The Dreaded Mail-in Rebate

Picture it, the day after Thanksgiving 2004, the biggest shopping day of the year for retailers. And guess where I was? Yes, that's right! I was in the middle of it all watching a horde of Wal~Mart maniacs duke it out for those "all you can buy" $2 DVD titles that you wouldn't be caught dead with on a rainy day; as well as waiting in a series of hour long lines at CompUSA, Office Max, Best Buy and a few other local retailers; all for the hunt of the ultimate bargain on a few toys and trinkets for home and the office.

By the end of the day, I suffered many shopping war wounds comprising of sore feet, limp arms from the "wait-lifting" exercises during my quest to pass through a checkout stand, and finally not to mention my parched taste buds that yearned for a drop of anything liquid to quench the desert it felt like. But it was all worth it, or so I thought as I surveyed my conquests for that day. I had racked up an incredible amount of deals, mostly for the office, that earned me the self-proclaimed title of Mighty Bargain Hunter, which coincidentally could rival the shopping skills of any gal I knew.

Later that week I turned my attention to mailing off the many mail-in rebates I could redeem. I believe the total was close to $1200. It was exciting to mail the rebate forms and think of the money streaming back into my mailbox.

Life went on. Afterall, it takes like a billion weeks for a rebate arrive in the mailbox. After a a billion weeks and a day, I started to forget about the rebates as life decided I needed to be busier by pursuing yet another piece of paper to hang on my wall, as well as with the increase of opportunities for me professionally. Soon I forgot about the rebates all together.

But in June of last year, I needed to purchase another significant piece of computing equipment. While browsing the local advertisements containing numerous mail-in rebates for just about anything I could buy, I suddenly realized that I had never received a single one of my rebates. This angered me, especially when I found uncooperative companies, so I won't name compUSA or Office Max since they need to be innocent and all that other stuff to protect their identities. I double checked my copies and found I had made no error that I knew of. Postage was affixed. Mail was gathered by a postal carrier at my office, so what had happened to my rebates I deserved?

I spent the next several months bad mouthing rebates at every store I entered that offered such a scam... including CompUSA and Best Buy. Even though I knew it to be futile to complain to a 20 year old sales clerk that only knew life as a mail-in rebate world, I felt like I needed to voice my outrage at the retail marketing gimmick gone awry. During that time, I also vowed I'd never fall for the mail-in rebate trick again, nor buy any large item from any mega store that didn't know the meaning of the term sales price that did not include a mail-in rebate appendage.

Well... as they say ... never say never. I ventured into compUSA two days ago to purchase a flat panel monitor for a workstation, and to my disgust I found that it too had the dreaded mail-in rebate. I choked on that hard. I walked around the blasted store reading the back of various product boxes that looked interesting, all the while processing the big dilemna I had in the back of my mind .... should I buy and take a chance on a rebate? or should I go buy a pad of paper and go back to manual data crunching? It was a tough decision to wade through for me. Afterall, I had made a blood-sworn vow to never ever return to CompUSA nor to ever buy a product with a mail-in rebate but to instead to buy the competitor's product offered without any mail-in rebates. After about an hour, I decided to take another chance on a rebate product ... and if it didn't work out, I'd then buy CompUSA as a company and sell it off into little pieces.

After walking out of the door and feeling a little sick to my stomach for breaching my code of ethics, I discovered a little notice on the sales receipt that said something like "this item qualifies for eRebates, File online". That made me go hummm. So, I tried it out. It was relatively painless and linked directly into their sales data to validate the elegibility for the rebate. After the process was completed for my initial claim, I felt taht maybe I could accept doing rebates online; where I could track the progress from validation to the actual sending out of the funds. I was once again in bargain hunter's heaven.

The interesting thing is, just a few days prior to my rebound rebate-laced purchase, I thought about such a beast as a service and wondered why no one was using such a sevice to help their customers get their money back. I thought that would be the ultimate promotion compared to silly rebates that a lot of folks dislike. Mail-in rebates can be frustrating when a manufacturer rules it invalid due to some technicality, just to worm their way out of paying the money. So, I thought that retailers could gain a competitive advantage by helping their customers navigate the rebate process and claim the money that was rightfully the customers to begin with. So, I was delighted to see that someone was getting a clue. Of course I would have liked the chance to develop the solution myself.