Question Of The Day: Did You Ever Get Screwed On A Rebate?
2007 was a nutty time for my car business when it came to buying parts and supplies.
All the auto parts stores around my dealership were busy blowing their financial brains out in the pursuit of commercial business. I was retailing all the good cars I could find at the auctions, and it wasn’t long before I started to see an armada of amazing deals come to my door.
12 free gallons of coolant (8 store brand concentrates, 4 Dex-Cool) at Autozone. 16 quarts of free synthetic motor oil plus 24 more quarts of conventional oil at O’Reillys. Advance Auto Parts would guarantee the lowest price. Then O’Reillys offered “cost plus” deals that I could barely even fathom. While the parts stores were busy slashing each other’s throats, I was steadfastly collecting all the cheap and free products that came from the marketshare bloodbath.
Armor All, Meguiars, Turtle Wax, auto care products that were trying to get a retail presence… all were practically free for the taking if you were willing to keep up with the offers. 2007 netted me enough auto care products to handle the next three years of my business.
This ended in early 2008, and by 2009, you could often get better deals by lurking at the Bob Is The Oil Guy web site. That’s when I started noticing a nasty trend. Things started to get a bit too cute with the rebates.
I would apply for a deal, scan a copy for my own records, mail it in, and wait.
Nothing. One month would pass. 45 days. Then two months.
It got to the point where I had a spreadsheet on Google Docs exclusively dedicated to all the rebates that I saw as bait. At least 20% of which were financially AWOL on any given time.
I would call, email, and even complain if their word and my mailbox weren’t aligning themselves the right way. Eventually I got what I needed, but boy, did I get ticked off at that constant tug-o-war of time.
These days I only stock up on certain products off-season (i.e. Freon in November) and pretty much stick to the Bob Is The Oil Guy site for whatever else is worth my time. I retail less, wholesale more, and it’s rare that I see something that is truly compelling these days.
One deal today did catch my eye. This one. The only problem is I can’t endorse it wholeheartedly because maybe, perhaps, that rebate may find itself in that netherworld called, “lost in process”.
Every rebate that isn’t online is a roll of the dice these days. So with the odds in flux, let me ask you a painful question. “Did You Ever Get Screwed On A Rebate?”
This is your time to sound off on what I consider to be an industry practice that should be taken out back and burned to cinders. Mail-in rebates are an inexcusable screwing of the general public.
If you were ever one of those screwed, here’s your chance to vent.
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I don't remember what the first item was that I didn't get the rebate on, but the second was a wireless router that was like $14.95 after a $50 rebate. It was a great deal, or would have been. I followed the directions to the letter, but got a letter saying the rebate had expired as of xx/xx/xx. Problem was, the expiration date was over 3 months in the future! So I wrote them back and pointed that out to them, then they wrote back again, saying the model router I bought wasn't one of the listed ones. BZZZT! Incorrect, my router was the top one on the list of 6 that they offered rebates on. I finally called the place I bought it from(Don't remember where, but it wasn't New Egg or Tiger), and told them what was going on. They knew about the problem, and eventually, I got an email message saying my rebate was on the way to me. Six weeks later, I finally got it, about a year after I had bought the router. The best rebate I ever got was on an old cell phone I bought from Amazon in the early days. The phone was $300, with a $320 rebate with a 2 year AT&T contract. I went for it, and followed the directions and about a month after the phone showed up, the rebate check did.
I don't bother with rebates in single digit dollar amounts. But I did get a 70 dollar one recently on four Bridgestone Tires which Costco takes "off the top" so it's really an instant price reduction.