Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Rebate Schmeebate

I swear I will never again be fooled by rebate prices. You know, when a retail store marks an item with the shelf price, minus the mail in rebate, and the price in an unbelievably great deal?

I have never been screwed by one of these deals. I have always gotten the rebate. Eventually.

I am now into my 10th week of waiting for a $50 rebate on a computer hard drive. They ask customers to wait 8 weeks for the refund. So I have now called the 1800 customer service line and used their web based tracking system. They all say the same thing "In Processing". Just like they told me two weeks ago.

Today though, I got an email directly from a customer service rep at the company. The way the email was written, I think it was an actual person sending it, not a computer generated response to my inquiry. And now she say that they have only had the request for 6 weeks. Isn't it funny that I mailed it less than 500 miles and it took 20 days to get to them? I have never ticked off my mail man, so I don't think it actually took that long.

But believe me, Annette, in customer service will be getting a lot of email from me in a couple of weeks if the rebate isn't here, soon. It might even be worth her sending me a $50 personal check, just to get me to go away.

5 comments:

Darth Daddy said...

I gave up on rebates. Got screwed too many times. I'd mail them off, and then 5 or 6 months later, recieve a postcard telling me that "I hadn't met the requirments", or "It was received after the required date", or it was "Invalid" . And there's no arguing with them - there's no one to argue with!

The reason they wait so long to send it (when they actually send you a rebate check) is because they are collecting interest on it.

Shannon

Mike said...

Wel, we are 2/5 of the way there. When I submitted this stuff, it was for two seperate rebates, one for $30 and one for $20.

I cashed, and spent, the $20 check already. It came a few days ago. But that $30 is still "in processing"

Mike said...

Finally done with the rebate stuff.

My $30 check arrived today, 1 week shy of 3 months later...

Anonymous said...

I've been lucky I guess. Sent in dozens and the only one I didn't receive was due to my error.

Mike said...

Yeah, I have a perfect record on rebates, but the wait time has gotten too long for me.

Costco has online submission and a couple of week turn around. That is cool!