So, allow me to start by briefly discussing rebates.

Rebates, for the sake of discussion, are used by manufacturers to stimulate sales of a product (or service I suppose) by making them appear less expensive than they actually are. For example, suppose a manufacturer wants to clear out some computers. Normally they cost $1000 but they go "on sale" for $800, with a $200 mail in rebate. You buy the item, mail in a rebate form and proof of purchase, and in theory some time passes and you get some money back.

Big deal, right? Everyone wins, you say. The consumer gets the computer cheaper and the manufacturer gets the sale.

Well, it's not really that simple. You see, the reason rebates are popular among manufacturers, is that statistically speaking there's a high probability that the consumer either won't ever claim the rebate, or will make a mistake with their claim, enabling the manufacturer to deny the rebate. Most of the statistics I've seen suggest that in general, about 50% of rebates go unclaimed. Naturally, the higher the rebate amount, the higher the probability that someone will want to claim it. Most people won't bother with a $5 or $10 rebate, but a lot more care about a $200 rebate.

So my big problem here is that rebates are proffered with the basic assumption that as a consumer you're either too lazy or too stupid to claim the rebate. That's pretty insulting, but it gets worse.

I've never been really big on rebates for the reasons I've just described, but not long ago I purchased a cordless phone with a rebate offer because I figured it was a pretty good deal. Now, the few times I actually bother to deal with a rebate, I do it -very- carefully, because I do not want to fall into the category of "too stupid to claim it". To make a long story short, I very meticulously filled out the rebate materials for this phone, jumped through the hoops, dotted the 'i's and crossed the 't's and sent it in, fully confident that I'd be collecting a $50 check 6 to 8 weeks later.

Well, I was wrong. It occurred to me today that I'd never got the rebate check, so I went to a website that tracks these things (wheresmyrebate.com) and checked. Turns out my rebate was denied, because "the offer was not valid for the phone I purchased." Well, let me just tell you - that's a whole big steaming load of Grade A Bullshit. I was very VERY careful to be sure it was a valid offer. In fact, I obtained the rebate form directly from the place that sold it to me. So I know for an absolute fact that it was a valid claim.

Here's the really beautiful part: Unless I want to go all Erin Brocovich, I have basically no recourse. The rebate processing company has my original UPC code, and even though I still have the product box it's the UPC code that constitutes real proof of purchase.

So I guess that in addition to assuming that consumers are lazy and stupid, manufacturers (or possibly the rebate processing companies) are now assuming that they can also be easily cheated. As far as I'm concerned this is nothing short of outright fraud.

As a side note, there was a whole company during the dot com era whose business revolved around giving people consumer goods that were "free after rebate". The way it worked was, you paid a super high amount for an item (for example, $200 for a $30 watch) but then you got the $200 back a few months later via the rebate. I had always wondered how they expected to make money on that, but at the time I figured that it was by earning interest on the $200. When they finally went bankrupt, there were all kinds of news stories about it, and I learned that their business model had nothing to do with earning interest. Their whole business model was based on consumers being (yes, you guessed it) too stupid or lazy to collect their rebates. Now, I can fully understand people not bothering with the $1 and $5 rebates.... but if you paid $200 for a $30 watch, don't you think the odds would be better that you'd be inclined to get the money back? Apparently this company didn't think so. They had so much faith in the ineptitude of the consumer public that they ran a multimillion dollar business to exploit it.

I used to think that rebates were a distateful but reasonable proposition, but this experience (with Motorola, by the way - and the phone's not even all that nice) has taught me that rebates are a big fucking waste of time. And as you can see, I've found it necessary to waste even more time writing about so that I won't be quite so pissed off.

For what it's worth, I'm batting about 66% on rebates. I just recently received 2 checks back that I had all but written off as having fucked up the process somehow. But lo and behold, they arrived. Neither of them had influenced my decision in any way to purchase the products, so it wasn't really a losing situation. One of them really surprised me, because I was certain that the gist was to purchase two items simultaneously and I purchased them a week apart and figured I was wasting a stamp.

On the other hand, I'm still bitter about a rebate that I got screwed on. I bought one of those 100 blank media CD-R spools back in the day. It was some no-name generic company with a $50 rebate, such that the whole kit-n-kaboodle would only be $9 after rebate. It was a simple process, one UPC, one reciept, and the form. Never got any money back on that one, and no denial or anything. Taught me a lesson though; I _never_ bank on rebates.

Damn, I could go off on this for a while too but I shouldn't.

--Joe

I agree that a rational solution from the consumer perspective is to never make a purchase based on the reabte. But there's something horribly wrong with a process that's supposed to be totally above-board, yet so frequently seems to result in one's getting screwed.

in a similar vein, I recently bought a $129 cd player for my car at Circuit City. CC has a "buy a cd player for $99 and get free installation!" deal, something that probably applies to most Best Buy/Circuit City types. I purchase it and check out - $188, thanks to six zillion things they didn't mention. I'm like "so, uh, what the fuck is free installation?" and the dude spends about five minutes in an obvious prepared speech that he probably has to repeat ten times a day.

dishonest advertising just pisses me off.

- luke

I'm about to buy a new cellphone because mine is falling apart. The new one costs $150 with rebate, $300 without but it takes 10 weeks for the rebate to come through. I hate that. I just want the phone for $150 NOW.

Almost all rebate forms require that the consumer fill out -all- information in order to qualify for the rebate. So, to collect that $5 or $50 or whatever, you've just handed over your name, address, and often much more than that... usually with no restriction on how that information can be used commercially.

I declined a $20 video card rebate last year precisely because to me it wasn't worth selling my information to yet one more direct marketer, just for a lousy $20.

1) Rebates
2) Fraud

Why assume that fraud is always and everywhere a part of rebates?

Another implicit assumption that you seem to be making (correct me if I'm wrong) is that, in the absence of rebates, the price of the item in question would fall to the rebate price (If you're not making this assumption then I can't understand why you would be angry about a company providing an opportunity to pay a lower price--again, in the absence of fraud).

And no, I'm not suggesting that in the absence of a rebate the price would necessarily come down to the post-rebate price. However it's my observation that in the technology arena that's often the case - companies use rebates as a "baby step" towards lowering the price of an item that's going to be phased out, obsoleted, etc.