On Friday 16 August 2002 11:31 am, Daniel Thor Kristjansson wrote: > Has anyone on this list ever gotten a mail-in rebate check? I've sent > in a few of these things and never seen the money. Since then I've > pretty much assumed they were all scams.
They're not scams, precisely, but the purpose of using mail-in rebates is several-fold: 1) to acquire your address to send junk-mail to 2) to send rebates very slowly (time value of money, lets the company account for the rebate in the next fiscal quarter) 3) to provide enough hassle that a significant percentage of purchasers don't end up getting the rebate, reducing the cost to the company If they really wanted to give you a discount, it would be easy to just give it at the register. A $50 rebate has a real value to me of maybe $20 or less - if I was looking at two identical products, and one cost $100 while the other cost $120 but had a $50 mail-in rebate, I'd buy the $100 one every time. Mail-in rebates of less than $20 or so are worth basically nothing - it will cost you more to redeem than you get from redeeming them. -- Michael Sims -- NYCwireless - http://www.nycwireless.net/ Un/Subscribe: http://lists.nycwireless.net/mailman/listinfo/nycwireless/ Archives: http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/
