[QUOTE=Musicat]
Here are two scenarios.[ol][li]If you buy now, this product will cost only $50! If you fill out the form correctly, don’t mind lending us your money for 8 weeks, don’t mind having to argue with the redemption firm about it, actually get a response from the redemption firm at all, who is counting on you to forget about it or throw away the check with junk mail. and remember that the manufacturer is planning on many consumers not redeeming their rebate, so they have no intention of doleing out a rebate on EVERY unit? What kind of idiot do you take us for, anyway? We’ve got this carefully calculated so what we pay is far less than what we promise! Or:If you buy now, this product will cost only $50 at the register, no more, no less![/ol]Which do you think is fair, and which do you think is borderline fraud?[/li][/QUOTE]
Both are fair, and neither is borderline fraud. Scenario #1 is a lot less convenient, but that inconvenience is understood going in to the transaction. Not at all fraud.
The main problem with your proposal is that it is not a law that requires rebates to be instant. It is, in practice, a law that bans rebates. If not for the current set-up, which allows for some customers to forgo the rebate and pay full price, there’s no incentive to offer the rebate in the first place.
In the example I gave in the OP (which still hasn’t been resolved and I have heard nothing from nobody), the rules made it impossible to collect ANYTHING no matter how good, honest, or meticulous the customer is. Could this be an accident? Sure, but what will it cost the company? Unless there are punishment laws, nothing. In fact, since few customers will make a federal case of it as I am about to do for a measily $10, all customers will be defrauded. The company stands to gain a lot if they just keep quiet and hope I’ll get tired of the game.
Why is this fraud? Because the company promised a rebate, but gave none. That’s fraud in my book. Wouldn’t happen under my “instant rebate” proposal.
Then maybe you’ve just been lucky. HP didn’t honor a rebate I mailed in for the exact reason the OP stated - they claimed that the only barcode on the box wasn’t the correct UPC.
That’s how it works here, too, basically. My understanding is that of you buy a 1c piece of gum (not that you can get a 1c piece of gum, but let’s pretend you can), and the .001c tax is basically disregarded, for obvious reasons. If you buy 10x 1c pieces of gum, however, you’ll pay 11c, as you have to pay the 1c tax.
Not everything has GST on it, though, which makes it more complicated than that.
We have GST- a Goods & Services Tax, which is slightly different to a VAT (Value Added Tax). Also bear in mind we don’t have 1c & 2c pieces, so we operate a rounding system; a 13c sale would be rounded up to 15c and a 12c sale would be rounded down to 10c. Unless you’re paying by EFTPOS or Credit Card, that is.
In other words, our sales/tax system is just as complicated as yours, if not moreso, and yet we still manage to display price tags which are the complete, total, and inclusive price the consumer pays for the product.
CurtC has it right, it’s price discrimination. Now I don’t personally like consumer gimicks, but I don’t see any reason for a new law. If the rebate folks are actually cheating people out of money by denying claims after the proper hoops have been jumped through, well we already have a law against that, it someone should crack down.
I’m not saying it didn’t happen to you, I’m just saying that in my experience it’s not a common occurrence. Was it possible that the package was improperly marked for a rebate? There are a few ways this could happen that don’t imply HP was out to screw you. Did you call HP to follow up?
Regardless, there are real business reasons for mail-in rebates. It’s a way to price items according to how much people want them. If you’re willing to go through hoops, you can save some money. I’m not a heavy user of mail-in rebates but I’ve probably claimed a dozen or more in the past 5 years and if it’s worth it to me I’ll use them again. Requiring all rebates to be instant would eliminate most of them and therefore I’d be against it. If there are a few bad apples incorrectly denying rebates, well, we already have laws against that.
So if promise to pay your income tax, but the check never reaches the IRS, would you plead guilty if they were to accuse you of fraud? What if you agreed to pay a speeding ticket, but the payment never reached city hall? Does this make you guilty of fraud?
There could be any number of reasons why you didn’t receive the rebate. Common sense dictates that this doesn’t make it fraud.
No, but I’d damn well be held responsible for paying it anyway, wouldn’t I? Who holds the manufacturers responsible for rebates “lost” in processing or in the mail?
I find your faith touching, though. And you are also correct when you say that one cannot legally prove fraud on the manufacturer’s part without showing evidence of bad faith. Which is, of course, a practical impossibility for a consumer, something that again works completely in the seller’s favor. But given that the entire rebate-offer process is designed to minimize the number of people who actually receive the rebate, I’m not sure why you consider it such a vast leap in logic to suspect that some less-than-honest manufacturers might “lose” a few rebate applications, to further increase their take on a sale that’s already been transacted.
If you consider that notion tinfoil-hat paranoia, then we simply disagree.
I did indeed. They sent me a form to resubmit the rebate a few weeks later. Unfortunately, they sent the form to me after the deadline, so I was again denied the rebate. :mad:
I not only think that they should be automatic, I also feel that if you use a credit card to pay a company, the money was taken off your card instantly, so if you need a refund from that company, they should put the money back on your card instantly.
For instance, I stayed at The Borgata in AC and they are supposed to refund my security deposit of $442.00 back to my credit card after I check out. I stayed there on April 10th 2008 and here it is May 14 2008 and the money is still not on my card. After waiting a week, I called and THEN THEY TELL ME it would take 2 to 6 weeks before it would show up ! WHY is this happening?
They took my money off in just about an hour, why the hell is it so hard to put it back on? Before the apologists come in here saying stuff like, “well, the banks are this and the banks they draw off of are that…” I will say this…NO. There is absolutely no excuse to take 6 weeks to get someone their money back to them.
Yes. Or at least lying. Do you really think a court would accept your claim?
“Your Honor, I can’t understand it. I put the check in the mail last week.”
“No problem, Son. These things happen. Case dismissed.”
If you establish an account to pay rebates, and months later, in spite of numerous sales of the product, no rebates are issued, would you think this was normal? Obviously, the manufacturer either:[ul][li]Had a poor QC program, or [*]Chuckled all the way to the bank.[/ul]One thing’s for sure – they don’t have much concern for their customers or need to worry much about their reputation.[/li]
BTW, I’m still waiting for a response from my emails to vendor and rebate company of a week ago. Yesterday, I got another “denied” card in the mail.
Hear, hear. There’s no way a minus sign should take a different processing time than a plus sign. After all, a minus one place is a plus somewhere else, and if it doesn’t happen simultaneously, both books are out of balance.
That’s crazy. I’ve stayed in hotels all over the world and have never had this happen. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever hear of a security deposit for a room on top of what the room is going to cost. Sure they take a card number in case you trash the place, but I didn’t think it ever got ran, unless you trash the room of course.
That’s a specious analogy and you know it. The court wouldn’t simply dismiss your case, but that doesn’t mean that you’re a liar. They would insist that you pay, but that’s not the same as accusing you of lying.
The thing is, I’m 100% positive that you see this distinction. For some reason though, you seem awfully insistent on pretending otherwise.
Do you deny that honest mistakes happen? If so, then you shouldn’t be quick to yell “Fraud!” when a rebate check doesn’t reach you. Nobody’s saying this isn’t unfortunate – perhaps even tragic, if we want to ramp up the drama-meter – but that doesn’t mean that there’s deliberate fraud at work.
Of course, if you’re the type who wants to assume the worst of intentions, then be my guest. Just pray that people don’t treat you with the same contempt when you make a mistake.
Again, I’ve never had a rebate denied. Why would I (and most people I know) never have encountered this problem before if the companies really didn’t care?
I can’t explain why your rebates are having problems. But as far as I can tell it’s not common, which would seem to refute your premise.
I have had at least 3 rebates never show up. One was wroth enough to follow up on- they claim they never got anything from me, and when I sent them copies, they refused to cover it as I didn’t have the cut-off code fromthe package- of course!
This is common enough that the Consumer guy from the San Jose Mercury News has made it one of his big issues.
Rebates and coupons are like flip sides of the same coin. CurtC has it right- the majority of people will either buy at full price or never send the rebate in/clip the coupon.
However, it’s still in the company’s interest to sell more, even at the rebate/coupon price, provided they still make a little money on it. They want you to work for it though, else they’re just making less money than they could. That’s why you have to clip coupons and wait on rebates.