Slashdot Mirror
OfficeMax Drops Mail-in Rebates
DrEldarion writes "Looks like OfficeMax is dropping mail-in rebates. 'Rebates were the #1 customer complaint we were getting,' said Ryan Vero, OfficeMax's chief merchandising officer. Hopefully other retailers will realize what a good idea this is and follow suit." The best part is that the discount is applied now at the register, so those of us who always thought that the rebates were a scam (or were too lazy to mail in the card) finally get some savings.
I just don't shop at places that have mail-in rebates. Period.
but a scheme.
those of us who always thought that the rebates were a scam (or were too lazy to mail in the card) finally get some savings.
Because not everyone will ask for their rebate retailers are able to squeeze more cash out of their customers.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
How stupid does a company have to be to devise a marketing practice that almost every customer who tries, hates and then continue to use it for what, decades?
.. are you paying any attention?
Hello, Staples, Best Buy, etc
This might have been news, sort of, back on June 30... http://news.com.com/OfficeMax+bids+farewell+to+mai l-in+rebates/2100-1047_3-6090290.html
Better to
I think that this is huge step in the right direction. It makes the cost after rebate a real cost, simplifies the process, and will go a long way towards customer satisfaction. I know that if OM has the same merchandise as a competing store, and I get the rebate at the register, I am going there. One more thing, if the rebate is instant, it will stop problems with rebates that are based on purchases of items in certain combinations. "I am sorry sir, but this rebate only applies if you buy x and y. Would you like to get y as well?"
My
In a country where rebates aren't found in the wild: Why is it hated so much? I can understand the inconvenience, but it seems I'm missing something.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
Ah, marketing at its finest. This isn't even really news. Most major retailers have been very quietly phasing out mail in rebates for months, if not years. It's in the freaking article, if you read it. People are saying " should do this too", and if you look, they probably already have.
As it says, Best Buy did this over a year ago, they just don't have all the manufacturers on board yet. If you look in their computer department, most laptops have discontinued mail in rebates, and are either instant or normal price. Circuit City has the same thing, in almost the same way. Many of their home office electronics manufacturers are instant-rebate only now.
If you read the article, it just states that "Beginning this Weekend" they'll start to phase the rebates out. It doesn't specify when they'll end, or exactly what will be phased out first. Best Buy made this exact same announcement in 2005.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, but people should try actually reading what's posted now and then. Then again, this is Slashdot, so what am I thinking?
Part of the whole reason for rebates was that many people never sent them in (I've seen numbers in the 90's showing about 5% of people would send them in). This allowed retailers to put a really low price on the shelf, but in fact make far more money for the item. Disregarding the outright fraudulent rebate scams, this practice wasn't fraudulent but it was obvious that the retailers are simply hoping that few people will actually send the documentation in to get the rebate.
With rebates taken at the register, expect them to be far more in line with a standard sale discount.
Do you have ESP?
I like rebates. Lower price than what a normal sale would be. They're hardly a scam -- if you're too lazy to take the 5 minutes to put the form together it's your own fault. I've done probably 50 rebates over the past few years, and only one of them did I never receive (though now that I think of it, it might have been from OfficeMax, so...). It's easy money for me at the expense of lazy people.
Now, if they're going to have the exact same prices, just without the mailing in, that'd be great, but I highly doubt that's going to happen.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
http://promomagazine.com/incentives/best-buy_04130 5/index.html (Karma whore link)
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 SU CK IT MP AA
Thaw your punctuation and it will spread more easily and not bunch up in one place that way.
I used to go to Office Max some weeks, leave with $100 worth of products and $100 worth of rebate forms. I pretty much always got every single one back, so for the hassle of filling out a few forms I was getting all sorts of free items (CD burners, surge protectors, mice, canned air, blank CDs, jewel cases, phones).
Now because of everyone else's bitching, those days are over. I don't know how the saving on other things are going to be affected by the end of the mail in rebate, but I know for damned sure they're never going to have an instant savings that leaves a dozen items in their store free for the taking.
The concept of mail-in rebates isn't a bad one. It works both in favor of businesses and in favor of more savvy/dilligent customers.
The real problem is that there are inadequate consumer protection laws (and enforcement) surrounding rebates. Stores and ads should never be able to put the after-rebate price in huge print, disguising the before-rebate price in tiny print in an effort to confuse consumers. And if a consumer mails in all the required pieces (UPC code, etc) to get the rebate, and the company either neglects to send the rebate check by their own deadline or erroneously claims the stuff the consumer sent in was wrong/incomplete, then the consumer should be able to contact some enforcement agency that will go kick the company's ass for lying.
Rebates are like coupons and generic brands in that they enable retailers to sell the same product at two different prices-- a higher one that you can choose to pay if you want the convenience of not mailing in anything and/or the cache of a name brand, and a much lower one if price matters enough to you to make you clip coupons, mail in receipts or put up with ugly packaging. This is a good thing for everyone involved, because it gives people more options; people choose how much they want to trade convenience for $$, and the company can afford to offer much lower rebate prices because they know everyone won't pay them.
It might seem that with the elimination of rebates, everyone would get the original rebate price, instead of just a selected receipt-mailing few-- but what I suspect is that everyone will just have to pay a much higher sale price that's an average of the original off-the-shelf and the original rebate price.
what allways buged me about 'em was you had to send in your proof of purchace - then if you had a problem with the product later on you had given up your ace in the hole.
That and finding out you dind't get cash buy store credit (Bust Buy, D-Link router)
Since we're on the subject of going overboard with mail-in rebates, have any of you guys had the displeasure of looking through a Circuit City newspaper ad lately? The damned things are almost entirely just mail-in rebate catalogs. Let's hope they get a clue soon and drop these things.
;)
Not to mention my complaint about the flyer's usability problems, with the portrait-layout cover, causing the thing to disintegrate into pieces when you mistakenly unfold it and try to page through it from the "left"...
On the other side of the coin, Staples at least lets you file for the rebates entirely online. No mailing, nothing. It's not any quicker to get the stuff back in the mail, but at least it's significantly less of a pain in the ass to file for the things. And no, I'm not a corporate shill for Staples. Honest.
...but I never could understood why american folks never raised hell about this whole rebate system. I mean come on, if I go in a store, I want to see 1). the exact total gross price which I have to pay for the thing when I get to the register, and 2). I don't want to see some fictional price displayed which has nothing to do with the amount of money you have to shell out at the register, but some hypothetical price you might arrive to after you sign yourself up into some company databases by filling and mailing in some paperwork. Like these companies would be some aiding organizations with no lurking motives, never using your data for ads, etc. If they'd be willing to give you the stuff cheaper, they'd give it cheaper. But they know exactly that most people will probably not send in the paperwork, so they don't have to pay you back that hypothetical difference.
This is just stupid. Deeply stupid. Yes, I've read all those opinions about how this is so good since they can get oh so many stuff for "free"... now come on, there's a joke I've known for a long time, sounds like this: "- How old are you, young prince ? - I'm 21. - Wow, and you still believe in fairytales ?".
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Look, from someone in the business, you have it all wrong.
1) Retailers are rarely the rebate providers. It's the manufacturers most of the time. So no, Best Buy has probably never scammed you on a rebate.
2) The reason you have to turn in an original UPC, a copy of the receipt, etc, is to prevent fraud. Fraud still happens all of the time, but this stuff is simply in place because if not, people will manufacture a ton of fraudulent submissions. And even with that, over half of our clients elect the "just pay if they call" philosophy, where if someone has bothered to call about their rebate, they will be given it.
3) If it were up to the people fulfilling the rebates, they'd validate everything sent in. Not only is there is a higher charge for valids compared to invalids, most of the time a fulfillment house is negotiating a contract, the first X customer service calls per month are free, so making the customer happy = less customer service calls = more savings for the fulfillment house.
4) Rebates give about 3 to 6 times as much reward as a simple discount does. Not only do a lot of people not bother to turn in a rebate form, it produces more sales, and it gives the manufacturer more demographic reports to do specialized advertising. Their marketing departments use the budget given to them that would be used for the simple discount to then use it for this other stuff.
If you don't want to fill out the rebate form and fill it in, fine; but it's not as if you're going to be saving anywhere near as much anyway. Really, you're talking about a $100 item being repriced at $95 instead of getting a rebate for $20. How much is that extra $5 off going to make for people deciding whether to buy or not?
Now how many people would if it were $80 after rebate?
Staples subsequently disavowed the rebate ("we don't process them") and it finally took a couple of emails back and forth to HP to get the matter "resolved". However, I just got *another* rejection from HP in the mail. So now I have an email from HP saying the rebate has finally been accepted and a physical letter that saying it hasn't. Meanwhile, the deadline is looming.
About two-thirds of the rebates I've done have been "rejected" only to be "resolved" after contacting the fulfillment company pointing out that they already have all the information they claim they don't. I've even received rejection letters claiming that they haven't received a serial number - with the serial number printed on the letter. It seems like it's just one more barrier they erect to avoid or delay paying, hoping you'll drop the matter.
You're obviously very young or have a very short memory. Government rarely adjusts taxes to meet its needs except when government itself predicts a revenue shortfall. Corruption, war, economic imbalance, social disasters ... these things don't matter at all, except to raise taxation rates. It takes a truly thick-skinned, courageous politician/leader to adjust government seizures downward because they're no longer necessary: there are always bureaucrats who'll swear they need more, segments of society who want to dismantle the "rich", and groups with similar motives. Gutless leaders simply leave taxes as they are, or raise them instead of ordering bureaucrats to do with what they have.
What matters is the government's propensity to seize property: if they see fit to do so, they will. Whether politicians call it "progressive" or "regressive" is mere rhetoric. At the end of the day, they've still taken your property. If you can succeed in getting them to seize someone else's property instead of yours, then your 'side' has won the political skirmish of the day.
The power to tax is the power to destroy. Government just about always exercises its powers, often just because it can. There is no such thing as a 'temporary' tax.
Founding member: He-Man Windoze Hater Club
Several years ago we were rolling in freebies and good deals. I used to have to decide which store to be at when they opened, there were so many good offers. And I did get a lot of loot from OfficeMax, including plenty of Free After Rebate CDRs and other free stuff, as well as good low prices on other things. I have extensive records on my rebates. I have received ever single rebate on everything I bought through OfficeMax. Yes, occasionally it did take a call to a rebate center, and OfficeMaAx dealt with some really bad "services", but I got it all. Those unwilling or too lazy to do this, fine, but don't spread the lie that we'll "finally get some savings", we are loseing the savings big time.
The rebates had virtually died already at OfficeMax. In fact they had already started advertising many items caliming Savings with "No Rebate Neded". But I couldn't quite find the savings. One week that they were selling a "Gread Deal" on a hard disk (WD brand if I remember right) for $89.99 "NO Rebate Required", I got the same size hard drive for $29.99 at CompUSA after rebate, and it was even a Segate drive with a 5 year warranty, not a WD 1 year take-a-chance drive. I've seen this pattern over and over again. The rebates are vanishing, but the good deals are not being replaced by true deals in the form of low prices. Same for Best Buy. They have almost completely dropped rebates, and I have not found one thing to buy there since the week they announced their identity tracking personal information database wallet busting loyality cards. Rebates are gone, but good deal prices have not replaced them.
Yes, I didn't like paying tax on the unreal higher price. I didn't like waiting to get my money back and occasionally having to make a phone call or even two. I didn't even like paying for the stamp (there were days that I sent out ten or more rebate envelopes, it adds up). But I loved the free stuff, and I certainly would pay the sales tax on a stack of fee CDs or DVDs to get them. Those days are gone. I don't really know how the organizations justified the offers, but I took them.
I doubt that those of you who are saying that we are "finally going to get some savings" are really that stupid that you haven't seen the trends, or that you would say this without any evidence at all to back it up when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary (my above hard disk example is just one of many that I could post). I rather suspect that what you mean is "I was too lazy to send in the rebate or just passedup the deal because I didn't want to deal with it, so now I'm glad that no one else is getting the deal either".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
made your clothes, your house, your car, and your computer, and virtually everything else you own or consume.
:)
I buy my clothes used from the thrift store at a very low price compared to the retail stores. Its almost cheaper to throw them away than to wash them. My car is used, I paid cash, so I don't have to give the title to the loan place _AND_ pay higher taxes and higher insurance rates for full coverage that costs more than a cheap car does like mine. My computer I bought new from Apple with a discount, no hidden fees, in fact they gave me a deal on some software that I wanted as well.
The moral here is that to escape the bait and switching, hidden fees, fees on returning defective equipment from manufacturers that failed to ship working versions of their products for the past _2_ revisions of their product (true story!), and all of this crap, I do have to "drop out" to some degree and find more unconventional and more honest and upfront means of doing commerce.
And to me, that is sad.
Extra taxes and fees at hotels? Gone, I will pay a flat, upfront fee at a campground that is lower and more honest and upfront, and well, at least a different experience than the luxury of having the ability to pay an exorbitant fee for room service. In fact, most campgrounds will just take cash put in an envelope (about $10/night). They don't also ask your life history and sell it to someone either. Why they need life history to rent a room for one night is only benefiting someone I don't know, and hurting my right to privacy.
Its not that I can't pay these extra fees, that is the whole reason that they charge them. Because they can.
Why am I protesting, and saving my hard earned money for me and the people I love?
Because I can _and_ I want to do that vs pay extra for nothing to someone I don't know and don't care about.
Its also common for me to get tickets to sold out rock concerts from people _minus_ the Tickemaster tax for the privilege of them selling a ticket. They typically get 30+% of the face value of the ticket and have the balls to charge the buyer _EXTRA_ to print the ticket on their own paper with their own ink vs mailing it to the customer for only the included extortion fees.
Legitimate businesses are making the mafia look like pussies. Any inquiry at the local "Payday loan" place will convince you that loan sharking by the mafia is a better deal. (No refund on your kneecaps though
I didn't like waiting to get my money back and occasionally having to make a phone call or even two. ... ...so now I'm glad that no one else is getting the deal either
Except, we are getting the deals. Online. Brick-and-mortar stores used rebates to try and compete with the low-overhead of online dealers like Amazon or NewEgg. Those $0.00 price tags were on items that made the company no money anyway... they're just to get you into the store, with hopes that you'll see something else you like and buy it as well.
If the brick-and-mortar stores are getting rid of rebates, they're going to have a very hard time competing with their online rivals unless they start having clowns and free hot-dog days. Or dropping prices. Frankly, I couldn't care one way or the other. I haven't bought an electronics item from a "real" store since 1995.
It would seem to me that Office Max just got a whole bunch of people to flock to their stores to see what could be had 'rebate-free'. I'm betting that for one clever reason or another, most of the big ticket items are still pretty heavily reliant on mail-ins. I'll also bet that at least some of the mindless shopping masses walking into OfficeMax will quickly forget what they went in for, and will walk out with one or a few items they otherwise wouldn'tve purchased. PR mission accomplished.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif