It happened again. Whenever I pick up an offer with “mail-in rebate”, something invariably goes wrong. This time it was a $30 rebate for a 4 GB SD card for my new camera. Immediately after I got the card, I carefully cut the bar-code and included all the required invoices and receipts with MIR and posted it. I was quite pleased with myself that this time I did not forget to post the rebate on time. Eight happy days passed in pleasant thoughts about the rebate. And then it hit me. On the 9th day, the darn envelope came back ! stamped with something equivalent to “Insufficient Postage”. At that instant, I was like “What the #@$* do you by mean insufficient postage?…I used an USPS standard issue stamp!”. After about 20 seconds I realized what must have happened.
I bought those stamps about an year ago when they were 37 cents apiece. A quick search on the internet showed me that the first-class postage rate was increased from 37 to 39 cents on January 8th, 2006. Since I conduct almost all transactions online and rarely use USPS snail mail (4 times in last 3 years), I wasn’t conscious of the change. And since it took USPS 8 days to realize that I was 2 cents short on postage, it was too late to send it back with proper postage.
Long story short: crap always happens to my mail-in rebates.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
haha, isn’t that always the way.. =)
kira: yes indeed !
My sympathies man! I was here on the day it shifted from 37¢ to 39¢. And the day was just after the Thanksgiving. You do the math.
nku: I thought I was the only one who got burnt by this
Oh I am REALLY SORRY! I just mailed off a Rebate with a 37 cent stamp and the funny thing is they took it! I am confused now. I hope it went to the Rebate center. It was $12.
Jacquelyn
Jacquelyn,
I hate mail-in-rabates.
I HATE them too! I just got screwed out of an $80 rebate for a printer which I bought along with a computer from Hewlett Packard — granted, I did it too fast and didn’t include a UPC cut-out of one of the computer box. But what a pain in the butt — you have to jump thru hoops and do all this bs. It’s very obvious from the packing slips and copies of the receipts I mailed to them that I did purchase said items… so screw it! I am DONE with mail-in rebates. I hope they become illegal. If the companies really want you to have a price break, they will just give it to you.
If manufacturer’s were required by law to pay 5X the value of the rebated when they screwed up, the process would go very smooth.
I wonder (thinking of NewEgg in particular) how many sales their “rebate” products lose to their competitors because they have rebates.
I WON’T buy anything with a rebate; I don’t CARE what the “savings” “are”. There are too many comparable products at comparable prices to mess with these stupid things.
Rebates are a minefield. Newegg rebates have been ok for me. Just this week I got the rebate check for an order in December, but I knew ahead of time it would take this long.
Newegg customer service has a great reputation and that was the reason I bought there, not the rebates.
On the other hand, beware of the cellphone rebate. A company called inphonic (google search inphonic and scam) runs a bunch of websites such has wirefly, letstalk, 1800mobiles, younevercall etc… and they are infamous for not sending rebates even if you follow their absurd requirements. CellphoneEdge is the same way but I dont know if they are owned by inPhonic. The Attorney General of Washington DC filed suit against them but they are still doing business and there are still complaints to this day.
You should not that Walmart and Motorola websites do their cellphone sales through letstalk.com and the terms say you have to deal with letstalk if there is a problem.
Bottom Line: If you buy from them, do not plan on getting the rebate and if it shows up…you’ll be happy. Google is your friend
Leave a Comment