OfficeMax recently announced that they are doing away with rebates! Here's an actual headline subheading:
Citing overwhelming customer dissatisfaction with its mail-in rebate system, OfficeMax said it will eliminate the program beginning this weekend. (http://news.com.com/OfficeMax+bids+farewell+to+mail-in+rebates/2100-1047_3-6090290.html)
Don't panic, though, they are merely dumping rebates in favor of in-store discounts, which is far better. Best Buy has also announced they are doing away with rebates, but that won't happen until 2007. Still, this is good news. Why? Because for years consumers have been getting the beat-down by rebate programs. Let me explain.
Did you know that, according to one statistic I read, less than 20% of rebates are actually paid? There are two reasons for this; one is laziness. Sometimes people either forget or just don't feel like going through the process and have to wait 6-8 weeks or longer to get an $8 check. Beyond that, however, is the fact that even those who do go through the process more often than not won't get their checks. The reason is that the process is intentionally made so convoluted that the average person is going to miss something, and anything you miss is your loss.
Consider this. I run an ad in a local paper that says my $100 widgets are on sale for $65. People think, "Wow, I've been waiting for those widgets to come down in price!" They jet over to the store, pick up a widget, lay it on the counter, and watch in horror as the cashier rings it up at $100. "Whoa!", the buyer says, "This is supposed to be on sale for $65." The cashier says no, it's $100. The buyer wants to talk to the manager (me). I come out and explain that yes, I put it in the paper for $65, but I really had no intention of actually selling it for that price, I just did that to get people to come in and get one. I'm sure that, not only will that person not buy that widget (unless, well, you know), but I'm equally sure that the FTC or some other governing authority will be interested in a conversation with me about this. In other words, that's ILLEGAL!
But, what if there was a way to advertise a lowered price and not actually have to honor it, at least not in all cases? This is exactly the promise of the third-party promotional firms that usually run most of these rebate programs. My thinking is that they promise the manufacturer a certain maximum number of rebates that they will actually have to pay, and in a sense the manufacturer can then advertise a "sale" price and not have to honor it in every case. Example, you buy that $65 widget, but you have to PAY $100 (plus the tax on that amount, which is not rebated) and then apply for a rebate. You must fill out a rebate form, cut out a barcode label (or something) from the packaging, include the title page from the owners manual (or some equally trivial trinket), include the product serial and model number, and include a dated copy of your sales receipt with the product for which you are requesting the rebate circled. Your purchase must have been made before a certain date, and your request must me postmarked by midnight on a certain date. With all these requirements, which seem simple up front, statistics prove that the majority of consumers will miss at least one, in which case the rebate request will not be honored. What they will do is send you a notification, about 2 days before the deadline for mailing requests, saying that your request did not meet the requirements. You could try again, but, didn't you already throw the original receipt away, or in some cases already sent it to them? And how are you going to get another barcode, since the rules of the program stated that the materials you send them are now their property and not returnable? Did you forget to circle the product on the receipt, perhaps because you didn't think you needed to because it was the only item on the receipt? In all these cases, forget about your rebate. That's how they get you. If you don't follow every instruction exactly, they'll deny your request. By the way, the only time I ever lost a rebate was when I was informed that I neglected to include the serial number for the product. The product in question was a memory module, which didn't have a serial number!
The point is that consumers have been getting a serious beat-down with these rebates for years. Any time you see a price and it looks incredible, look for the asterisk; it denotes that a footnote somewhere says, "after mail-in rebate". Recently, I bought a power supply for my computer. I didn't even know it had a rebate until the cashier caught me leaving the store and said, "Sir, you forgot your rebate form." I thought, hey, this is cool, a $20 rebate. I read the fine print and found it's going to take 12 weeks (that's 3 months, folks) to get my rebate, if I actually get it. I always go through great pains to make sure I meet their requirements to a 'T', so I am confident. Still, why does it take 3 months to get a check? Can't someone just open the envelope, check and verify things, enter something in a computer and have a check spit out the next day? This process should NOT take more than a week at the most. But when you read that 10-12 weeks thing, you're likely to say, "Ah, forget it." Too many of us just roll over for corporate trickery like this, and that's the very reason it gets so popular. OfficeMax responded to "overwhelming customer dissatisfaction" by dumping this bad idea. if more of us would act on our overwhelming dissatisfaction, instead of griping to each other about it at the water cooler (or the copy machine or lunch table) a lot of this, and other beat-down behavior, would dry up like a wet towel in the desert.