part of the corporate culture.

The United States is a country that thinks nothing of killing Iraqis to prevent a fall in value of the dollar and make money for weapons and oil company investors; routinely stealing from customers seems mild by comparison.

Re:Use the "F" word: Fraud.

[xtracto]

I think you can avoid making all that mess, and also getting angry if you simply do not consider rebates.

Rebates are scams, at least that is how I see it, I do no live in USA, but from everything I have seen. I remember also buying a iRiver CD/mp3 player about 5 years ago, I bought in in BestBuy or other similar shop, they offered me an extended warranty and the product had a mail in rebate.

I bought it there because it was the cheapest price (before rebate) I could find, as I was only on vacation (as I said, I do not live there) but, it seemed for me that it could be nothing but a scam.

Better compare prices from different shops and go for the cheaper (without rebate), of course, then you _may_ have to cope with companies like PriceRitePhoto which want to sell you other things (or, the extended warranty ... my ass).

Information Gathering Anyone?

[Svartalfar]

I used to work at Best Buy and I know we used to ask for every customer's phone number. When asked why I was told to inform the customer it was for tracking purposes. My boss tells me later on that it is so we can call customers after thier purchase, check in on it, and offer supplimental offers. "Hey, hows that TV ya bought, want DirecTV with that? How bout the service plan you chose not to go with?" Now they are going to be recording all your information at the register. Wonder what they will do with your home address and email address. I smell junk mail and harrassment at home!

I've used the online option...

[Ingolfke]

and got my money in 2 weeks. Very nice!

After 10 years of complaints Best Buy listens

[OrangeTide]

I'm glad they are finally getting their act together and getting the rebate industry "wired". Better late than never, but boy they sure are late.

I'm surprised

[BrentRJones]

I thought that mail-in rebates were a major source of keeping cash for stores that offer them. The rate of cashing-in the rebates is below 50%. And the uncashed ones are pure profit.

THey still hate them.

[georgi55]

"I guess this means Best Buy doesn't hate their customers after all." No, they do hate them and that's why they are moving to online process, they hate their customers who buy stuff, send rebate and retrun them; "eveil customers" By moving everything online like Staples Easy Rebate they can track if the person hasn't returned the item.

Best Buy?

[nurb432]

Does anyone still shop there considering the regular ( policy based ) treatment they give their customers?

The real solution - escheat

[John Jorsett]

This rebate nonsense continues because businesses know a lot of customers won't redeem them and the unclaimed cash is money in the seller's pockets. I think the real solution is for states to require all unreclaimed rebate funds by default go to the state (a concept called 'escheat'). I predict rebates would become either nonexistent or rare.

Rebates illegal in the UK?

[abigsmurf]

Can someone actually tell me for sure if rebates on physical goods are illegal in the UK? I've heard rumours that they are but we can still get 'cash back' on subscription services like mobile phone contracts or credit cards/loans...

Hate their customers because of this?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Do you know why people get rebates? Its because your allowing your home address, phone number, and/or email address to be sold to mass marketing mailing lists which increases the amoung of telemarketing, jumk mail, and spam you will receive.

Don't be deluded into believing mail-in rebates are beneficial. Even if you get 50% or 80% of the original item cost back in a rebate, this just means that the company your buying from is able to sell your information and make 10 times more profit with that information as opposed to selling the merchandise alone. The manufacturer is BUYING your contact information from you, but choosing to receive the money, you are authorizing your contact information to be sold.

Think of it. If a manfuacturer was truely benign and wanted to sell you a product at a reduced cost, then why not simply drop the MSRP by whatever the rebate amount is. This doesn't benefit the manufacturer. By collecting VALID contact information (i.e. you need to offer your correct mailing address to receive the rebate cheque), they are ensuring they get top dollar for their compiled mailing lists.

ALL REBATE OFFERS are a scam. Sometimes you will notice they say they can use the collected information and pass it to 3rd parties. Even if there is a check box saying you don't want to receive information from the manufacturer or 3rd parties, this isn't the case. Your just saying you don't want information about the product your buying, not in general.

If a manufacturer is offering a substantial rebate on a product, either wait a few months when they actually reduce the MSRP, or go to another store that is offering it for cheaper, but don't buy into mail in rebates unless you love junk mail and telemarketing calls at suppertime.

I actually thought Best Buy WAS thinking in the best interests of their customers by stopping the rebate process altogether, but was dissapointed when they only intend to facilitate quicker and easier collection of contact data using the internet. They will probably require you to provide a valid email address, thus increasing your incoming spam.

Look, at one time I was getting publishers clearing house junk mail every week, along with credit card applications and all kinds of junk mail. The ratio of real mail to junk mail was about 20 to 1. I stopped participating in rebate offers and was more careful about where my contact information is used, and I don't receive even ONE addressed junk mail item in a week.

Dumb people

[ylikone]

I have always gotten my rebate cheques also. I will have to assume that people that don't get them are just not following the instructions on the rebate carefully enough, meaning they don't include all the required bits or then they waited too long after purchasing and missed the rebate deadline.

Re:Dumb people

[Skater]

I'm not sure I buy that logic. Most people on Slashdot are probably IT or related, right? IT requires an attention to detail, so I find it hard to believe they wouldn't be filling those forms correctly. Maybe we've just been lucky... I view it as a small gamble, and I don't buy stuff based on the after-rebate price. I figure if I get the rebate, great, if I don't then I haven't lost much.

Re:Dumb people

[log0n]

No. It used to be that way (proud nerdly IT folk), but I'm becoming more and more convinced that slashdot now is made up of the new 'AIM / MSN is ko0L' crowd.

Re:Dumb people

[LurkerXXX]

I've never had a hard drive on me. I will have to assume anyone who has ever had a hard drive fail must have mistreated it somehow.

What? One person's individual experience has no real bearing on what others might experience? Shocking!

Re:Dumb people

[zodiaccat]

Wait... AIME/MSN isn't ko0l? ...damn. (runs into closet, cuts self.)

Re:Dumb people

[bzipitidoo]

I don't think so. Tell me how to follow the rebate requirements when the instructions are contradictory, missing, or wrong. Bought a new system from Fry's around Christmas (yeah, I know, not the time of year to get good deals) and went thru rebate hell. Was 9 rebates in all. Fry's advertised 2 rebates for a power supply, as in $55 - $40 rebate - $10 rebate = $5! The company offering those rebates offered another on a case. I bought both, and am trying to get all 3 rebates. But of course the rebates say not valid with any other rebate or offer. On top of that, Fry's mixed up the forms and it's easy to see why. I got 2 rebate forms for the case. The extra one for the case asked for the UPC code for the power supply. So, I don't know how many of those rebates I'll see.

Re:Dumb people

[Bing Tsher E]

Most people on Slashdot are probably IT or related, right?

Depends on how you use the terminology. I consider 'IT' to be the data janitors. People who are product developers and engineers who write software are not 'IT' anymore than the mechanical engineers who design a carpet sweeper are janitors. But people who

I bristle when an HR type refers to me as being an 'IT' type person.

Re:Dumb people

[ld_hrothgar]

I always get my rebates, my dad NEVER gets one. The last time I bought anything from them my father and I both bought monitors, *I* filled out both rebates and mailed them in (different names, addresses, envelopes) and I got my rebate (4 months later... bastards) and he never did. I checked their online tracking and they said he had a rebate coming, then one day it said there was no rebate with that #. He refuses to shop there anymore and I tend to agree with him. Remember when it was 4-8 weeks for a rebate? Last time I looked it was up to 10-12 weeks.

Re:Dumb people

[sumdumass]

I've been burnt on rebates several times. I have ocme to the conclusion that if it isn't an instant rebate at the registar it isn't anything you can count on. I have recieved rebates in the form of gift cards that can only be spent at a certain store, i've recieved them in the form of cupons for discounted items from a certain manufacturer and onc ei recieved a check for $15.00 that actualy bounced the first time thru and cost me $25.00 in fees.

I live in ohio and evidently, best buy's practice of scamming rebates is enough to get the state involved. It might be a case of them pulling different stunts in different states once they calculate what they can get away with. Then again bestbuy isn't the only player that has given rebates a bad name.

How Rebates Really Work...

[xoip]

The stores and manufacturers are betting that you don't take the time to fill in the forms.

Over time, Best Buy will ask third-party vendors to get on board with Best Buy's electronic rebate system. However, the ability of Best Buy to process rebates from third-party vendors will vary by vendor, as the retailer works to establish the program with each manufacturer over time

Follow the money...These guys are betting on the fact that a good percentage of consumers don't go to the trouble of mailing in the information.For those who complain that their information is lost by the processing company, make a copy of the documents to prove it was all together when you sent it.
I've never had a problem with the mail-ins but I'm sure that time will come.

Not good enough

[jav1231]

If rebates are so cool, let BB go through the process of getting them. Something tells me they will have no problem getting a rebate.

Electronic Rebates get my business much more often

[CFD339]

I've used rebates many times - and whenever I've done the work, I've gotten the check. Sure, I'd prefer they did it at the register or just LOWERED THE PRICE, but I suspect that accounting rules and who is selling what tend to make that complicated more than it should be.

In any case, I know the game. The manufacturer counts on you NOT redeeming all the rebates. Fair enough. It lets them offer deeper discounts. I assume the possibility of failing to get the rebate when I buy the product. These electronic rebates reduce that liklihood, and as a result I'm more likely to get the product.

Now what are they going to do...

[ebrandsberg]

Make you "shoot the monkey" on the webpage in order to actually get the rebate vs. hiring real monkeys to process these things? I'm sorry, but I hate rebates in general--they are worse than insurance carriers on you actually qualifying for the rebate "I'm sorry but you sent in the wrong proof of purchase", "I'm sorry, but the proper documentation fell on the floor when we opened your envelope and since we arn't allowed to pick it up, this rebeate is denied", etc. Yea, whatever.

It's Not A Question Of Hate

[netnomad]

It's a question of keeping up with the Joneses. Staples in Canada has been doing the online rebate thing for more than a year. People love it, because in their minds it doesn't cost them anything and they don't have to go to the post office to mail in the receipt or to buy a stamp.

Re:Of course they still hate us...

[RobertLTux]

try this trick go to dispare.com and get a "another dissatified customer hat" or get one made
paperclip a $10.00 to the brim of the hat

and now the game if you actually get good service (ie the clerk paid attention to you didn't bs you yadda)
unclip the $10 and ask to speak to the manager
when you get the manager tell Him? " i was doing a bit of an expirament and since i actually got good service today i would like to give #clerk this $10 but im not sure its allowed"
then make your purchase go home and write the corporate office explaining the situation

Rebates great when shopping for your employer

[nasorenga]

I look for rebates when shopping for the office. Look, if I buy a $1000 item, then I pay the $1000 + sales tax, my employer reimburses me for the whole amount, and then I send for the $400 rebate which I get to pocket in toto. The fact that sales tax is charged on the whole $1000 is not a problem for me, and not for my employer either, since it is wholly deductible against tax collected for the products/services she sells.

Too many, voids a rebate. Tax not considered.

[Easy2RememberNick]

Many of the rebates I've seen even have written on them that the company can refuse to send you a rebate if too many people send in rebates, they keep the money! There are many other conditions too.

  If you're buying a product and the clerk said too many people are in the line, I'm not giving you the 10% discount because there are too many people asking for it. I know what I'd do. RIP clerk.

  Also you have to consider taxes, the rebate you think you are getting is after taxes. You pay $100 for a product with a $50 rebate, the rebate you send in is *after* you purchase the item at $100. The item at $100 + 5% tax = $5 in tax, but if the rebate (like the ads imply, "$50 rebate!") took off $50 first it would be $50 + 5% = $2.50. Your $50 "rebate" is not only $47.50, minus the cost of the envelope and stamp to mail it and also your time and effort.

Don't forget: sales tax, time, effort, postage

[walterbyrd]

And other annoyances, and expenses, etc.

- once you cut that UPC thing off the box, you can forget about bring it back for a refund.

- you paid sales tax on the $40 you never got, that's another $3, or so.

- Figure 30 minutes of your time filling out forms, cutting out UPCs, making photo copies, etc. If you earn $25 an hour, that $12.50 right there.

- postage, envelopes, photo-copies.

- even if you got your refund, that 10 weeks without your money.

Re:Don't forget: sales tax, time, effort, postage

[heinousjay]

Figure 30 minutes of your time filling out forms, cutting out UPCs, making photo copies, etc. If you earn $25 an hour, that $12.50 right there.

Wow, you get paid for any time you don't spend filling out rebates?

How does your assertion make sense in any way?

Re:Don't forget: sales tax, time, effort, postage

[Limecron]

I agree that "Well, if you make $x per hour then you've really lost" assertions are somewhat bullshit.

Also, if you've ever filled out a few rebates before and it still takes 30 minutes, you've probably got some sort of IQ deficit, or at a minimum very, very poorly organized.

That said, there are still better things I could spend my 5 minutes of filling out rebate form doing, and it's probably worth some amount of money to me. It's just not quantifiable. :)

Re:Don't forget: sales tax, time, effort, postage

[Zaphod Prefect]

- you paid sales tax on the $40 you never got, that's another $3, or so.

It's my understanding that (in the US) rebate checks aren't considered "taxable income."

Best Buy Steals Gift Cards

[umass2ucr]

Best Buy hates their customers...a lot. I tried to use a gift card online, and they cancelled the order, cancelled the gift card, and won't issue me a new card or send me a check! I encourage all of you to visit their competitors.

I make a point

[WormholeFiend]

to tell salesppl that I wont buy any crap that comes with a mail-in rebate... "gimme the rebate NOW, or keep your shit and try to sell it to someone else."

Another Evil Corporation???

[Pedrito]

Why does everyone rag on companies trying to make money. Best Buy is a publicly trade company. By law, they have to keep the best interests of their investors in mind. This is, in almost all cases, to make as much profit as they can.

If you can get past that, Best Buy isn't all that bad. Personally, I shope there all the time. They started reducing the number of mail-in-rebates a while ago. I check every couple of weeks for their blank DVD prices. Every once in a while, they have sales and the blank DVDs are more than 50% off the regular price. 50 packs for $16 or $17.

Their customer service has, in my experience, been exceptional. Yeah, their sales people push the useless service agreements but, and again, in my experience, they don't push too hard. I've walked out of CompUSA without buying a computer because their salespeople kept on with the service contract and wouldn't shut up about it. Best Buy has never come close to annoying me that bad about them.

I'm glad they're continuing the push to get rid of the mail-in-rebates. They're a pain. But I certainly don't think there's anything particularly evil about them trying to capitalize on customers habits. That's just efficient business management. It's exactly what their stockholders expect.

Wonder how many customers Best Buy had to lose?

[HangingChad]

I quit shopping at Best Buy over a $30 rebate on a CDROM drive. That was years ago. Two letters to Best Buy customer service, a handful of phone calls, still no check. So I quit shopping there and haven't been back since.

How many customers does a company have to lose that way before they change behavior? That's one of the big reasons I do most of my shopping online now. It's not always cheaper than at the store and there's always shipping and handling, sometimes S&H and sales tax. But I can still comparison shop a lot faster than driving store to store. Even for clothes. It's so easy to send stuff back to Nordstroms if it doesn't fit. Takes less time than driving to the store and only costs $5 in postage. It's worth it.

Best Buy can kiss my ass.

Déjà vu

[guzzirider]

"When people return the crap they bought, it goes back on the shelves"

Ever been to Frys ??

(I always thought that would be covered by a green friendly environmental policy, Recycling, you know the kind where the store owners pockets are lined with green cash and the merchandise is recycled to the least whiny \ most ignorant customer)

I don't do rebates

[Carpal Tunnel]

I have also always received my rebate... eventually, but I have never taken advantage of a rebate without feeling taken advantage of.

Let me get this strait. You want me to buy something at a marked up price, then spend the time and energy (time is money) to send in proof that i bought your product. Then, months later, after you have earned interest off of my money, i get some of it back, only to have saved a few dollars anyway?

Oh yes... lets not forget about all those poor souls who didnt follow your directions properly, or forgot to send it in on time, or god forbid decided not to bother!

Somehow this whole process disturbs me. It is a backassward coupon scheme, and i refuse to ever buy a product with a rebate (unless the pre-rebate cost is low already). I am almost always able to find the same product for only a few dollars more somewhere else without a rebate, and to me that is worth it.

Anyone care to enlighten me on how rebates benefit me?

Re:I don't do rebates

[Uncle Rummy]

Well, that's the point - they're not supposed to benefit you; they're supposed to benefit the retailer (or manufacturer, as the case may be). Most people will see an ad for gadgetX priced at $100 with a $50 mail-in rebate and calculate the cost of that product to be $50. Retailers like Best Buy have reinforced this belief with their advertising: GadgetX - $50!* (tiny print underneath: "* $100 - $50 mail in rebate").

However, because of all the things you mentioned (failure to submit the rebate before the deadline, improper submissions, interest-free loan to retailer from those who do submit everything properly), the true cost to the retailer of offering that $50 rebate is well below $50. This allows them to shift the demand curve for that product by creating an imbalance between the cost to the retailer of selling the product and the perceived cost to the consumer of purchasing it.

The question is whether the increased demand created by mail-in rebate pricing games creates more profit for the retailer than is lost by alienating consumers who dislike them. Apparently Best Buy has decided that they're pissing off too many people to justify this particular pricing game.

What pisses me off about this whole thing is this quote from Best Buy's press release: "Best Buy is taking a leadership position within the retail industry with our plans to eliminate mail-in rebates". Apparently they're hoping that we'd all forgotten about the leadership role Best Buy took in making the mail-in rebate pricing game such a ubiquitous part of modern consumer electronics retailing in the first place, and now they want us to get on our knees and suck their dicks for phasing out the very thing they inflicted upon us.

Re:I don't do rebates

[bnenning]

Somehow this whole process disturbs me.

As it should. It's a textbook example of deadweight loss.

Re:I don't do rebates

[Carpal Tunnel]

"Best Buy is taking a leadership position within the retail industry with our plans to eliminate mail-in rebates".

Really?
Last i heard, staples is already doing this. But hey, if they SAY they're being LEADERS, then who's to argue. PR departments don't lie.

While it is nice that they are making it slightly easier, nothing changes the fact that we are still dealing with rebates here.

A rebate is a rebate. The easiest rebate is no rebate.

Re:I don't do rebates

[jp10558]

I don't know, the so-called instant rebates (price marked down at register) seem ok, but why not just have it on sale, and not monkey around?

Re:I don't do rebates

[MrNerd]

And then there's me...

I was recently buying a power supply for my wife's computer (on sale!) at Staples. I saw a video card with two rebates. One was an "instant" rebate, ie they took it off at the cash register; one was a mail-in. The cashier asked the computer salesperson if that was correct. He said: "No, they're just instant."

I've often wondered if he meant that. (Of course he didn't!) I ended up getting the 128Mb video card for my wife for free; in terms of dollars, they paid ME!

$80 - $25 (instant rebate) - $30 (instant mail-in rebate!) - $30 (actual mail-in rebate). It took 5 minutes online and then 6 weeks of waiting, but I got a check for $30.

I never buy anything from a giant chain that isn't marked down below retail. Online suppliers beat retail stores hands-down for cost every time, unless the retail store is clearing something out, or offering a loss-leader.

Re:I don't do rebates

[Carpal Tunnel]

That's the thing though. It is very rare for me to find a product with a rebate that will save me significantly more money than just shopping around for a non-rebate item.

Sure, if you only shop around in retail stores you might not find a non-rebate deal... but who only looks in stores?

what about haggling?

[bobamu]

Don't like the price of something, or it's too much for you to afford? Make an offer, if they don't like it, take your cash elsewhere and haggle there. If you can't get what you want for the price you want then it's not the end of the world, unless of course it's major life saving surgery, then you're kinda doomed.
Mail in rebates just look like a handy way to "administratively error" extra cash out of people.

Best Buy as a company is moving away from MIR

[brendank310]

You should be able to see this at most of the Best Buy stores. I know this as I work for Best Buy, and I understand a lot of your grief with the company, Lord knows I have my own. But if you look at a lot of mid to high range laptops, and mid to high range desktops(mainly Gateway) you'll see the savings are passed along instantly at the register. There is a reason for this. When we sell that $300 emachines with monitor and printer, the people buying it aren't going to be buying anything that is going to make us any money(services, accessories, service plans etc). So from my perspective, they use mail in rebates on those so that we don't lose the tiny margin we get on those products, as we aren't going to recoup it with other item sales.

rebate lover

[doug141]

Rebate lovers are few and far between here. In 2002-2003 the sunday circulars were chock full of free-after-rebate stuff from electronics and office supply stores. I turned in over 30 back then and got every single one. The offers have tapered off over the last two years. My shelves are loaded with free modems, free extension cords and powerstrips, free CD-Rs, free network cards, free CD cleaners, free DUST-OFF, a free sound card, a free cordless phone, free jewel cases, free postit notes, a free smartmedia card reader. The only thing I EVER got burned on was a 4 port usb hub from I-ROCKS just this winter. Those SOBs admit to getting the correct documentation and are 8 weeks late cutting a check.

I've seen previous slashdot posters talk about companies never sending the rebate checks. I don't know if we buy from different companies or if they can't, or won't, follow directions exactly.

Some guy was slamming grocery coupons, too. I've combined coupons with sales to get free BAGS of groceries. The cashier was nonchalant about it... he's seen it before.

you know.....

[ShaunC1000]

If they really wanted to make this easier for the customer they would just ask for your address right at the cash register and automate the entire rebate process.... or just discount the rebate right there on the spot. But we all know the lazy ass people in this country won't even bother to go on a website and fill out their info for a check in the mail. The entire rebate system depends on the laziness of people.

Re:you know.....

[/dev/trash]

Rebates are

Same in Germany and in Japan

[Anonymous Froward]

In NZ, I've never heard of this sort of craziness. If the vendor is offering a discount on their product, they do it through the retailer, like you suggest.

Same in Germany and in Japan. Never seen this rebate thing in these two countries. When I came to USA, I was shocked to see the inefficiency of rebate system. I don't have any statistics, but I guess this is indeed US thing.

Mail-In Rebates

[dayton967]

People seem to forget the Mail-in rebates are not done by the stores themself, but by the manufacturer through a 3rd party. Though Mail-in rebates still suck the big one. The should just get rid of them. J.

CompUSA

[Deadstick]

...is doing it now. I bought a disk drive there on Dec. 26, and just had to log onto their site and type in the receipt number. It confirmed what I bought and said the check would be mailed "after" (but not how long after) the 21-day free-return period expired, which would be Jan. 16. I just checked the status on the site and it said the check would go out "on or about" Feb. 4. We'll see what happens.

rj

Re:CompUSA

[Deadstick]

Aha...Tadrith's post explains why CompUSA went to the online deal: they got in trouble with the FTC over sleazoid fulfillment practices. And here I thought they'd had an epiphany of altruism...I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked.

rj

Attorney General's office, Consumer Fraud division

[kurisuto]

When a rebate agency is reluctant to give me my rebate, I've gotten good results by saying that I'm going to report the problem to Consumer Fraud division of the state Attorney General's Office.

Once, I was supposed to get a free scanner as a rebate. The form said that the scanner would be shipped within 6 weeks. For months, the rebate agency gave me the run-around, saying that my rebate was on "extended processing" and refusing to give me a date when I would receive it. I finally said that I was going to file a complaint with the Attorney General. The scanner showed up on my doorstep two days later.

It's easy enough to find the contact info for the Attorney General's office. Just search the web for the name of the state (from the mail-in address or the phone area code) and "Attorney General."

Does this mean I'll actually get the rebates?

[gone.fishing]

Over the years I've filed several rebates through Best Buy for fairly small amounts. I've never recieved a check or gift card from them (or communication that I didn't file for it correctly). Because of this, I don't buy much at Best Buy and will never allow a rebate to drive my decision to buy anything.

I honestly don't know if this is Best Buy's fault, the mails fault, my fault, or some crook stealing stuff from me (although that last possibility seems really remote).

Maybe this new process will improve things?

Infinite sales tax

[Deadstick]

...occurred at Fry's on Black Friday. They were moving several items as "free," with rebates that added up to the purchase price -- but you still paid sales tax on the full amount.

rj

Sounds so...European

[Deadstick]

Price tag says 10 euros, you put 10 euros on the counter. That way they hide all the taxes in the purchase price instead of all but one.

rj

Ever wonder why...

[Ranger]

...they call them rebates? Get rid of the re- and they are just bates or baits. So really they should be called consumer-baits. Because, in fact, it's what manufactures use to bait consumers, the lure of $$$, money back. Since consumers keep falling for them, the manufactures keep rebaiting the consumer.

As for the End of Rebates. Hmmmm, sounds suspiciously similar to Blockbuster's End of Late Fees campaign. Notice Blockbuster doesn't advertise that anymore. Too many consumers got burned on that one. They'll probably simply redefine what a rebate is. I wonder what Best Buy's new master plan for rebates really is?

Speaking of rebates (somewhat OT but fun story)...

[Agram]

...I've done many of them, including Best Buy and AFAIK I got if not all, then a vast majority of them processed properly. The most important thing when applying for rebates is to make clear and legible copies of everything you send in (especially if they ask you to mail in the original UPC), even the mailing envelope if necessary, so that one can properly dispute any potential mishandling of their rebate application.

That being said, the best rebate deal I ever got was on an old PC game called Cyberstorm 2. I played the 1st part and was very much hooked to it. Unfortunately, the second part was IMHO nowhere as good as the first one. But I digress...

At any rate, I bought the game for $9.99 (it became bargain bin relatively shortly after the game hit the shelves) and on the cover there was still a $13 rebate from the game publisher (I think Sierra). Just for giggles, I filled out the rebate and sent it in with the purchase receipt (this was part of the rebate requirement) and sure enough, a couple weeks later I got $13 back :-). So, in effect I got paid ~3$ (ok, a bit less after taxes) to get the game, lol.

Too bad there aren't more deals like this one...

Umm...

[kadathseeker]

Why does anyone shop at Best Buy anyway? Their prices are NOT the best, or even particularly good. The only rebate purchases I've made recently were at Fry's for a 200GB Seagate hard drive and a 36GB Western Digital Raptor. I got the Seagate for $50 and the WD for $100, after rebate (this was a year ago, when prices were higher than they are now for those things). Sure, it took a while, but I saved nearly $80 between the two. Basically, I only buy something with a rebate on it if it is something I really want, with a large rebate, and if I really intend on sending it. The few times I have done this have really paid off.

Rebates vs eBay

[whoop]

I've recently spent time looking for hard drive upgrades on ebay. I notice all over there are brand new HDs out there, with the UPC clipped off the box. I figured they were using these store rebates to buy cheap and sell for a profit.

So I went to the Sunday paper a few times, looked at drives with their rebates, and I fail to see where the profit is. I bought one drive off ebay, 160gb or so, for $55 shipping included. In this past Sunday ad for Best Buy, they have a 120g for $59.99 after rebates. There is also a 250gb drive for $89.99 after rebates. Scanning ebay, there are a some for $75ish with shipping expiring in under 30 minutes.

Am I missing something, or are there once in a great while a rebate deal so good you can actually make a little something doing this?

Life is better without rebates...

[samj]

Rebates are cons, pure and simple. They're counting on a (potentially large) percentage of them not being honoured, and for each one that isn't someone has paid more for the item than planned/budgeted. I'm surprised they get away with it - it's like expiring gift certificates (what's that all about anyway - if I cash it a year later it's worth less anyway!).

50 miles?!

[CrayDrygu]

"Depending on where you are and what stores are around, driving 50 miles out of your way might actually save you a lot of money [...]"

Fifty miles!? Holy shit, dude. You go right ahead and drive over an hour to get to the grocery store, and an hour back again. How much is your time worth?

I have an Aldi, PathMark, Stop & Shop, A&P, and ShopRite all within reasonable distance of me. Out of those, only the Aldi doesn't have a discount card, but they're a discount grocer. I get what I can there, but they close early, and don't carry everything. (Only last month did they start carrying non-frozen meat, for example.)

And if I really wanted to drive, the only other chains within reasonable distance are FoodTown (has a club card), Wegman's (has a club card, and is slightly more pricey than the others anyway), and Whole Foods, which is just more expensive regardless.

Re:50 miles?!

[evilviper]

Fifty miles!? Holy shit, dude. You go right ahead and drive over an hour to get to the grocery store, and an hour back again.

An hour? No, 50mi/75MPH=0.66hr, and that's assuming you obey the speed limit.

And that's assuming you are stupid enough to make a special trip from your home, rather than going there from someplace closer. (eg) work

Alternatively, you could change your habbits, and go shopping once every couple months, instead of several times a week like an old woman. Large freezers are cheap.

Besides, I didn't say YOU should do it, I'm just pointing out that most everywhere, people have better options.

Re:50 miles?!

[CrayDrygu]

"An hour? No, 50mi/75MPH=0.66hr..."

So you're going an average speed of 75mph from the moment you leave your home, to the moment you get to the store? Do you live on the median on the highway?

Where I am, you're looking at an average speed of something closer to 50mph, 40 if there's traffic. Seriously, next time you travel somewhere about 50 miles away, mark down the mileage on your odometer, and time yourself, and see what your average speed works out to.

Re:50 miles?!

[evilviper]

So you're going an average speed of 75mph from the moment you leave your home, to the moment you get to the store? Do you live on the median on the highway?

No, I'm about 1/2 mile away, and the speed limit to the onramp is 50MPH, with just one (short) stoplight, and rarely enough traffic to matter.

So the difference is just a matter of a few seconds.

Where I am, you're looking at an average speed of something closer to 50mph, 40 if there's traffic.

Good for you.

Not Quite

[CrayDrygu]

First of all, as has been pointed out, the interest on $30 over 6 weeks is approximately nothing. If they raised the selling price of the item by $1, they'd make more than they do off the interest.

More importantly, though, this isn't the retailer's money anyway. Next time you're in a Best Buy, look at the rebates, and you'll find that pretty much all of the store rebates are instant -- they come off the price right at the register.

The manufacturer's rebates are paid for by the manufacturer, not the store. See, the idea here is that Best Buy already paid the manufacturer for the goods. Let's use a laptop computer as an example. If their normal selling price is $1149, Best Buy probably paid $1049 for it. So if the manufacturer wants them to go on sales for $899, they can't just nicely ask Best Buy to take a $150 loss on every unit, or deal with refunding Best Buy.

So, rebates. Best Buy doesn't have to deal with the extra accounting hassle, you get your laptop for less money, and the manufacturer gets to sell more units. And probably more importantly, they get to count the rebate checks in their marketing and promotions budget, meaning it doesn't hit their revenue numbers. Creative accounting at work.

pipedream: Fry's following suit... nah!

[DuctTape]

Now if only Fry's would follow suit. Out of two rebates, I've not gotten either back. Gee, we have no record of your submission.

I haven't gotten mad at anyone; I just look at the price before rebate, and that's the price. Which is why I shop at Newegg.com. Or Amazon.

DT

your analogy sucks

[c6gunner]

Jumping through hoops? Hardly. They ask you to cut out your UPC code and mail it out with the receipt. OHHHHH. Yep, I can see how that's a brutaly harsh request. They're like the goddamn gestapo.

Seriously, if you want a GOOD analogy, it would be more like me saying "you want a drink? great, kitchen's over there, go grab a beer".

Sure, it seems to you that it "serves no purpose" for me to send you to get your own damn beer, but chances are some of my guests will be fatasses too lazy to do it. Which means more beer for the rest of us! Now THERE's a worthwhile purpose.

Re:your analogy sucks

[h3llfish]

Seriously, if you want a GOOD analogy, it would be more like me saying "you want a drink? great, kitchen's over there, go grab a beer". I still don't think that's a good analogy. In the case of the beer, someone had to go get it, or else no one could enjoy it. To get the utility from the item, someone had to do some work. But my whole gosh darn point, and I apologize if I'm not doing a good job of expressing it, is that a rebate adds nothing to the product. It enriches mankind in no way. Like so much of what people end up doing all day, it serves no real point, other than to make sure that half of the people don't get the price they saw in big bold letters in the ad.

Price Matching

[CrayDrygu]

When I worked for Best Buy, price matches were pretty much the bane of my existence. The rules were pretty clear, and we followed them. The customers never did, of course. Here's how it goes:

"Simply bring in proof of a local retail competitor's price on the same available brand and model, [excluding] competitors' free offers, limited quantity items, open-box, clearance or closeout products, mail-in incentives, financing or bundle offers."

So, what parts got ignored? Almost all of them.

• "Bring in proof" -- Most people didn't. We'd usually work with them, and either call or look up pricing on their website, but don't expect it on a Saturday afternoon when there's 12 other people waiting impatiently.
• "local" -- So, first off, that excludes every internet-only business (Amazon, NewEgg, etc), and internet-only prices. It also excludes store that aren't, well...local. I'm in central New Jersey. We're not going to match a price on a retailer in Manhattan. We wouldn't even match retailers an hour north of here -- there's another Best Buy that's closer, that location will match them.
• "competitor" -- Retail stores don't, generally speaking, consider warehouse club membership stores to be competitors. So no, we won't match Costco. (We kept joking that, sure, we'd match the $30 difference, but there'll be a $45 'membership fee'.)
• "same [...] brand and model" -- Yes, 6th Avenue has the Toshiba 46HM85 for $500 less. It's last year's model. We have the 46HM95 now, and we're not marking it down to last year's model's price. No, I don't care that the only discernable difference is the model number.
• "available" -- If you can't buy it there for the advertised price, you can't buy it here at that price either. And yes, if the difference was significant enough, we'd call and check.
• "free offers" and "limited quantity" -- Duh. (See also, "available")
• "open-box, clearance, or closeout" -- Guaranteed to be a below-cost price. Besides, chances are we either have it on clearance too, or if we don't, it's because, well, it's not on clearance here. We'd have to be dumb to allow it, especially open-box pricing, which is only valid on that one specific individual item anyway.
• "mail-in incentives" -- Usually, these are being offered by the individual manufacturer anyway. If it's not through our store, we can't just make up a slip for you to mail in.
• "financing" -- Best Buy doesn't own its own bank, so we can't just ask them to "pretty please" change the financing offers just for you.

Seems like a long list, I know, but it's not so draconican. We'd match a whole lot more offers than we'd turn away, and the rules were pretty flexible too. If the internet-only price you found is $20 less on that $300 camera, we'll probably match it anway, and especially if you're buying other stuff with it.

Personally, I always thought (and still do think) that the rules are pretty reasonable. Yeah, some other retailers will match a price on nothing but a promise, but some businesses like to protect themselves a little.

"You never know what is allowed and what isn't. Sometimes you can use a coupon with a pricematch, sometimes you can't, sometimes the coupon price is subtracted from the pricematch, sometimes the after rebate price is used"

Official line is that coupons are not valid when combined with any other offer, which includes price matches. When coupons are used, the discount is taken off the price paid at the register. But again, it's up to management's discretion, and with every store having something like 10 managers, it's a toss-up.

Re:Price Matching

[evilviper]

"same [...] brand and model" -- Yes, 6th Avenue has the Toshiba 46HM85 for $500 less. It's last year's model. We have the 46HM95 now, and we're not marking it down to last year's model's price. No, I don't care that the only discernable difference is the model number.

I could completely agree with you, up until that one. It's complete bullshit to just change the model number for different retailers, different years, months, days, etc. Why not just use a nice long model string, and make it different for EACH AND EVERY UNIT? It's fucked-up, and I'm sure some big companies are going to get sued for big money within the next few years over such unfair trade practices.

Re:Price Matching

[CrayDrygu]

"It's complete bullshit to just change the model number for different retailers, different years, months, days, etc."

I think you misunderstand. Every bit of major electronics gets updated at least once a year by the manufacturers. Sometimes the difference is purely cosmetic, or some minor bugfixes. Sometimes it's whole new features and new capabilities. There's always something different, it just isn't always something major.

It's worse with computers, you know. A given model doesn't last more than 3 months, typically, before it's replaced with something that maybe has an extra 10gb of hard drive space, or an extra 0.1ghz.

So that's what I meant by "no discernable difference." I guess it was the wrong word, I should have said "no meaningful difference." It's different, just... do you care? If you do, you can buy this year's model at this year's price. If not, get on the highway and go buy last year's model at last year's price.

They do this because they can't have the same thing sitting on the shelf for months or years, or people would be going, hey, why are you charging brand-new prices for this old model? And how come mine doesn't have the patented ImageTron filters, and these ones do, and it's the same model number? So they tweak a little, put a new number on it, and the stock of the old model gets sent to the discounters.

It's in no way, shape, or form an "unfair trade practice." It's called progress, even if it is just baby steps.

Re:Price Matching

[evilviper]

Fair enough. Just a misunderstanding.

However, there really are a lot of cases where Best Buy will be selling an identical item as the Walmart down the street for a 15% higher price, with absolutely the only difference being that number on the sticker, and in the manual.

This is often the case with VCRs, TVs, etc.

I understand your point

[c6gunner]

but you're partialy wrong.

For one thing, if it's a manufacturers rebate, then under your model the store would have to front the rebate money because they still paid the regular price for the product. Which means that any time you have a manufacturers rebate on multiple items, the store is temporarily losing money. Might not be a huge impact, but it could be a problem for them.

Secondly, as others have pointed out, the fact that not everyone will claim the rebate allows companies to offer LARGER rebates. If all rebates were automaticaly claimed, you would never see a $120 HD with a $40 rebate, instead you'd get 5% off sales and the like. Small price decreases for everyone. Personaly, I'd much rather see big discounts for those willing to do the work, and no discount for those too lazy to do it. That's capitalism at it's best baby! :)

Hate much?

[RyoShin]

Looking through the top threads, the amount of animosity towards Best Buy is astounding. I know that there are a lot of people that don't like the place, but I'm surprised that there are a good number of people on Slashdot.

Maybe I'm an exception. I've never once had a problem with Best Buy. I rarely get the service plans (one of the things I've heard the most gripes about), and those that I have gotten I've never had to use. I've never had problems returning anything. Every single rebate I've sent in (and I've sent in many) has been fulfilled.

Maybe I'm biased. I did work there for three months. Yes, we were told to push the service plans like hell. Yes, they make Best Buy a lot of profit. Yes, they don't cover some things that you'd think they would (this is why you read things before you sign them, people.) Yes, the USB cables and the like are vastly pumped up in price.

You can get things cheaper, through places like Newegg, but NewEgg doesn't have any "sales associates". Yes, their "sales associates" generally aren't knowledgable, but if they were, they would be working at a better, higher paying job, wouldn't they? The fact of the matter is that Best Buy is a good nation-wide chain with employees that they train just enough to help John Q Public figure out what cheap-o computer to get for their elderly mother or 10-year-old daughter. Or just for finding a certain game or movie so they don't have to spend extra time browsing the isles.

Actually, now I can understand the animosity. But Best Buy really isn't that bad.

wait a sec...deja vu

[SteveXE]

I could have sworn I read this same article last year and possibly the year before....in fact I know I have.

Rebates are about crazy, crazy prices.

[Futurepower(R)]

You said you don't live in the United States.

Rebates are not about shopping carefully. Rebates are about crazy, crazy prices. On the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest rebate and sale day of the year in the U.S., I bought 12 Wireless devices (routers, USB wireless, PCMCIA cards and PCI wireless) for $2.99 each after rebate.

Rebates are about standing at a cash register, asking a sales clerk how much are the packages of 100 brand-name CDs, and being told "free after rebate".

The U.S. is a place of crazy extremes. The U.S. government has killed at least 4,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war, and yet most Americans consider the U.S. a benevolent country.

Love?

[RomulusNR]

At best, only their customers who have computers and Internet access.

And who don't mind sending their personal info to bestbuy.com.

safeway.com will show you your previous purchases

[danielsfca2]

When you use safeway.com (or vons.com, etc. All the safeway-owned stores that do delivery) and add your clubcard to your account, you can view all your previous purchases. Whether in the store or online.

The first time I went to that part of the site, I was surprised to find white shoe polish that I'd bought in the store for my ex-girlfriend two years before...and quite a few similar "I remember when I bought that!!" things. It was fascinating.

It's not perfect, and it doesn't give you stats or details on how often you bought things, but it sure is neat.

Also, it shows an indicator on the product page that "you've bought this before." I think it's a thumbs-up sign. It's pretty handy for when you're not sure which variety of something you got before.

Try it if you have a Safeway-owned chain in your area. You don't have to buy anything online to sign up and add your card, so even if having your groceries delivered isn't your thing, you can test it out.

-Dan

Good move, but just get rid of them altogether

[Retired Replicant]

I hate mail-in rebates so much that they actually deter me from buying things. The only price I compare when shopping is the amount I have to pay at the cash register.

credit where due

[doug141]

I-ROCKS just sent me my check, albeit 12 weeks after the original 3 month deadline.