Who do you think "society" is, moron? It's *you*. You're to blame. Don't think you can foist your responsibility off on others by conjuring up the magic word "society" as a form of leftie CYA
There is not much point discussing it with someone who believes that if a child gets born with a medical condition it is his/her fault. Or if circumstances beyond one's control produce a severe injury or loss of income or what not. Dimiwts like you who believe that they can depend only on themselves and are immune from external circumstance are the source of most problems in the very societies I spoke of. As to my responsibility? I happily pay my taxes. And I find it a source of pride if other people get better thanks to those payments.
Yeah, having money makes you evil, by default. Extremist looneytoon.
No having money does not by default make you evil. Using it to enslave and subjegate others does. When you pull your head out of your ass (thats gonna be some pop) and look around at the state of Corporate America you might notice some decidedly anti-social (and in fact anti-capitalist) happenings on a large scale. Same things are happening in the Canadian corporate world.
I am however in this discussion only concerned with efforts of some of these people to make vast sums of money on health care while at the same time hurting most Canadians.
Also on a phillosophical note, according to tenents of Capitalism, individual wealth is supposed to be tied to the benefit to society (as judged by an educated consumer in a free market) that very person is providing... I will be a happy camper and stop complaining as soon that becomes the case.
I have never heard of a critical procedure with 70% chance of success to be denied because it costs money.
The only way it could have happened is that the doctors did not believe the chances were this high. If you have evidence to the contrary, then it is simply a case of malpractice and it has nothing to do with the socialized system. So sue.
There is plenty of evidence that shows persons of noted political or social stature "buy" thier way up the list for surgery in a manner that bears not relationship with the urgency of their need.
The very rich simply pay 100% of the cost of their care in the US. They are of no concern to the rest of us as long as they do not want to screw the system for us. Your notion of "buying" their way in the socialized care is laughable since the very rich are, like you, vehemently oposed to and condescending of the system. They would not be caught dead in the same hospital as the peons.
And that compares to a covered, routine AAA-repair surgery with a 70% chance of success at a cost of 1/20th of the premiums paid by the patient, how?
I am not sure what are you getting at. Are you saying that the procedure that was denied was a "routine" one, with 70% chance of success? If so sue because then it would have been a medical malpractice to not perform it. Socialized medical care or not.
Ah, yes, abdominal aortic aneurysms are not repaired in that primitive medical backwater known as Canada. The government says they cover that surgery, but, surprisingly, they can not provide the surgeons to perform it.
I find this exceedingly incredulous. Provinces will send people even to the USA if they cannot offer critical services themselves (much to the chargin of the nuts on Free Republic). If the aneurysm was not detected prior to it bursting, which I assume is what happened (as the onus is on the patient to get checkups) then no medical system would be able to do anything about it. Even the most overpaid doctors can't do miracles.
Do you realize that there are some 9000 relatively routine medical procedures not available in Canada for lack of skill? And these aren't the medical equivalent of rocket science, either.
Err... any credible sources for this? Lack of 9000 "routine" procedures would reduce all the hospitals to dispensing coffee or Advanced Brain Surgery, since the number is so high as to cover most "routine" procedures. I wonder where you get such nutty statistics...
Because I benefit from a free enterprise system. The fact that some benefit far more does not bother me. It is bothersome that one can use wealth to purchase law that benefits the wealthy exclusively, but that is no reason to decry wealth alone. Decry fraud and other crimes.
And any of this has to do with you wanting to make health-care unaffordable for most how precisely?
For refusing to "cave in" to a two-tier system, Canada has the greatest per-capita costs of any country with a national health care system
You are sorely mistaken. The highest per-capita medical expense by far is that of the USA.. Note the $5,775 (USA) vs $982 (Canada) per capita 2003 expense. That same article explains the breakdown of administrative costs, profits etc.
While the U.S. has problems with administrative inefficiencies and legal expenses, these are trivial to correct, by comparison. You are comparing apples to oranges and stating that rotten apples are more appealing than expensive oranges.
Yes, so trivial indeed that it is taking 200 years to "correct"... and when they are finally done correcting they will end up with a... "single-payer" Canadian style system, as that American report explains.
No, I fully understand insurance. I have adequate health, disability, and life insurance. But no sane person would purchase a health insurance policy that would not at least provide up to the amount of premiums paid to save their life for covered procedures. To force such a policy on one and not permit them to purchase another is criminal. If my house burns down, I get my house replaced. My premiums might go up, but so long as the loss (i.e. health problem) is covered, the insurer pays.
You might be suprised to learn then that no insurance company guarantees a penny to be paid out, never you mind "up to the amount of premiums paid". That is the whole point of insurance: the insurance company can and will deny any expenses they consider "frivolous" or "unnecessary". I.e. they can decide your house was not properly fire-proofed or that the bush fire constituted an exceptional condition of some sort. I am sure you can Google for one of the million stories describing this process in the USA. Furthermore, while the Canadian doctors only concern was that the procedure would have been a waste of effort, thus they only concerned themselves with the medical side of the equation, in the USA the insurance company will decide on purely financial grounds what is it "worth" to them to pay, vs. potential lawsuit expense. You of course did not realize that the Canadian system is merely a form of insurance, the "single-payer" medical insurance system to be exact and its rules of payment are far more relaxed then that of the USA, i.e. more procedures are administrered in less likely success scenarios then in the USA. But there will be always some poeple complaining that the Canadian doctors refused to authorize the One And Only Patented Emu Dung and Hollistic-Spiritual-Hypnotic Therapy With Fire Ants for someone in the final, inoperable stages of cancer for a mere $100k in a Church "clinic" somewhere in Brazil.
Your ad hominem comparision of libertarianism to fascism is telling
My comparison is not only not ad hominem (although I did call you with quite deserved epitetes later) but merely stated the obvious.
I was not born into privelege.
So you were not but the only people who would benefit from private health-care are those who did and a small group of "self-made" millionaires many of whom are business crooks. Why are you shilling for them then?
You presume that even people of modest means are "privileged assholes"
No I do not. But you appear not to realise that these very same people are the subject of massive health-related financial failures in the US. Over 40% of personal bankruptcies in the US are in just such families and are caused by medical bills after their insurance coverage proves inadequate. Yes, Virginia, they all did have insurance. Most people of "modest means" do not have $30k lying around, not to mention that it would likely have been only one of many such expenses to cover. You should inquire about average family's (parital) medical coverage insurance rates and compare those to the medical portion of Canadian taxes. Some American doctors recently made a ruckus in Congress about this little bit... something about 30% higher administrative costs... 250% higher drug costs etc. etc. In other words the poeple of "modest means" are served far, far better by the Canadian system then that of the USA.
FWIW, the procedure to save his life would cost about US$30k. He paid far, far, more than that in Canadian income taxes over a 31 year working career.
... and it was the opinion of the doctors that it would have been a waste of time and money since they already knew what the result would have been. You are objecting to them being unwilling to spend $30k on a 0.001% (or some such) chance of success. While true, the US system would let you get a second mortage to pay for this and many other increasingly more desparate and futile procedures, the end result would have been the same. But if I am wrong about this, then it has nothing to do with socialized medical care but with simple malpractice. As in the doctors making an error in judgment. In which case sue, I see no problem with citizens doing so in such cases.
In any case, no more monies should be spent to save a live than were taken from that person for that possible purpose. So, your $25M argument is specious.
I see you do not believe in the concept of insurance! As in taking small amounts from all to cover huge expenses in case of the unlucky few. In which case I am afraid that your cash-only experience with the US for-profit system will likely be even more abysmal than most (some procedures cost over $500k, hospital stay $2k per day etc.).
While I am to old to register with the U.S. millitary, my son, an American citizen, is too young, but I expect that one day he will, as he will be required to by law.
I suppose it just natural selection then if someone is too poor to afford hospital and dies.
Yes.
Tragic, perhaps, but it is no one's fault.
The term for this is barbarism. And it is society's fault. As in failure to help most of its individuals so that some born into priviledge assholes can shower themselves in absolute power and luxury. Amongst many of its modern renditions, the most streamlined version is called fascism. Since that has acquired some "undesirable" connotations, some newer versions appeared, the most popular of which are variants of Libertarianism of which you appear to be subsrciber.
I for one will be exceedingly glad when you and your fascist ass are out of the country. I hate to foist such a vicious, selfish, sociopathic moron on anyone, but it seems you would fit in the US these days nicely. Dont let the door hit you on your way out, fucker.
Oh, by the way, do not forget to sign up for the US army so that you can go spread your ideals of vicious dog-eats-dog thuggery throughout the planet. Just do not be back or you might find out that the rest of us Canadians can use guns too.
P.S. Anyone reading this should note this telling bit: "To spend less money to try to save a person's life than was taken from them by force for their health care, is fraud at best, and murder at worst.". The main objection being that the doctors were unable to find a cure and realized that sad truth before $25 million was spent on futile but profitable procedures ala US. The poster is simply refusing to accept that his father's moneygrubbing proved impotent in the face biological failure. People like him live in the US of course too and they account for a significant portion of your insurance expense since they are the ones suing all the doctors in sight when a loved one dies. After all he has a lot of money to spend on the cure and so if it fails, it must be someone's fault for money always wins, right?
I can see larry's figure of 500k to develop support...
Removing code is not "development" and no it cant cost anywhere near as much in a product of complexity of BitKeeper. Also there was no support offered to the users of the free client, but on the other hand the bugs they discovered were fixed in the commercial version.
... and host the free version (and I do mean just the extras / differences for the free version) being reasonable. IME just hosting (properly on decent dedicated servers) a complex web app for a few hundred users can run to 1000s per month.
He made this choice to prevent people from looking at the server code and for advertising purposes not out of charity, consequently he does not get to include hosting costs in his claim.
I'd be interested in what you think is the bitmover timeline - eg. when Larry employed others and when Linus started using it. I don't have personal knowledge but web/usenet history seems to show that it was larry+others _before_ Linus switched to it.
It is my understanding that Larry worked on BitKeeper with Linus (a process which started when he was still at Sun) for a very long time just by himself. Linus and Larry are personal friends. Larry even visited at Linus' house when he was hashing out BitKeeper. Only after the project matured and became commercially viable did he get financing and other people on board.
Now look at this ridiculous numer of $500k... what an ass! Thats the money he spent on the whole R&D effort of his product which he goes and sells for profit
That was referring to his claim that he spent $500k on helping linux. But that was obvious from the second sentence, something you chose to ignore.
No sense continuing to debate when I can just watch you argue with yourself.
Yes, no sense indeed when you have difficulties understanding duplicity of a claim that someone spent $500k exclusively on charity while his entire commercially oriented effort is barely exceeding that amount.
One (decent, experienced) programmer since 1997 adds up to more than $500k by my reckoning, just on salary before adding _any_ overheads.
Sure. Except... Larry did not spend all that time/money to help Linux. He did it in hopes to get rich. Noone is arguing that he didnt spend time or money (as he could have been drawing salary somewhere), we are merely arguing that he did none of that for charity.
But Larry now claims otherwise. He tries to convince the gullible that the vast bulk of the cost of developing BitKeeper was somehow consumed supporting all those unwashed freeloading Linux developers. That is where this ridiculous notion of his that he somehow "lost" $500k "supporting" linux comes from.
This is what you seem not to understand.
I pointed out in my previous posts the history of BitKeeper and the fact that Bitmover did not expand until after Linus' name recognition allowed Larry to get large corporate contracts for custom solutions which then forced him to hire staff...
Even if we assume that is all smoke & mirrors and it is just Larry, with no office or any other overheads, that $500k from 1997 works out at less than $100k per year. Then you have to take out healthcare & other employer expenses for a US company - not insignificant. Quick google for a relevant salary survey shows you end up with less than one programmer for that. So it _still_ can't be only 500k even if it was just Larry all the time.
And you just assumed what Larry wants everyone to assume... that the entire effort of developing BitKeeper was somehow for the benefit of FOSS linux community and done out of charity. In fact 100% of the expenses of Bitmover were directed at the commercial product. No support whatsoever was given to the users of the free client, with the exception of Linus, who was actively involved in the development process.
Remember, noone is arguing that the entire development cost of BitKeeper was under $500k. It is in fact quite likely that it was more, given that Larry could have been working on something else and earning money. But was it a "gift" to the ungrateful, unwashed mases which somehow costs Larry $500k? Not only it was not, but the masses actually gifted Larry their efforts to enhance BitKeeper and Linus' name recognition. The ridiculous notion of many programmers somehow "supporting" the Linux users is laughable, made even funnier by the fact that the vast majority of the development cost was borne by Larry himself in the days when he was molesting people on lklm for ideas daily.
Or to put it simply, you are trying to pretend that I was arguing something which I did not.
"Just an SCM system" doesn't mean a lot - like saying "just a database". In some people's opinion it seems to be a pretty good scm and better than a lot of others.
Vast bulk of BitKeeper was developed by Larry himself, prior to his company hiring anyone. BitKeeper is simple enough to allow for such a development process. That is when the invovlment of Linux developers was at its peak and that is the only thing we are discussing here.
Wonder how big the sourcesafe dev team is ? I'd bet on more than $500k _per year_, and sourcesafe sucks.
Were Larry to go nuts and hire 1000 people next week, spending $10 million it would have changed nothing relevant to this discussion.
500k is 2-3 man years at my guess (I'm not in the US and don't know US salaries but I can look up salary surveys and add estimated overheads).
You should realize that Bitmover, the company, was for most of its history a one man show: Larry.
Even if it was "merely a stripped-down, crippled version", just doing the testing and release engineering costs time and money.
Note that the purpose of the said release engineering is to allow for testing and enhancements flowing from the linux community. BitKeeper would be just another obscure SCM product (one of thousands) if it were not for the fact that Linus and the kernel developers contributed their expertise in large project managment and time to test the ideas and actual code of BitKeeper. Now add the Linus' name recognition for marketing. As things stand it is Larry who owes linux community vast sums of money, not the other way around.
There is also no way that 500k is "all the work on ButtKeeper". Based on the info on their site, I would guess that bitmover is 20+ people (could well be more), and they've been around for a few years. At that size my guess is that you are easily into costs of $millions _per year_ - and bitkeeper is all they do. Do the math.
Yes that is the impression you are supposed to get. But ButtKeeper was developed nearly exlusively by Larry, basement-operated one man show, starting in 1997 (and probably earlier while he was working at Sun but he would rather not say that). Most of that effort was conducted with direct input from Linus and many other people on lklm. Only after the product was completed and marketable, did the company expand to include... marketing personell and administration. Noone has seen the current financials from Bitmover, but it would be a safe bet that most of the expense goes to office/administrarion/marketing/packaging etc. There are of course more programmers now (hired last year?) but it is safe to assume that the expense of the whole thing has reached $500k only after the expansion. In other words, the linux community contributed effort and expertise into making of ButtKeeper, larry got his product, proceeded to sell it and now no longer cares for his benefactors... and actually wants to bill them for their efforts.
Obviously false, obviously ridiculous if you had _any_ experience of paid-for software development. Words fail me.
I do have experience since my consulting firm at one point was involved in custom coding. We had 6 programmers at the peak of that project. How about you?
The point is that the expense of making a product varies greatly with the type of the product and the way in which it was developed. The Bitmover enterprise, with its sole product, was operated by Larry since 1997 and frankly he wrote 90% of the code for the thing in those years... with the sole purpose of selling it. And he used Linus and the linux crowd to help him.
So that's less than one programmer through the company/product history.
Bitmover has _several_ programmer _vacancies_ advertised right now, and yet you reckon they do it all with one part time.
Bitmover was for most of its history a one man show: Larry. Only recently (previous 2 years?) did the company grow to employ other people. Of whom I suspect most are marketing/administrative personell as such things ususally go. Since noone has seen actual financial statements from Bitmover any claims of vast expenditures are just hot air.
I'm not "falling for" anything - you just can't do simple math.
Yes you are. ButtKeeper with all its noise is just an SCM system, one on which Larry worked for many years in his basement. There is absolutely no need for vast number of employees on this product. Larry probably includes his web hosting expenses in this thing too.
$500k was the cost put on the paid work of developing and supporting free bk for Linux, not some kind of 100% profit "license fee" cost.
This is amazing. I see this nonsense repeated over and over on this thread. Repeat after me: Slimeball Larry McVoy is lying through his teeth. The "free" version is nothing but stripped down version of the commercial client. Get it? His entire effort for the Linux commmunity consisted of taking clues how to better his product from the community, their testing their bug reports and expertise and then selling it. In return, he gave Linus a full client/server and everyone else a crippled version of his commercial client.
Now look at this ridiculous numer of $500k... what an ass! Thats the money he spent on the whole R&D effort of his product which he goes and sells for profit. And now in the best form of an immoral businesslime he wants to stick the Linux community with the bill. And you and many others here are uncritically falling for it. Words fail me.
Explain to me, slowly, how does one spend 500k on employees removing code from your product. Thats right. Since the "free" client for linux developers was merely a stripped-down, crippled version of the commercial one this is what that crowd of experts was supposed to be doing. They must have had the source code written on sheepskin in goldflakes or something to take such horrendous effort and expense.
Or perheaps McVoy, in keeping with his obnoxious, slimey, greedy persona, is just trying to claim that all the work on ButtKeeper is somehow his "goodwill" to human kind and we ignorant peons are just too below him to see his greatness...
It is the other way around. McVoy owes hudrends of thousands of dollars to the Linux community for contributing their expertise and time in testing and debugging his concoction which he then proceeds to sell to the highest bidder.
According to McVoy.. gazillions... hundreds of dedicated staffers... blood of virgins..
And according to one Darl McBride, SCO spent millions purchasing Linux.
Get a grip.
One has only to peruse his frequent postings on lklm to see what sort of greedy, self-centered personality McVoy is. The fact that the output of the very same "dedicated" employees' constitutes the bulk of the comercial "version" of ButtKeeper he wont mention (you forgot that the free client is merely a stripped down version of the commercial one). This is indeed not merely RIAA/MPAA/BSA math, it is also slimey corporate math, like that of a drug company lumping marketing expenses, CEO bonuses and travel in the R&D column so it can whine about "exorbitant research expense" to the government.
What's changed is the gradual escalation of a select few's willingness to kick a gift-horse in the testicles and steal its teeth.
Probably something to do with the fact that while the horse was giving rides to one Linus it was also biting bystanders, kicking anyone who ever even thought about getting another horse and kept leaving copious amounts of manure on various people's front lawns. Not to mention that after a short while it became apparent that the "gift horse" was not in fact a horse at all but an obnoxious ass named Larry dressed up in horse-skin who concocted the whole sharade in order to satisfy his greed and pitiful need for accolades for his "unique" and oh-so-impossibly-clever Capital Horse Idea(tm). So after the ass was indeed beaten and its teeth pulled before it run away heehoing, Linus was left with a decaying horse-skin of sentimental value to him and a lot of people with clean lawns and out of range of hoofs and thus much better for it. And the world kept on turning...
This same situation occurs in regular sales. They don't include the taxes either. In all cases you are expected to pay sales tax, and neither manf. or vendor will speak of it (as its assumed, and various greatly region to region).
Nothing of the sort. On a regular "sale" you pay the tax on advertised price, not on some other, higher price.
At the time you bought the item, the price was x, and you paid a percentage. It does not matter that in the future you will get y back from the manufacturer.
Which is one of the ways in which the "mail in rebate" is at a disvantage to a regular discount at the cash register.
And get a clue dumbass...the vendor (or merchant) didn't come up with the rebate scheme, manufacturers did. Excluding BB rebates (which ARE done by the vendor, and a are only a small portion of all rebates) the vendor does nothing different than if there was no rebate offer.
The whole process exists exclusively because the vendor is in collusion with the manufacturer. Otherwise, the prices "after rebate" would not be advertised by the vendor and would not be (falsely) featured on their price tags within the store. Were it indeed so that the manufacturer offered a coupon within a product packaging that were a surprise bonus, not identified by the vendor, you would have a point.
This same situation occurs in regular sales. They don't include the taxes either. In all cases you are expected to pay sales tax, and neither manf. or vendor will speak of it (as its assumed, and various greatly region to region).
No you wont since some honest vendors apply the "rebate" to the price before sale to me. Thus you and me both take advantage of it, I dont have to bother with mail, UPC codes and assorted crap and you do. On top of that I do not pay the tax on the rebate amount. It is as simple as that. The difference is that one vendor has a clue and tries to serve me as a customer and the other (Best Buy) does not.
With your convoluted logic, I can only assume that you're still living with your mom and working at a grocery store. So believe whatever you like, as long as it helps you cope with the fact that you have such low intelligence you can't fill out your name and address.
Well well, an attempt at an age insult from someone clearly young enough not to remember the days before scams lile "mail in rebates" were the way of life for "consumers" of dubious intelligence like himself. It is probably completely lost on you, but what I am (vainly it seems) attempting to explain to you is in your own best interest as a customer. And luckily for you the practice of mail in "rebates" is coming to an end thanks to some folks at the FTC who have the common sense to protect such self-destructive individuals like yourself from their own gullibility.
How its a scam I guess I'll never understand, but go ahead and live in your little fantasy world were somehow they've screwed you buy offering a lower price for being patient.
Well clearly FTC lives in the same "fantasy" world and thereofore BestBuy (and others) are abandoning their con under regulatory preasure.
But you'd never earn 1.5 mil on that dollar..the most YOU could get is that one dollar.
One dollar scam or a million dollar scam, it doesnt matter, it is still a scam. I can only conclude that you are some sort of a thief engaged in stealing small amounts from other people and are therefore so desperate to try to defend this scheme to make your own activities appear harmless.
You also fail to realize that the manufacturers get paid when they ship to the merchants. So the manufacturer has probably been letting the $40 they made selling to the merchant sit in the bank and using the intrest to pay for the rebates.
What other funds they kept at the bank is their business and totally irrelevant. I am only concerned about my $50 that is sitting in their bank account for 8-12 weeks.
The rebate says I get $50 back, and I get $50 back.
No, the price/"rebate" advertising states in bold letters that the price of the item is say $100 "after mail-in $50 rebate". Which is a lie because when you do pay, you will pay taxes on $150 and receive $50 back which in effect refunds you less then $50 off the price of the item, i.e. advertised price is innacurate. The true price of the item was $107 (assuming 14% tax, a $7 on $50). The advertised, in bold letters, price was $100. You pay taxes on $150 ergo the real price was $107 before taxes. While one probably can find some sort of disclaimer in fine print on some of the ads, most of them I looked at simply say "Pay $100! *after $50 mail-in rebate" which is simply false. Noone is expecting not to pay tax, but the advertising creates an impression that the $50 is applied to the price of the item before taxes.
that $7.5 million goes right to the state, because they're the ones leving the tax. So if you want to call them a thief fine, but they are the ones forcing the 10.99 item to 12.53. and as a consumer you KNOW there is a sales tax.
You must be working for one of these vendors. Noone else would be so pighedeadly blind. Let me spell it out for you: the $7.5 million is the money that the vendor does not have to pay because he is lying about the amount of the refund. If his advertised ("after rebate") price was truly $100, the after-tax refund should have been $57. The consumer here loses by paing more tax then he would if the price was simply $100 as he was lead to believe. The governemt gets more tax then they deserve on this sale and the reason for it is the convoluted "rebate" scheme instigated by the vendor for his benefit.
So go ahead pay full price ($106 after tax), and i'll gladly pay only $56 (after tax) for the same thing because I can properly enter my name and address on a form and drop it in the mail.
You seem not to comprehend the simple fact that I will simply purchase the same item for $50 with no hassle, no mail and no imbecillic rebate schemes at some other vendor who operates by the old-fashioned rules of the market, one who will not try to get me to do work for him in hopes of getting lucky and increasing the price after the sale. Some for example do an "instant rebate" which enables them to defeat the vendor's scheme for the benefit of the consumer, by simply applying the rebate value to the price and filling all the bullshit paperwork for you (with the name of the store on the forms instead of yours). But go ahead and get busy filling out these rebate forms, if you do enough of them they might hire you to run around BestBuy dressed up as the "Rebate Boy".
Lets understand that, you know, rebates have traditionally been a way for the manufactures to lower thier price, when a merchant doesn't want to have a sale. Lower prices spur buying, and rebates are a way to lower prices (as they can't force merchants to do).
"as they can't force merchants to do"?! Utter bullshit. It is in the vested interest of both the seller and the manufacturer to spur sales. To do that, a positively ancient mechanism exists: lowering the sale price. It was done ever since Phoenicians invented a thing called "money". Mail-in rebate is an attempt to pervert that straightforward system by appearing to offer the traditional discount while allowing the vendor/seller an ability to lower its effective amount in many ways. In other words the consumer is a loser here compared to a traditional cash discount. Simple as that.
Oh my god, you mean that, *gasp* the customer has to prove they bought the product for which the rebate is being offered, and during the time frame its being offered? You're right, thats asking alot.
Yes it is. It is asking the consumer to perform unpaid work on behalf of the vendor/manufacturer. Which is intended to discourage following up on this process. While it appears that you enjoy performing unpaid work for BestBuy, most of us do not.
No, they are designed with the understanding that you pay full price, and the manufacturer will send you a check for the rebate amount, thus lowering you end price. I fail to see how saying 'buy this, and i'll send you a check for $10' is a scam. The fact is that it is unconditional.
It is conditional because a number of factors exist which can interfere in the process as it depends on work being done by the consumers, the vendor's bureaucracy, postal service, banking etc. Thus not only the vendor is afforded excuses for not paying, even if he plays it fair, there are other intermediate players who can drop the ball. Contrast it with a simple price discount at the time of purchase: none of these factors exist there which can affect the price after the sale was made.
Um, what exactly do you expect if your entry is illegible? How can they possibly send it out? They could guess at your name or address...but would that get it to you for sure? Mail can be damaged by water, and things do get lost in the mail. But its not only rebates that get hit.
This goes again to the "conditional" part. The specific examples I gave are those of unproveable excuses which the vendor can employ at his whim. None of them can be verified by the consumer (what is legible to the consumer can be claimed to be "unreadable" by the vendor's staff in India).
Yes, its a real hassel to fill out your name and address, and prove that you a) bought the proper item (by providing a upc) and b) buying it within the specified time period (by providing a copy of your reciept). It can't be much less info then that, or do you think companies should just take your word for it?
Again you seem to miss the most basic of concepts here: it is not my responsibility to provide a company which sold me a toaster with my detailed personal information. It is not my place as a customer to perform paperwork for it, involving UPCs, forms and running to the post office. My only obligation is to pay the advertised price at the cash register. All additional conditions and after-sale manouvering serve only and exclusively to further the interests of the vendor, not mine.
Actually literate and wise consumers can properly fill out a form and put it in an envelope.
Actually no literate and wise person submits himself/herself to bureaucratic procedures on his/her own time in order to make sales more profitable for the vendor. Wise consumers buy the same items with the discount included in the sale price and leave the mail in "rebates" to those whose self-respect is somewhat lacking.
I could easily call you a trained monkey for using a bank over a cred
Of course thats the manufacturers fault, a high sales tax.No, the manufacturers fault is advertising a $50 rebate on his product, a statement which is false.
Double taxation? Huh? You paid the sales tax at purchase and then you paid tax...oh wait, you didn't pay tax again.
Since the rebate is performed after taxes, the doubling of the tax occurs on the rebate portion itself, i.e. you are being refunded less then $50 promised in the price of the item.
Are you also upset that when you buy something its not really 10.99, its 12.53 instead? False advertising!! OMG!!
Yes I am because allowing a small thief to get away with something, quickly prompts a larger thief to attempt the same on a larger scale. In the case of the mail "rebate", the vendor is successfully lying about the value of his "discount" to the tune of tens of millions of dollars since a $7.50 times a million units sold is $7.5 million.
Idiot.
One of us allows himself to be fleeced by an assorted crowd of thieves and crooks on what appears a regular basis and, what is more amazing, actively encourages such practice. The other does not. I leave it as a exercise to the reader as to which one of us is an "idiot".
Ohhh....$50 * 1.02 = 51. A whole dollar per month? Yea, those evil bastards.
$1 times 1,500,000 units sold = 1.5 million per month. Evil, crooked bastards indeed. Just because you are being scammed for a small amount, that does not mean that the scam itself is not large or highly profitable. According to your inane logic, if each thief steals only 50 cents from you per month, that is quite all right. This attitude quickly leads to thousands of thieves doing it.
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There is not much point discussing it with someone who believes that if a child gets born with a medical condition it is his/her fault. Or if circumstances beyond one's control produce a severe injury or loss of income or what not. Dimiwts like you who believe that they can depend only on themselves and are immune from external circumstance are the source of most problems in the very societies I spoke of. As to my responsibility? I happily pay my taxes. And I find it a source of pride if other people get better thanks to those payments.
Yeah, having money makes you evil, by default. Extremist looneytoon.
No having money does not by default make you evil. Using it to enslave and subjegate others does. When you pull your head out of your ass (thats gonna be some pop) and look around at the state of Corporate America you might notice some decidedly anti-social (and in fact anti-capitalist) happenings on a large scale. Same things are happening in the Canadian corporate world.
I am however in this discussion only concerned with efforts of some of these people to make vast sums of money on health care while at the same time hurting most Canadians.
Also on a phillosophical note, according to tenents of Capitalism, individual wealth is supposed to be tied to the benefit to society (as judged by an educated consumer in a free market) that very person is providing... I will be a happy camper and stop complaining as soon that becomes the case.
I have never heard of a critical procedure with 70% chance of success to be denied because it costs money.
The only way it could have happened is that the doctors did not believe the chances were this high. If you have evidence to the contrary, then it is simply a case of malpractice and it has nothing to do with the socialized system. So sue.
The very rich simply pay 100% of the cost of their care in the US. They are of no concern to the rest of us as long as they do not want to screw the system for us. Your notion of "buying" their way in the socialized care is laughable since the very rich are, like you, vehemently oposed to and condescending of the system. They would not be caught dead in the same hospital as the peons.
I am not sure what are you getting at. Are you saying that the procedure that was denied was a "routine" one, with 70% chance of success? If so sue because then it would have been a medical malpractice to not perform it. Socialized medical care or not.
Ah, yes, abdominal aortic aneurysms are not repaired in that primitive medical backwater known as Canada. The government says they cover that surgery, but, surprisingly, they can not provide the surgeons to perform it.
I find this exceedingly incredulous. Provinces will send people even to the USA if they cannot offer critical services themselves (much to the chargin of the nuts on Free Republic). If the aneurysm was not detected prior to it bursting, which I assume is what happened (as the onus is on the patient to get checkups) then no medical system would be able to do anything about it. Even the most overpaid doctors can't do miracles.
Do you realize that there are some 9000 relatively routine medical procedures not available in Canada for lack of skill? And these aren't the medical equivalent of rocket science, either.
Err ... any credible sources for this? Lack of 9000 "routine" procedures would reduce all the hospitals to dispensing coffee or Advanced Brain Surgery, since the number is so high as to cover most "routine" procedures. I wonder where you get such nutty statistics...
And any of this has to do with you wanting to make health-care unaffordable for most how precisely?
For refusing to "cave in" to a two-tier system, Canada has the greatest per-capita costs of any country with a national health care system
You are sorely mistaken. The highest per-capita medical expense by far is that of the USA.. Note the $5,775 (USA) vs $982 (Canada) per capita 2003 expense. That same article explains the breakdown of administrative costs, profits etc.
While the U.S. has problems with administrative inefficiencies and legal expenses, these are trivial to correct, by comparison. You are comparing apples to oranges and stating that rotten apples are more appealing than expensive oranges.
Yes, so trivial indeed that it is taking 200 years to "correct" ... and when they are finally done correcting they will end up with a ... "single-payer" Canadian style system, as that American report explains.
No, I fully understand insurance. I have adequate health, disability, and life insurance. But no sane person would purchase a health insurance policy that would not at least provide up to the amount of premiums paid to save their life for covered procedures. To force such a policy on one and not permit them to purchase another is criminal. If my house burns down, I get my house replaced. My premiums might go up, but so long as the loss (i.e. health problem) is covered, the insurer pays.
You might be suprised to learn then that no insurance company guarantees a penny to be paid out, never you mind "up to the amount of premiums paid". That is the whole point of insurance: the insurance company can and will deny any expenses they consider "frivolous" or "unnecessary". I.e. they can decide your house was not properly fire-proofed or that the bush fire constituted an exceptional condition of some sort. I am sure you can Google for one of the million stories describing this process in the USA. Furthermore, while the Canadian doctors only concern was that the procedure would have been a waste of effort, thus they only concerned themselves with the medical side of the equation, in the USA the insurance company will decide on purely financial grounds what is it "worth" to them to pay, vs. potential lawsuit expense. You of course did not realize that the Canadian system is merely a form of insurance, the "single-payer" medical insurance system to be exact and its rules of payment are far more relaxed then that of the USA, i.e. more procedures are administrered in less likely success scenarios then in the USA. But there will be always some poeple complaining that the Canadian doctors refused to authorize the One And Only Patented Emu Dung and Hollistic-Spiritual-Hypnotic Therapy With Fire Ants for someone in the final, inoperable stages of cancer for a mere $100k in a Church "clinic" somewhere in Brazil.
My comparison is not only not ad hominem (although I did call you with quite deserved epitetes later) but merely stated the obvious.
I was not born into privelege.
So you were not but the only people who would benefit from private health-care are those who did and a small group of "self-made" millionaires many of whom are business crooks. Why are you shilling for them then?
You presume that even people of modest means are "privileged assholes"
No I do not. But you appear not to realise that these very same people are the subject of massive health-related financial failures in the US. Over 40% of personal bankruptcies in the US are in just such families and are caused by medical bills after their insurance coverage proves inadequate. Yes, Virginia, they all did have insurance. Most people of "modest means" do not have $30k lying around, not to mention that it would likely have been only one of many such expenses to cover. You should inquire about average family's (parital) medical coverage insurance rates and compare those to the medical portion of Canadian taxes. Some American doctors recently made a ruckus in Congress about this little bit... something about 30% higher administrative costs... 250% higher drug costs etc. etc. In other words the poeple of "modest means" are served far, far better by the Canadian system then that of the USA.
FWIW, the procedure to save his life would cost about US$30k. He paid far, far, more than that in Canadian income taxes over a 31 year working career.
... and it was the opinion of the doctors that it would have been a waste of time and money since they already knew what the result would have been. You are objecting to them being unwilling to spend $30k on a 0.001% (or some such) chance of success. While true, the US system would let you get a second mortage to pay for this and many other increasingly more desparate and futile procedures, the end result would have been the same. But if I am wrong about this, then it has nothing to do with socialized medical care but with simple malpractice. As in the doctors making an error in judgment. In which case sue, I see no problem with citizens doing so in such cases.
In any case, no more monies should be spent to save a live than were taken from that person for that possible purpose. So, your $25M argument is specious.
I see you do not believe in the concept of insurance! As in taking small amounts from all to cover huge expenses in case of the unlucky few. In which case I am afraid that your cash-only experience with the US for-profit system will likely be even more abysmal than most (some procedures cost over $500k, hospital stay $2k per day etc.).
While I am to old to register with the U.S. millitary, my son, an American citizen, is too young, but I expect that one day he will, as he will be required to by law.
Have fun in Iran!
Yes.
Tragic, perhaps, but it is no one's fault.
The term for this is barbarism. And it is society's fault. As in failure to help most of its individuals so that some born into priviledge assholes can shower themselves in absolute power and luxury. Amongst many of its modern renditions, the most streamlined version is called fascism. Since that has acquired some "undesirable" connotations, some newer versions appeared, the most popular of which are variants of Libertarianism of which you appear to be subsrciber.
I for one will be exceedingly glad when you and your fascist ass are out of the country. I hate to foist such a vicious, selfish, sociopathic moron on anyone, but it seems you would fit in the US these days nicely. Dont let the door hit you on your way out, fucker.
Oh, by the way, do not forget to sign up for the US army so that you can go spread your ideals of vicious dog-eats-dog thuggery throughout the planet. Just do not be back or you might find out that the rest of us Canadians can use guns too.
P.S. Anyone reading this should note this telling bit: "To spend less money to try to save a person's life than was taken from them by force for their health care, is fraud at best, and murder at worst.". The main objection being that the doctors were unable to find a cure and realized that sad truth before $25 million was spent on futile but profitable procedures ala US. The poster is simply refusing to accept that his father's moneygrubbing proved impotent in the face biological failure. People like him live in the US of course too and they account for a significant portion of your insurance expense since they are the ones suing all the doctors in sight when a loved one dies. After all he has a lot of money to spend on the cure and so if it fails, it must be someone's fault for money always wins, right?
Removing code is not "development" and no it cant cost anywhere near as much in a product of complexity of BitKeeper. Also there was no support offered to the users of the free client, but on the other hand the bugs they discovered were fixed in the commercial version.
He made this choice to prevent people from looking at the server code and for advertising purposes not out of charity, consequently he does not get to include hosting costs in his claim.
I'd be interested in what you think is the bitmover timeline - eg. when Larry employed others and when Linus started using it. I don't have personal knowledge but web/usenet history seems to show that it was larry+others _before_ Linus switched to it.
It is my understanding that Larry worked on BitKeeper with Linus (a process which started when he was still at Sun) for a very long time just by himself. Linus and Larry are personal friends. Larry even visited at Linus' house when he was hashing out BitKeeper. Only after the project matured and became commercially viable did he get financing and other people on board.
That was referring to his claim that he spent $500k on helping linux. But that was obvious from the second sentence, something you chose to ignore.
No sense continuing to debate when I can just watch you argue with yourself.
Yes, no sense indeed when you have difficulties understanding duplicity of a claim that someone spent $500k exclusively on charity while his entire commercially oriented effort is barely exceeding that amount.
Sure. Except... Larry did not spend all that time/money to help Linux. He did it in hopes to get rich. Noone is arguing that he didnt spend time or money (as he could have been drawing salary somewhere), we are merely arguing that he did none of that for charity.
But Larry now claims otherwise. He tries to convince the gullible that the vast bulk of the cost of developing BitKeeper was somehow consumed supporting all those unwashed freeloading Linux developers. That is where this ridiculous notion of his that he somehow "lost" $500k "supporting" linux comes from.
This is what you seem not to understand.
I pointed out in my previous posts the history of BitKeeper and the fact that Bitmover did not expand until after Linus' name recognition allowed Larry to get large corporate contracts for custom solutions which then forced him to hire staff...
And you just assumed what Larry wants everyone to assume ... that the entire effort of developing BitKeeper was somehow for the benefit of FOSS linux community and done out of charity. In fact 100% of the expenses of Bitmover were directed at the commercial product. No support whatsoever was given to the users of the free client, with the exception of Linus, who was actively involved in the development process.
Remember, noone is arguing that the entire development cost of BitKeeper was under $500k. It is in fact quite likely that it was more, given that Larry could have been working on something else and earning money. But was it a "gift" to the ungrateful, unwashed mases which somehow costs Larry $500k? Not only it was not, but the masses actually gifted Larry their efforts to enhance BitKeeper and Linus' name recognition. The ridiculous notion of many programmers somehow "supporting" the Linux users is laughable, made even funnier by the fact that the vast majority of the development cost was borne by Larry himself in the days when he was molesting people on lklm for ideas daily.
Or to put it simply, you are trying to pretend that I was arguing something which I did not.
"Just an SCM system" doesn't mean a lot - like saying "just a database". In some people's opinion it seems to be a pretty good scm and better than a lot of others.
Vast bulk of BitKeeper was developed by Larry himself, prior to his company hiring anyone. BitKeeper is simple enough to allow for such a development process. That is when the invovlment of Linux developers was at its peak and that is the only thing we are discussing here.
Wonder how big the sourcesafe dev team is ? I'd bet on more than $500k _per year_, and sourcesafe sucks.
Were Larry to go nuts and hire 1000 people next week, spending $10 million it would have changed nothing relevant to this discussion.
You should realize that Bitmover, the company, was for most of its history a one man show: Larry.
Even if it was "merely a stripped-down, crippled version", just doing the testing and release engineering costs time and money.
Note that the purpose of the said release engineering is to allow for testing and enhancements flowing from the linux community. BitKeeper would be just another obscure SCM product (one of thousands) if it were not for the fact that Linus and the kernel developers contributed their expertise in large project managment and time to test the ideas and actual code of BitKeeper. Now add the Linus' name recognition for marketing. As things stand it is Larry who owes linux community vast sums of money, not the other way around.
There is also no way that 500k is "all the work on ButtKeeper". Based on the info on their site, I would guess that bitmover is 20+ people (could well be more), and they've been around for a few years. At that size my guess is that you are easily into costs of $millions _per year_ - and bitkeeper is all they do. Do the math.
Yes that is the impression you are supposed to get. But ButtKeeper was developed nearly exlusively by Larry, basement-operated one man show, starting in 1997 (and probably earlier while he was working at Sun but he would rather not say that). Most of that effort was conducted with direct input from Linus and many other people on lklm. Only after the product was completed and marketable, did the company expand to include... marketing personell and administration. Noone has seen the current financials from Bitmover, but it would be a safe bet that most of the expense goes to office/administrarion/marketing/packaging etc. There are of course more programmers now (hired last year?) but it is safe to assume that the expense of the whole thing has reached $500k only after the expansion. In other words, the linux community contributed effort and expertise into making of ButtKeeper, larry got his product, proceeded to sell it and now no longer cares for his benefactors ... and actually wants to bill them for their efforts.
I do have experience since my consulting firm at one point was involved in custom coding. We had 6 programmers at the peak of that project. How about you?
The point is that the expense of making a product varies greatly with the type of the product and the way in which it was developed. The Bitmover enterprise, with its sole product, was operated by Larry since 1997 and frankly he wrote 90% of the code for the thing in those years ... with the sole purpose of selling it. And he used Linus and the linux crowd to help him.
So that's less than one programmer through the company/product history.
Bitmover has _several_ programmer _vacancies_ advertised right now, and yet you reckon they do it all with one part time.
Bitmover was for most of its history a one man show: Larry. Only recently (previous 2 years?) did the company grow to employ other people. Of whom I suspect most are marketing/administrative personell as such things ususally go. Since noone has seen actual financial statements from Bitmover any claims of vast expenditures are just hot air.
I'm not "falling for" anything - you just can't do simple math.
Yes you are. ButtKeeper with all its noise is just an SCM system, one on which Larry worked for many years in his basement. There is absolutely no need for vast number of employees on this product. Larry probably includes his web hosting expenses in this thing too.
This is amazing. I see this nonsense repeated over and over on this thread. Repeat after me: Slimeball Larry McVoy is lying through his teeth. The "free" version is nothing but stripped down version of the commercial client. Get it? His entire effort for the Linux commmunity consisted of taking clues how to better his product from the community, their testing their bug reports and expertise and then selling it. In return, he gave Linus a full client/server and everyone else a crippled version of his commercial client.
Now look at this ridiculous numer of $500k... what an ass! Thats the money he spent on the whole R&D effort of his product which he goes and sells for profit. And now in the best form of an immoral businesslime he wants to stick the Linux community with the bill. And you and many others here are uncritically falling for it. Words fail me.
Riiiight.
Explain to me, slowly, how does one spend 500k on employees removing code from your product. Thats right. Since the "free" client for linux developers was merely a stripped-down, crippled version of the commercial one this is what that crowd of experts was supposed to be doing. They must have had the source code written on sheepskin in goldflakes or something to take such horrendous effort and expense.
Or perheaps McVoy, in keeping with his obnoxious, slimey, greedy persona, is just trying to claim that all the work on ButtKeeper is somehow his "goodwill" to human kind and we ignorant peons are just too below him to see his greatness...
It is the other way around. McVoy owes hudrends of thousands of dollars to the Linux community for contributing their expertise and time in testing and debugging his concoction which he then proceeds to sell to the highest bidder.
And according to one Darl McBride, SCO spent millions purchasing Linux.
Get a grip.
One has only to peruse his frequent postings on lklm to see what sort of greedy, self-centered personality McVoy is. The fact that the output of the very same "dedicated" employees' constitutes the bulk of the comercial "version" of ButtKeeper he wont mention (you forgot that the free client is merely a stripped down version of the commercial one). This is indeed not merely RIAA/MPAA/BSA math, it is also slimey corporate math, like that of a drug company lumping marketing expenses, CEO bonuses and travel in the R&D column so it can whine about "exorbitant research expense" to the government.
Dont fall for it people.
Probably something to do with the fact that while the horse was giving rides to one Linus it was also biting bystanders, kicking anyone who ever even thought about getting another horse and kept leaving copious amounts of manure on various people's front lawns. Not to mention that after a short while it became apparent that the "gift horse" was not in fact a horse at all but an obnoxious ass named Larry dressed up in horse-skin who concocted the whole sharade in order to satisfy his greed and pitiful need for accolades for his "unique" and oh-so-impossibly-clever Capital Horse Idea(tm). So after the ass was indeed beaten and its teeth pulled before it run away heehoing, Linus was left with a decaying horse-skin of sentimental value to him and a lot of people with clean lawns and out of range of hoofs and thus much better for it. And the world kept on turning...
Nothing of the sort. On a regular "sale" you pay the tax on advertised price, not on some other, higher price.
At the time you bought the item, the price was x, and you paid a percentage. It does not matter that in the future you will get y back from the manufacturer.
Which is one of the ways in which the "mail in rebate" is at a disvantage to a regular discount at the cash register.
And get a clue dumbass...the vendor (or merchant) didn't come up with the rebate scheme, manufacturers did. Excluding BB rebates (which ARE done by the vendor, and a are only a small portion of all rebates) the vendor does nothing different than if there was no rebate offer.
The whole process exists exclusively because the vendor is in collusion with the manufacturer. Otherwise, the prices "after rebate" would not be advertised by the vendor and would not be (falsely) featured on their price tags within the store. Were it indeed so that the manufacturer offered a coupon within a product packaging that were a surprise bonus, not identified by the vendor, you would have a point.
This same situation occurs in regular sales. They don't include the taxes either. In all cases you are expected to pay sales tax, and neither manf. or vendor will speak of it (as its assumed, and various greatly region to region).
No you wont since some honest vendors apply the "rebate" to the price before sale to me. Thus you and me both take advantage of it, I dont have to bother with mail, UPC codes and assorted crap and you do. On top of that I do not pay the tax on the rebate amount. It is as simple as that. The difference is that one vendor has a clue and tries to serve me as a customer and the other (Best Buy) does not.
With your convoluted logic, I can only assume that you're still living with your mom and working at a grocery store. So believe whatever you like, as long as it helps you cope with the fact that you have such low intelligence you can't fill out your name and address.
Well well, an attempt at an age insult from someone clearly young enough not to remember the days before scams lile "mail in rebates" were the way of life for "consumers" of dubious intelligence like himself. It is probably completely lost on you, but what I am (vainly it seems) attempting to explain to you is in your own best interest as a customer. And luckily for you the practice of mail in "rebates" is coming to an end thanks to some folks at the FTC who have the common sense to protect such self-destructive individuals like yourself from their own gullibility.
Well clearly FTC lives in the same "fantasy" world and thereofore BestBuy (and others) are abandoning their con under regulatory preasure.
One dollar scam or a million dollar scam, it doesnt matter, it is still a scam. I can only conclude that you are some sort of a thief engaged in stealing small amounts from other people and are therefore so desperate to try to defend this scheme to make your own activities appear harmless.
You also fail to realize that the manufacturers get paid when they ship to the merchants. So the manufacturer has probably been letting the $40 they made selling to the merchant sit in the bank and using the intrest to pay for the rebates.
What other funds they kept at the bank is their business and totally irrelevant. I am only concerned about my $50 that is sitting in their bank account for 8-12 weeks.
The rebate says I get $50 back, and I get $50 back.
No, the price/"rebate" advertising states in bold letters that the price of the item is say $100 "after mail-in $50 rebate". Which is a lie because when you do pay, you will pay taxes on $150 and receive $50 back which in effect refunds you less then $50 off the price of the item, i.e. advertised price is innacurate. The true price of the item was $107 (assuming 14% tax, a $7 on $50). The advertised, in bold letters, price was $100. You pay taxes on $150 ergo the real price was $107 before taxes. While one probably can find some sort of disclaimer in fine print on some of the ads, most of them I looked at simply say "Pay $100! *after $50 mail-in rebate" which is simply false. Noone is expecting not to pay tax, but the advertising creates an impression that the $50 is applied to the price of the item before taxes.
that $7.5 million goes right to the state, because they're the ones leving the tax. So if you want to call them a thief fine, but they are the ones forcing the 10.99 item to 12.53. and as a consumer you KNOW there is a sales tax.
You must be working for one of these vendors. Noone else would be so pighedeadly blind. Let me spell it out for you: the $7.5 million is the money that the vendor does not have to pay because he is lying about the amount of the refund. If his advertised ("after rebate") price was truly $100, the after-tax refund should have been $57. The consumer here loses by paing more tax then he would if the price was simply $100 as he was lead to believe. The governemt gets more tax then they deserve on this sale and the reason for it is the convoluted "rebate" scheme instigated by the vendor for his benefit.
So go ahead pay full price ($106 after tax), and i'll gladly pay only $56 (after tax) for the same thing because I can properly enter my name and address on a form and drop it in the mail.
You seem not to comprehend the simple fact that I will simply purchase the same item for $50 with no hassle, no mail and no imbecillic rebate schemes at some other vendor who operates by the old-fashioned rules of the market, one who will not try to get me to do work for him in hopes of getting lucky and increasing the price after the sale. Some for example do an "instant rebate" which enables them to defeat the vendor's scheme for the benefit of the consumer, by simply applying the rebate value to the price and filling all the bullshit paperwork for you (with the name of the store on the forms instead of yours). But go ahead and get busy filling out these rebate forms, if you do enough of them they might hire you to run around BestBuy dressed up as the "Rebate Boy".
"as they can't force merchants to do"?! Utter bullshit. It is in the vested interest of both the seller and the manufacturer to spur sales. To do that, a positively ancient mechanism exists: lowering the sale price. It was done ever since Phoenicians invented a thing called "money". Mail-in rebate is an attempt to pervert that straightforward system by appearing to offer the traditional discount while allowing the vendor/seller an ability to lower its effective amount in many ways. In other words the consumer is a loser here compared to a traditional cash discount. Simple as that.
Oh my god, you mean that, *gasp* the customer has to prove they bought the product for which the rebate is being offered, and during the time frame its being offered? You're right, thats asking alot.
Yes it is. It is asking the consumer to perform unpaid work on behalf of the vendor/manufacturer. Which is intended to discourage following up on this process. While it appears that you enjoy performing unpaid work for BestBuy, most of us do not.
No, they are designed with the understanding that you pay full price, and the manufacturer will send you a check for the rebate amount, thus lowering you end price. I fail to see how saying 'buy this, and i'll send you a check for $10' is a scam. The fact is that it is unconditional.
It is conditional because a number of factors exist which can interfere in the process as it depends on work being done by the consumers, the vendor's bureaucracy, postal service, banking etc. Thus not only the vendor is afforded excuses for not paying, even if he plays it fair, there are other intermediate players who can drop the ball. Contrast it with a simple price discount at the time of purchase: none of these factors exist there which can affect the price after the sale was made.
Um, what exactly do you expect if your entry is illegible? How can they possibly send it out? They could guess at your name or address...but would that get it to you for sure? Mail can be damaged by water, and things do get lost in the mail. But its not only rebates that get hit.
This goes again to the "conditional" part. The specific examples I gave are those of unproveable excuses which the vendor can employ at his whim. None of them can be verified by the consumer (what is legible to the consumer can be claimed to be "unreadable" by the vendor's staff in India).
Yes, its a real hassel to fill out your name and address, and prove that you a) bought the proper item (by providing a upc) and b) buying it within the specified time period (by providing a copy of your reciept). It can't be much less info then that, or do you think companies should just take your word for it?
Again you seem to miss the most basic of concepts here: it is not my responsibility to provide a company which sold me a toaster with my detailed personal information. It is not my place as a customer to perform paperwork for it, involving UPCs, forms and running to the post office. My only obligation is to pay the advertised price at the cash register. All additional conditions and after-sale manouvering serve only and exclusively to further the interests of the vendor, not mine.
Actually literate and wise consumers can properly fill out a form and put it in an envelope.
Actually no literate and wise person submits himself/herself to bureaucratic procedures on his/her own time in order to make sales more profitable for the vendor. Wise consumers buy the same items with the discount included in the sale price and leave the mail in "rebates" to those whose self-respect is somewhat lacking.
I could easily call you a trained monkey for using a bank over a cred
Double taxation? Huh? You paid the sales tax at purchase and then you paid tax...oh wait, you didn't pay tax again.
Since the rebate is performed after taxes, the doubling of the tax occurs on the rebate portion itself, i.e. you are being refunded less then $50 promised in the price of the item.
Are you also upset that when you buy something its not really 10.99, its 12.53 instead? False advertising!! OMG!!
Yes I am because allowing a small thief to get away with something, quickly prompts a larger thief to attempt the same on a larger scale. In the case of the mail "rebate", the vendor is successfully lying about the value of his "discount" to the tune of tens of millions of dollars since a $7.50 times a million units sold is $7.5 million.
Idiot.
One of us allows himself to be fleeced by an assorted crowd of thieves and crooks on what appears a regular basis and, what is more amazing, actively encourages such practice. The other does not. I leave it as a exercise to the reader as to which one of us is an "idiot".
$1 times 1,500,000 units sold = 1.5 million per month. Evil, crooked bastards indeed. Just because you are being scammed for a small amount, that does not mean that the scam itself is not large or highly profitable. According to your inane logic, if each thief steals only 50 cents from you per month, that is quite all right. This attitude quickly leads to thousands of thieves doing it.