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moneysense.ca, 2/04/05
Bravo Best Buy!
As a consumer, there are very few things I hate about big electronics retailers than mail-in rebates. In this week’s flyer, a particularly bad page had mail-in rebates for 14 items out of 17! A popular tax software is listed at $31.99 and offers a $5 mail-in rebate. Who are they kidding? It is an epidemic especially for computer peripherals and software.
Mail-in rebates are popular with vendors because they are betting that consumers will not go through the hassle of sending in the rebates. It is a good bet because mailing in a rebate is only slightly less complicated than filing income tax returns. There are special forms to fill, silly bar codes to be cut out, copies of receipts to be made, stamps to be bought, envelopes to be mailed by a certain date and cheques (if they arrive) to be cashed in. No wonder, most people just give up.
Finally, Best Buy has seen the obvious and plans to end this insidious practise (I hope this includes the stores they operate under Best Buy and Future Shop banners in Canada). A company executive says: “Our customers are telling us they just hate the process. They send it in, they remain aggravated until they get their cheque”. I am glad you finally noticed but what took you so long? Better late than never, I guess.
moneysense.ca, 2/04/05
aren’t the rebates written off by a way of manipulating accounting? if the item costs 50 with 10 rebate, they record 40 as revenue, but pocket the 10, if noone cashes it in!
A smart practice, I think!
But as a consumer, I hate it!
I hate it because they rely on consumers to get frustrated and give up. $5 rebate. Who are they kidding? It takes 50 cents to just post the rebate. Who is gonna bother?
On one occassion they simply sent a letter back PAST the expiration date saying “We could not process your rebate because of improper information” and did not give my bar codes, receipts etc back to me!!
At Best Buy they often have several rebates for one item, meaning you must send two or three different envelopes, copies, bar codes and whatnot to different locations. Grrrr…
The real question of course now becomes… where does the savings go? Does that mean that the $40 article with a $10 rebate, is now a $50 article without rebate? I hate the practice as well, but I hate paying retail prices as well.
Ron:
Thank you for your comment. I hope that they will provide the mail-in rebate upfront as “instant savings” or something. I try to buy computer peripherals and software from specialized OEM stores. They usually have low prices and no mail-in rebates to worry about.
Neville:
I recently had the same experience. They sent me back a rebate form asking for the UPC code that I think I cut and sent them!!! Very sneaky. But, I won’t buy that product ever again.